President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

I'd never heard of him until reading that Weekly Standard article. Now, however, I know that he's one of those people whose very existence is assault on ... somebody.

 

#deflect

 

Yeah, the Gettysburg Address is a real piece of shit.

 

I would have gone with "There's too many pigs for the tits" ...

 

Gettysburg address is spectacular. And, that might be the most memorable line, but it is only setting the table for what is to come.

 

I think "American interests" is currently up for debate. The Bannon-doctrine, as best I can make it out, very broadly suggests that America should act like China and Russia, exploit other countries for resources. And America should do this without a care for the people who live elsewhere, besides its easier to deal with a dictator than a democracy. A dictator can be bought or intimidated or blackmailed and extorted (trump by Russia). China in Asia and Africa and Russia in Africa and Eastern Europe buy access to natural resources and entry to markets by supporting, paying, cooperating and intimidating dictatorships or destabilizing democracies to make them pliable. Those countries routinely are abusive from Tito style autocrats to Pol Pot style autocrats. The US has done this with Shah's Iran andcentral and south American countries in the past and with Saudi Arabia for the past 50 years. China and Russia lie, spy and seek to destabilize American economies, by any means necessary. Should the US act in a similar fashion we would engage in similar economic war with them. The world economy is so un structured, that war would be devastating. Think of nuclear war but no one is instantly killed. Just anarchy with 7 billion people, not a rag tag group of immediate survivors.

American interests, whether you like it or not, in Syria are the preservation of Israel, free flow of oil from and goods to and around the Middle East and Eastern Med and keeping Islamic terrorism from creating a subcontinent of anarchy. ISIS, Taliban and Al Queda can not win. They just can't rule that many people. They aren't sufficently armed, organized and in sufficient numbers. All they can do is engage in endless guerrilla war and terrorism. Just endless medieval destruction with modern weapons. They survive but don't win. Russia exploits this by being an active participant to keep this disorder. Destabilizing oil production, goods transportation and essentially paying extortion to keep terrorism out of the mother land. Trump has allowed Russia to put miliatary bases in Syria. They won't leave.
American interests in the Ukraine is to keep a nation independent. It is the domino effect again. The Ukraine helps Russia with ports and resources and even a middle class market. But if it was only the Ukraine it would be terrible to allow a country to be subsumed by Russia but not a strategic imperative to block it by the US. Ukraine is the 1st step, They want the Baltic nations, they want Poland and Hungary to be puppet regimes again. East Germany is lost without a million casualties, but Putin wants to put the band back together, The Warsaw Pact.

 

#distract

 

“If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?” is a personal favorite.

 

Yeah, but still ...

 

On the other hand ...

What Trump and His Team Have Wrecked So Far



* EDITED to add photo for YF.

 

Winning.


And here's one for YF

 

The leftist Slate political podcast had a segment on Antifa this week, FWIW.