Consequences of the US 2024 Presidential Election: Global Geopolitics Edition

[sporkman]

Will trump go after iran? He seems to be giving Israel everything it wants including proposing that America soldiers die in Gaza.

israeli influence makes the thesis of Russian interference laughable. Israel has so much influence that you’re really not allowed to even point it out while Russia gets blamed for everything because you’re allowed and even encouraged to blame them.

 

[sporkman]

Yep. To a first approximation, Gulf I was a military response to the price of oil skyrocketing after the invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqis under SH.

1994 Clip of a C-SPAN Interview with Dick Cheney

Here Cheney is cogently explaining to the interviewer what would likely happen after regime change in Iraq. I will never get tired of sharing this.

There’s a really hilarious Charlie rose interview with Iranian foreign minister Jarad Zarif. What’s funny about it is that he’s giving cogent and good advice about the dangers of invading Iraq. But Charlie rose was in a war frenzy as was everyone at the time and he talked about imposing democracy on Iraq and transforming the region.

it is always darkly funny when your supposed enemy gives good advice but then the hawks will say that he’s lying, he’s trying to trick us, don’t believe what he’s saying. The national security hawks are asinine like this, like they wont even listen to the other side but insist that they can’t be talked to or listened to.

can’t quite find it. Charlie rose website isn’t working for me. But this interview was like right before the invasion of Iraq.

 

[sporkman]

Bro, no country Israel has ever invaded (or asked the US to invade for it) has been a (real) threat to Israel.


View: https://youtu.be/PHzSr52fZLQ?si=tnOVtM0WIjCUH4C6


https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/...ress-netanyahu-advised-us-to-invade-iraq.html

https://www.vox.com/2015/2/26/8114221/netanyahu-iraq-2002

Israel's foreign policy since the day it was founded was to repeatedly punch its neighbours in the nose, and then when they inevitably get punched back respond, "See? We tried dialogue with the Arabs, but they're just barbaric, violent people. We HAD to invade, because we have no partners for peace".

100% agreed that American public had their eye on the wrong ball about Russian interference. Almost every sitting American Congressperson is currently an Israeli asset.

It makes much more sense that Israel tipped the 2016 election to Trump. The motive is obvious: Iran nuclear deal. The payoff was quicker too. But yes, virtually every US congressperson visits the wailing wall in Jerusalem. And Israel-centric evangelical Christianity is far far more popular than Russian orthodox. Russian Orthodox Christianity is like nothing in the USA, while American Christians are known to go into a holy land psychosis when they visit Israel because the thing they've been reading about their entire lives is there in the holy land. Kind of like going to Disney World after watching every Disney movie...

 

[sporkman]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/29/world/americas/inside-fentanyl-lab-mexico.html

The cartels are nasty business and if I could hit a button and kill every single one of them I would. The problem of course is that the cartels give the government of Mexico a run for their money. In fact, the Zetas are basically former Mexican Army Rangers.

Meaning that if the US government actually tried to go after the cartels with the military, it would be a Vietnam/Iraq style conflict with high casualties, IED's, etc.

One fascinating point of comparison is why Mexico has a cartel problem while America does not. Most likely it is because America has the reserve currency and so can afford to pay its military and police forces enough money that they are incorruptible, while Mexico being much less wealthy does not have this privilege. There is also the interesting point of comparison of Catholic fatalism vs Protestant individual agency.

 

[sporkman]

Which is why the US previously had much better luck against the cartels using other means. Of course, success has its own consequences. Our involvement in the Sinaloa cartel's breakdown and internal war has caused a lot more violent death than when it was operating as a near-formal business, but that (mostly) hasn't been in the US.

That said, I think you're missing one key consequence of military action against the cartels that makes it materially different than Vietnam or Iraq. Mexican cartels have extensive ability to strike targets on US soil. If it came to it, they could wage full-fledged campaigns of terror against government officials and US citizens. Not at the scale of what they have done in Mexico, but way bigger than Americans are used to seeing domestically. I would 100% expect political assassinations and the like as retribution if we went after the cartels militarily.

Yes that is true, but for the purposes of the RW in this country that would be a feature, not a bug, because an attack by a cartel within the US would result in a huge rally around the flag effect. People didn't care about Iraq or Vietnam because it was so far from the homeland, but a fight within the continental USA you would see something completely different. People would be willing to sustain heavy casualties. The cartels themselves likely know this which is why they don't do any of that within the USA.

What is more worrisome would be the potential for corruption of the US army and/or police as they became involved in Mexican operations.

 

[sporkman]

So I'm gonna try to buy as little as possible for the remainder of the Trump presidency. Also, the deminimus provision is still in place so ironically, you can bypass the tariffs with aliexpress...

 

[sporkman]

The US is done as a superpower. Who the hell will trust us anymore?

if only there were a way to get Trump to leave...

 

[sporkman]

It’s too late. He could be gone today and the damage is still done.

no it isn't. Most people are aware that trump is an anomaly and that the establishment GOP wouldn't do any of this crap once he's gone. Ron Desantis wouldnt do this.

 

[sporkman]

DeSantis who leads the push to remove the child labor laws? That appointed a conspiracy loon as Surgeon General? That DeSantis? Come on, be real here, if Heritage pumped their money into DeSantis all he would ask would be "How high do you want me to jump"

heritage wouldn't push for tariffs though. The GOP establishment is free trade. This is because of Trump personally, who had his prime in the 1980's when the trade threat from Japan occupied his mind.

