Friendly reminder that if you look at population numbers its AFAIR less than 1/3rd of the world population whose countries recognize the ICC, which is an absolute minority.
> Friendly reminder that if you look at population numbers
i think it's funny that you tried to cast doubt but couldn't even do that because you lead with the glaring flaw in your reasoning instead of your rhetorical point. congrats.
Reuters isn't owned by the US Govt, but AFP is a public body (although with a pretense of independence) built in the office of the former OFI in 1944, which was Vichy's propaganda ministry.
How do you call a country where public press is so much owned or subsidized by the govt that other press can't survive, where press has guidelines of things to say, where voting happens without the ability for voters to check their vote was counted (witnesses were removed from witnessing the vote counting in France, when it's not total electronic), where they import voters to sway elections, and where the FISC publishes lists of people with a house and account numbers and amoints so hostage takers can target the right house and ask the right thing? Where police or train conductors take no action against fraudsters unless they are white, preferrably grandmas? SNCF has always been the most participant to exactions, they're breaking no tradition here.
What's holding me in Europe is clearly not democracy. Candidate for US or AU visa here, I'm rich but AU has closed the wealth-based visa.
You would think google, microsoft and apple would be having kittens over this. How will any government or large corporation trust their goods and services if they can be disabled at will because the USA government takes offence to you, or someone in your department. Good for linux I guess but pain for the rest of us.
They issued a General License concurrent to the ICC sanctions designation to authorize IT/ICT services, similar to licenses that exist for many sanctioned countries. https://ofac.treasury.gov/media/937191/download?inline
Never heard the idiom "having kittens" before. It sounds very cute, but the origin, the belief of birthing kittens because the mother unknowingly ate cat semen, will stop me from ever using it.
That's citing the pocket trivia book How Did It Begin? Customs, Superstitions and Their Romantic Origins by Rudolph Brasch. As he cites "a superstition, once prevalent among Scottish people" he likely based his claims on Notes on the Folk-Lore of the North-East of Scotland by Rev. Walter Gregor. This reads: "It was a notion that a male cat, when he jumped, emitted urine, and at times semen. Hence great care was used to keep male cats at a distance from food, for another notion was, that, if a cat did chance to jump over food, the one, who was unfortunate enough to partake of it, conceived cats."
This doesn't seem to match the use of the idiom. Meanwhile Greens Dictionary of Slang suggests the meaning is related to the nervousness of pregnant cats. https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/42jrf3i#nizqrgq
I guess so, I now know of a lot of sovereign activities gaining traction (ie the Dutch NixOS based government desktop).
But then again with out politicians being this unwilling to experience some papercuts for freedom [0] I guess they have nothing to worry about. (Although the certainly endured the Teams papercuts until they didn't feel them anymore.) I honestly don't understand why they're crying so hard, I really enjoy Element "ascii shrug".
Ah well, the old saying "Privacy is for Nerds" remains true as always.
It's almost amusing reading this through the lens of the visa shuttering article from yesterday (which a lot were cheering) because none of the receivers were born in the US.
Is that amusing, or is it cherry-picking to create an imagined hypocrite that is easier to attack? You should decline the temptation to be smug (in general, but especially regarding people who haven't actually done anything hypocritical).
The administration is the thing to criticize here: Not all individual people who agree with some arbitrary other thing the administration did or said.
You should assign rationality to individuals, rather than assigning irrationality to groups, especially on HN. If you can't resist, I would earnestly ask you to vent in this way outside of HN, on the rest of the internet.
I'm not smug, I'm disappointed. I don't think hypocrisy is necessarily irrational but it is self-serving, morally bankrupt and, in this particular instance, self-defeating.
Not in the least, people are highly irrational, I don't know how you can say this with a straight face. Even me, here, if I were rational, I would STFU, who am I helping pointing out the hypocrisy of it all? Nonetheless, I still think it's hypocrisy. And being bothered by it does not make it not so.
