Tbh the people are not educated properly, too enslaved to debt service and bills, and so brain conditioned to individual greed that forming a cohesive army to restore democracy is a laugh.

That’s very true. Our problems don’t only exist at the top. We have fundamental, critical problems at every strata: top, bottom, and middle.

This country is so fucked.

Ideologically speaking, dozens of studies and surveys have shown that Americans are actually not very ideologically separate

Maybe Americans are generally ideologically homogeneous, but there’s enough variability within that shared ideology for there to be significant disagreements between the various ideological subgroups. Even if Americans broadly agree on the matter of individual rights, liberties, and freedoms, they may not necessarily agree on which rights should be prioritized or for whom.

But maybe the problem is in the shared ideology itself. A country that is adamant that people should have the right to be ignorant and misinformed, shouldn’t be surprised when large numbers of people are ignorant and misinformed.

Political tribalism is so crazy in this country. It’s like Republicans and Democrats live in two different countries. I suppose in some ways they do.

Tesla cannot be saved until and unless Musk sells his share of the company and completely divorces himself from it. Even that may not be enough, as the brand is so closely associated with Musk that his stain may not wash off, but it’s their only chance.

If you’re still on Earth…

Firefighters, EMTs, and police are all first responders, and so it’s necessary for them all to have at least emergency medical training. Yet, they are distinct agencies, because each job requires unique skills and training. I think police, and for that matter all first responders, should have mental health emergency training, just as they have medical emergency training, but I also think it would be useful for there to be a distinct agency that specializes in mental health emergency response, just as there are agencies that specialize in fire emergency and medical emergency response. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the police to fill this role, just as I think it would be unreasonable to expect the police to fight fires or provide all of the services of an EMT.

We need an option other than the police for people experiencing a mental health crisis. The police are not mental health professionals, and we shouldn’t expect them to be. The police are enforcers, emphasis on “force.” We need to establish a new agency of responders who are trained to deal with people who are experiencing a mental health crisis.

I think one of the greatest mistakes you can make in war is to underestimate your enemy.

What does that mean?

Edit: I guess they’re not going to answer. If you’re not capable of completing a coherent thought, maybe just stay out of the conversation.

People are products of their culture and the material conditions that they live under. So, we have two choices: we can either take a hands-off, or laissez-faire, approach and allow conditions to change organically and just accept any political or social changes that might come about, or we can take a more direct approach and try to change the conditions that people live under, and the culture, in such a way that will make something like the Trump movement much less likely to emerge. But, the second option probably won’t just happen, spontaneously or organically, it would probably require a fairly heavy handed, top down approach. I know many people are quite apprehensive about that, so that approach would likely be quite controversial.

So, what’s it going to be? Let things just play out organically and see what happens, and accept that the outcome may or may not be desirable, or try to steer the course of US society more directly and deliberately?

SDR isn’t a currency, it’s a reserve asset. I know you might be thinking, “well, gold is a reserve asset and a currency,” but go down to your local supermarket and try paying for your groceries with like 1/10 of an ounce of gold and see how that works out for you.

Some kind of international organization needs to issue and manage a reserve currency. Maybe the world’s various banks need to come together and form a global central bank that issues the currency.

They’re Western supremacists. They believe that Western culture and ideas are inherently superior to those of the non Western world, and for that reason the West should control the world.

The world needs a neutral reserve currency, not controlled by any one nation.

What other legal way is there that doesn’t require you to pay full price for the game?

There are a lot of philosophical questions that this whole situation brings up. They’re not new questions, people have been pondering and theorizing for a long time on these matters, but I think they remain uncertain. What is the end result of wealth and economic development? Where does it end, where does it take a society, and the world?

The US was a manufacturing superpower. Those manufacturing jobs lifted a lot of people out of poverty and into the middle class. Average wealth and living standards increased significantly. Then things stagnated, and those manufacturing jobs moved to other countries where people were poorer and thus willing to accept lower wages than the American workers. The US transitioned from a manufacturing economy to a consumer economy.

The manufacturing jobs were replaced with service jobs. Now, instead of working in a factory you worked in a retail store, or a customer support center, or for a financial institution, or a software company, etc. All well and good, I suppose, but it was still stagnation for a lot of people. Many people stopped getting wealthier and their living standards stopped improving. Some people did get much, much wealthier, but many others actually started getting poorer.

So, where do we go from here? Trump thinks we just need to bring back the manufacturing jobs and that will fix everything, and he’s not alone. Many people, across the political spectrum, think that’s the solution. But, I don’t think it is. Don’t get me wrong, a good manufacturing job is a god send for someone who needs the work and for whom the job will improve their economic situation, but for the rest of us, and I think that’s most of us, it doesn’t mean much. So, what does? More desk jobs?

I think that once you reach a high enough level of economic development, your goals change. It’s no longer about getting out of poverty, it’s about something else: freedom. I think people ultimately want freedom. Freedom to pursue the things that bring them joy and fulfillment. But, how? Because people also want security and a decent standard of living. A hobo might be “free” in many ways, but he’s not free from poverty. So how can we be free, to pursue the things that bring us joy, while also having a good place to live and raise a family, in safe, clean neighborhoods, a good education, and healthcare, etc? How? Or, are those two things mutually exclusive? It seems to me, the only way you can have both freedom and security is to be independently wealthy, but that’s just not possible for everyone. In fact, I don’t think it’s possible for the majority of people. So, what? Where do we go from here?

Everything’s stupid and nothing matters.

If you’re going to start a war, you better know for a fact that you can win. Trump thinks he knows, but he doesn’t know shit.

The US has a terminal disease: hubris. This is what it’s like to live in an empire in decline.

The US and allies control WTO, and China was only allowed trade on WTO terms after they accepted to follow the WTO standards, basically designed by USA

That means nothing, anymore. Those standards are meaningless, China holds most of cards, now. Any attempts to reign in China have been half hearted at best, and often undermined by the US itself. As tough as people have tried to sound in their rhetoric about China, the fact is American corporations and consumers continue to do business with them because it’s just too good of a deal for them.

and American politicians have openly stated how they need to prevent China from expanding their influence.

Well, they have failed, spectacularly, and that was true LONG before even Trump’s first term, let alone these tariffs.