 

[sporkman]

The GOP establishment has been wiped out as far as I can tell, Congress certainly doesnt seem to have a single one with a backbone left.

Trump really is a once in a lifetime figure. He grew to prominence during a media age when there was more of a monoculture. I never watched the Apprentice at all, but apparently he was beamed into people's television sets next to jeopardy and whatever else was on tv at the time, for like ten years and that's why so many people have this irrational devotion to the man. But network tv is dead now.

Once Trump is gone, the GOP reverts to Ted Cruz.

 

[sporkman]

The US Senate, with all D's voting for it and 4 R's voting for it, passed a bill stripping the president of his emergency tariff powers.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16ODR7A1FlE


After midterms, you can practically guarantee that the Democrats will control both chambers and they will actually pass a bill stripping the president of power to set tariffs.

 

[sporkman]

Replacement tech for American products:

M-series, A-series and Snapdragon ARM CPUs – Samsung Exynos or MediaTek series chips.

X86 cpus – probably not, though Via Technologies has the capacity to produce them. Might as well abandon x86 though. Too much US control.

RAM, SSDs, etc – all made in Asia anyway

RDNA and CUDA might be a problem, but ARM has its own graphics cores.

And of course, forget about putting Cisco and such in networks. We go with Nokia and Ericsson. They are the market leaders anyway in mobile network infrastructure.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/opinion/trump-tariffs-china.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS

Kind of interesting how Huawei responded the Trump's hostile actions in his first term. They have their own OS now. Has anyone tried it?

 

[sporkman]

He just got elected again despite network tv being dead.

Also, where can I find evidence of this GOP establishment because I'm failing to see any pushback from free market Republicans on Trump.

There are lag time effects. Most people who saw Trump on The Apprentice every single evening on their tvs are still alive and voting. And they were definitely alive in 2016 when they voted him in the first time.

 

[sporkman]

These tariffs are horrific, and I think we're gonna be stuck with them until Trump leaves office one way or another. The fact that he even went this far as to introducing and implementing them in this way means that he means it. He would have to be aware of the turmoil they would create and he went ahead anyways because he's like a suicide bomber who is dedicated to his ideology. Plus he's old, too old for the presidency which should have an age limit.

the stock market will likely drop by at least half. The only hope is if someone in his family talks him out of it, but his family should have talked him out of it before it actually happened.

All of this because Jeff Zucker was chasing ratings at NBC and then later at CNN.

Given how he did this, I also place the odds of him intentionally breaching the debt ceiling as fairly high as well. He'll call any warnings "fake news" and "DEI thinking" and all the other garbage terms they use to dismiss expertise.

Trump is a classic example for why democracy needs to be managed, and why undemocratic means are often necessary.

 

[sporkman]

Arguing for Russia's system of "managed democracy"? Considering Trump's obvious fascination and emulation of authoritarian regimes, I think that's going to yield more Trump not less Trump.

When he was elected in 2016 no one in their right minds thought he made any sense. But technically he did run by the rules. He won outright in 2024. But studies showed that the people who paid more attention would vote for Kamala. Expertise matters in everything in life, especially politics, but in a democracy system the people who don't pay any attention and don't put any work into educating themselves have just as much a voice as people who do pay attention.

The end result is bad leadership and bad policies.

Because face it, Trump is a democratically elected president. He is the result of a democratic system. The democratic system then is the problem.

 

[sporkman]

I kind of expect him to reinstate the gold standard next.

 

[sporkman]

I think it's a bit nonsensical to blame it all on the democratic systems. You could just as well blame it on poor choices in the education system (poor funding, home schooling, ect...), the media ecosystem or the way political funding works and probably half a dozen other things.

those are all problems but they aren't the direct system which selected trump. the direct system is democracy. democratic voting is responsible for Trump being elected and trump being elected was a bad outcome.

 

[sporkman]

Quasi-democratic system. The allocation of two votes to every state regardless of size perverts the notion of equal votes.

It is quite substantially democratic. And again, Trump won outright in 2024 so there's no electoral college excuse. The problem is that morons who takes Tim Pool seriously can also vote.

 

[sporkman]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/us/politics/trump-meeting-laura-loomer.html

Trump fired the head of cybersecurity command, an army general, on the advice of laura loomer.

Laura Loomer helped get a career military man fired.

WTF

 

[sporkman]

This is like the Pearl Harbor of economic policy. It's wildly unorthodox and radical. And like Pearl Harbor, it is ultimately a losing strike which eventually dooms the empire.

Conventional wisdom is overwhelmingly most often right.

 

[sporkman]

Pin your hopes on bird flu migrating to humans? Yeah, I know, flippant and not productive but I have no idea how you can get the morons to understand they're being morons in a climate where they are served by their own media bubbles who tell them they're heading for a golden age.

Right. Maga will MAHA itself to death. There will be a mass die-off of these guys as they shun vaccines and modern medicine in favor of vitamin A and drinking bleach.

Markets depend upon trust, predictability and fair play. Adam Smith noted that—observing how difficult it was for economic growth in Medieval Europe due to this. If Trump starts playing games with the markets like he has with other dealings, he's risking stability of the Dollar. Warren Buffett warned about this in his recent annual report. Once the US losses dollar hegemony, it's game over.

Trump deserves to be removed one way or another. Impeachment doesn't seem likely, nor does the 25th amendment. Hopefully he does choke on a mcdonald's burger one evening. Hegseth doing a coup on Trump? Can we dream?