And not the least, this administration did not appear out of thin air. The US population voted it. I sure view the administration as a mirror (and the responsibility) of the US population.
But I do understand your wider point, and I think you're right, this whole thing is non-prodictive.
Insane these awards are going mostly to executives, Musk getting it for engineering sciences is a slap in the face to anyone that previously received the award.
You know what's funny? I live in a very progressive town. Everyone is pissed at Elon. Everyone drives Teslas. And not old one, clearly tons of them were purchased after he went "bad". Clearly people's principles are contingent on the car sale discounts.
> Clearly people's principles are contingent on the car sale discounts.
Okay, I'll bite. Do you routinely make your purchase decisions solely on a single factor? Especially big ones, probably second only in size to your home?
It is possible to loathe Elmo but also conclude that given all the various factors driving your decision making, a Tesla ends up being the best fit.
When buying our refrigerator, I didn’t look into how evil the CEO of whirlpool is. It’s quite possible he is as bad or worse. However, at least he has the good sense to be quiet about it.
Yea, for most CEOs, I have no idea what their politics are because they don't wear it on their sleeve and make it part of their company's brand. I can probably guess their politics, but it's not going to affect my purchase decision.
There are a handful of CEOs who just can't seem to keep it to themselves, to the point where they're just begging for people to include those politics in their purchase decisions.
It's all quite true. What is surprising though, that the SAME people who are very outspoken in criticizing Musk are driving Teslas. First, they would put some lame stickers to make the whole thing seem like a joke, now they don't even care to do that. It's almost like their self-proclaimed virtue ends where (tiny) financial pain begins.
Where I grew up in the US it was not uncommon for people to intentionally only buy union made vehicles. Not sure how that works out now when things are built and assembled in a dozen factories but it used to be more simple and union workers supported other union workers. (this reads like the rantings of an old boomer, I'm not either I swear)
> It is possible to loathe Elmo but also conclude that given all the various factors driving your decision making, a Tesla ends up being the best fit.
Musk is unambiguously an unashamedly a Nazi, and not just for the triviality of his arm gestures. He calls people like my parents traitors for not sticking with their respective races and says people like me should “remigrate” because the west should be white only. He says people like my wife express “hatred against whites” and routinely retweets antisemitic posts. He called his ai system the “mechahitler” and it routinely returns racist responses when asked.
And when people patronize his businesses it amplifies his own wealth, which he then spends to spread his vitriol in multiple countries.
So yes, if you support Nazis financially or otherwise it makes you one too.
For you, out of convenience, nazi supporter and actual nazi (what, performer? activist?) are positions just micrometers apart, if at all. Not everybody considers moral fluidity some sort of virtue to brag about, in contrary
It’s hardly casual, but also hardly complex: if someone is a Nazi in both word and action, that’s pretty clear. It’s duck typing in the real world: the actual origin of the term.
But your defense of racist speech, acts, and the propagation of same sends a clear message too.
I was about to purchase a £6 tool on ebay, but noticed the seller was named truth_com. I decided to buy it from another seller simply because i intensely dislike the noise coming from that direction. Had i not noticed, and completed the sale, would i be a Nazi?
If i drop pennies in a collection box on a shop counter, unwittingly supporting a terrorist organisation, have i blown up schoolchildren?
What if i see the collection box, research the charity, discover that it funds terrorism, correctly decline to contribute, but then fail to immediately kill the shopkeeper and his entire family? Am i supporting terrorism, by suffering a terrorist to contribute his activities?
Develop some fucking nuance. Your direction is fine, but your insistence on your authority as the ultimate arbiter of morality is not. Calling all Tesla owners Nazis is petulant and self-satisfied.
I do, something about having actual moral values and stances, not some pathetic when-it-suits-me. Can make life sometimes a bit more complex but then I can look myself in the mirror and be content with what I see without some advanced mental gymnastics.
Nazi germany may have been making the best cars of that era, would you still give them money out of convenience? Not that teslas are best electric cars in the world in quite a few aspects, but they have emotional momentum of early starters.
One simply does not have strong moral opinions and then act directly against them at first minor inconvenience.
There are enough EVs on the market these days that people can afford to include more frivolous factors into their decision making. I was in the market for an EV a few years ago. Solely because I dislike Elon and don't wish to support his business, I took teslas off the table after 5 minutes of research to make sure they weren't drastically superior.
Sold mine after running it a few months covered with stickers saying what I thought of him. Drive another EV now and will not go back. No discount on the car. Stop generalizing.
Isn't the Model Y the best selling car several years running? It could be argued that Tesla is losing interest in making cars, though the counterpoint would be that they keep making incremental improvements. Looks to me like they are trying not to mess up what appears to be a working formula.
>>Also daily reminder that Jensen Huang and Lisa Su are first cousins once removed. It's a big club, and you ain't in it.
It's almost like culture you are brought in and family values have big influence over what you are able to do in your life.
Neither of them were handed their success. It's a good opportunity to learn what makes them different.
"The White House considers anyone that uses the term, “Artificial Intelligence,” as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, “Super Intelligence,” THE ENEMY! President DONALD J. TRUMP"
All because this simple-minded, vile rapist desperately wants to put his worthless fingerprint on everything, and his addled, time-locked imbecile brain decided that he would rename AI. So far I've only seen one pathetic simp so completely busted and worthless they would follow suit, and that's the equally vile and drug-abuse obliterated Elon Musk.
The US has fallen. These companies don't go against outrageously stupid dictums by this terroristic administration because they know there are zero checks and balances, and this vile creep will punish any who counter him.
Astonishing that this guy isn't polling at 0%. Do Americans fully comprehend that this self-dealing clown has destroyed your future?
It's a loyalty test. And he's given his supporters permission to classify anyone who doesn't follow along as 'the enemy' aka 'the other'. It's a shortcut so his supporters know they don't have to give any credence to anything else they say, since now they assign all the other labels and insults he's hurled at 'his enemies' to the person they are talking to.
He's been doing this for years. Change the name from something widely used/adopted to something brand new and watch who follows along. Anyone who starts using the new name is a friend, and anyone who doesn't is an enemy.
Trans people typically whose a new name, referring to their old name as their “deadname”. People who insist on using the deadname when they know the person has a new name are deliberately mocking, and even being cruel to, the person who has changed their name.
Musk continues to refer to his trans child by their birth name and gender. I can’t understand how someone would do that to their own child (much less anyone at all).
After purchasing twitter he chose for it a new name and wants everyone to use it, but by not bothering to I’m simply following his example.
That's pretty par for the course - at least, as far as authoritarian regimes go. It's getting very difficult to think of the US as anything but, at this point.
It's meant to be embarrassing, that's part of the control strategy. Once you start doing embarrassing things on Trump's behalf, everyone will know you've done a shameful thing, and you can only escape the shame by digging your way deeper into his cult where it becomes a virtue.
Maybe it's just a loyalty filter to easily see who is actively "bending the knee". If you use "AI" in your discourse it's a subtle sign you don't align with Trump. I'm not sure but we'll know soon!
I don't consider Peter Thiel to be very smart. I've read his "sermons" for lack of a better word and they're just pseudointellectual nonsense, and tech-babble with a dash of religious justification to appeal to conservatives (Federalist Society/Heritage Foundation etc.) I wouldn't seriously consider anything he says to be viable. They're (Trump's cabinet/oligarchs) only loyal as long as MAGA loyalists keep blindly supporting Trump, the second the tide turns they'll scatter like cockroaches.
Terminology should not be underestimated, propaganda is a lot about terminology, and whoever designed this renaming campaign knows what he's doing. The politics behind this SI push is pretty transparent to those who really care about these issues.
Please expand on this... I can't think of a reason to rename AI to "super" intelligence. What objective does this accomplish?
Propaganda is simply spammed until it sticks. How could it be worth it to literally make an enemy out of anyone who doesn't take to the new terminology?
I'm going to update my world view based on this new information. I used to think Trump was just a right wing guy who put his country first. His actions seem to have become increasingly unhinged.
This is relevant to me because Brazil is going to have a presidential election soon and the right wing is taking over. Trump's brazilian ally is expected to win. I'm gonna start paying a lot more attention to US-Brazil relations.
Thanks for sharing. Also, just for clarity, if you look at how my previous comment to you was moderated, you'll understand why I write the way I write here.
> I used to think Trump was just a right wing guy who put his country first.
I struggle to remember when I would have ever believed that. I know it is a meme, but there is still so much unfortunate truth to the notion "what would Donald Trump do differently if he were actually a Russian asset?" Because the only good explanation that fits is that he intends to do lasting damage to the USA. Like he is spiteful, feels like we have collectively shat all over him his whole life, taunted him, and now we are to be punished.
A foreigner's amateurish assessment: to me many of Trump's actions at least try in spirit to increase the leverage of the American people.
Tariffs on other countries is exactly what my country did last century in order to foment national industry. It did produce results, including a national computer. I'm not exactly sure why it backfired when Trump did it.
If Trump's someone's asset, he's probably Israel's.
A weak marionette can be played by many skillful hands. He is very weak in his predictable childish tantrums and narcisstic ego polishing.
I'll add he is a china asset - he is really paving way for their unchallenged hegemony in few decades. Also making Europe stronger long term, despite trying hard the opposite. For that and that only, I surprisingly commend him. Not best move for US but we dont care about that.
Maybe its actually better for the world overall, china is now looking as best moral new leader by virtue of just doing nothing, its enough these days. Imagine if ie Xi or puttin' would do same ai -> clains, the laugh around the world would be loud and long
You're a victim of "sane washing". The media has been suppressed to the point of trying to justify every move of this administration as serving some kind of brilliant purpose. Surely the usual special interests are getting their gifts, but a lot of our national policies can strictly be explained by narcissism and dementia. Big Gulf and Big Lake aren't making billions off his other name changes.
Creating a partisan naming controversy sabotages nonpartisan discussion, and the specific choice of name makes it extremely challenging to talk about the unique dangers of superintelligent AI.
Artificial has bad connotations. Super gas good connotations. Trump speaks to the feral mind that drives survival instincts and overrides rational thought. If you’re influenced by it he warps your world in a way that is overwhelming. If you’re immune it’s hard to comprehend because is seems so glaringly stupid.
It's not about whether or not "Super" makes sense. He could have just as easily changed the name to "potato." The point is to change a commonly-used word to something else, and measure who follows along. If you go along with it, you're a loyal friend, and if you don't you're an enemy.
It's like the Facebook -> Meta rebrand, Facebook was a dirty word at the time while Meta wasn't (gosh that didn't last long though) so it was an attempt to try and get rid of the accumulated negativity and hope that searches for the topic of Meta only returned bland and positive results instead of dredging up the many ongoing court cases.
It's literally just a blatant favour to Mark Zuckerberg in exchange for ??????
Here, let me prove it: Meta is the only one that has used that term in the past, going back to the announcement that they were founding "Meta Superintelligence Labs" (end of June last year). Zuckerberg reinforced their plans to use that term back in August when that essay of his that was the talk of the town for like a few days, which used the term "superintelligence" 50+ times. Then, just this week, we found out about Meta's ICANN bid to own .superintelligence TLD. The deadline for those submissions was August 12th. Trump signed the EO on Sept 29th, and now Zuckerberg effectively "owns" that term.
Of course, if it ever caught on, I'm pretty sure Slovenia would benefit more from it (by owning .si).
Yes. Trump is not a rational actor, it is textbook narcissism, not as a critique of his personality but I think he meets the criteria for clinical diagnosis.
If you don't listen to him then it results in narcissistic injury and he will retaliate.
It's a loyalty test. He has done this repeatedly. Just like the hilariously dumb Lake America nonsense, where he stomped on 400 years of American history to think he's somehow punishing Canada -- only to us it was just incredibly pathetic, and yet another example why we need to move on from the fallen husk idiocracy the US has become -- and then celebrated that it was "ratified" because Apple and Google foolishly changed according to the government GIS changes.
Trump is an insanely stupid person. Like, this is beyond doubt at this point. But he is so utterly shameless and unaware of his own endless limitations that it somehow breaks the brains of tens of millions of Americans. It's astonishing.
Important distinction: Google’s official, publicly declared policy is to follow the government names. Apple has never publicly declared any such policy. It was a choice.
(If Apple have indeed said this somewhere I’m happy to be proven wrong)
He does not think, he simply has no filter and that appeals to the working class people who feel like they have been shunned by elitist democrats and their woke fluff (while maintaining the status quo on anything that actually matters). He would have not stood a chance against someone like Bernie Sanders, who cares deeply about working class people without the fluff.
I don't disagree with your feelings on 45/47, or your assessment of the quote. I just think in terms of analysis it's really vague, very free-association and fatalistic. I think in this context, if you want to land your hit you should tie it to the substance of the article and make a point about how this changes something. I think "45/47 Bad" and "Elon Bad" are well represented takes (and not even wrong!) but people will tune it out because it feels like a repetition of something they already know, or at least that they've already heard.
I replied to someone asking why multinational corporations aren't pushing back. Many US corporations make most of their revenue outside the US, and you would think these corporations would be more outspoken about the very dark, insular, war-criming path the US has gone down.
My comment directly addressed that. These aren't like incidental character comments, they directly address why the US is so completely broken right now. And this is damage that is permanent. This isn't just another lark that the US will recover from. The days of the US being the centre of the "free world", of commerce, and so on, is obliterated. Inertia is a hell of a thing and it might keep the illusion of maintenance going for a while, but the path is set now and there will be no recovery.
And when this disastrous government is ousted, successive governments are going to be so catastrophically crippled in every dimension that they'll look like failures, which surely will see the enlightened American public vote for the next foolish charlatan, rinse and repeat. I see no way out of this cycle now, and there's no way I can candy coat it.
Yes, sadly. My discussions with tech people outside the US indicate that the rest of the world is learning to route around the US. The damage is more or less permanent at this point.
Super Intelligence name change is most likely about enrichment - there were reports about sales of .si (slovenia) increased significantly many months ahead of annoucement - most likely insiders.
If only he had read a single book at some point in his lifetime.
Artificial Intelligence is objectively the correct term. He's just using stupid Trumpian word-play for fun. It's so stupid and so sad. At least we won't need to listen to this for thaaaat much longer, at least I hope.
What happens is (also) the typical: we work at some level (rational), abscesses work at another level (ventral). The two worlds do not meet.
I get the (somehow understandable) reasons for trying to "boost the spirits" towards RnD in face of campaigns against it (cpr. bernie sander's proposal "20 years of prison to those trying to implement intelligence"), but of course ventral discourse should not be acceptable to people given a right to vote - vote should be for adults.
As an American, I agree. The unfortunate reality is that this kind of thing will continue until his supporters love things like the rule of law, checks on presidential power, and basic decency more than they hate "woke".
The idiocy will continue until it hurts enough, then people might not change but they might make different choices. Until then, we can only hope we fall far enough to learn the lesson, but not break our legs
The question is will it hurt them enough before it's too late for your collective choices to matter more than Thiel and friends' wealth and power. I have serious doubts. It's pretty obvious that the existing checks and balances in this country's constitution simply do not work as they were assumed to function, if at all.
Trump voters I know love those things but think the other side is worse.
I mean it would be easy for the other side to give up wokeness, blatant racism under cover of DEI and some of the most blatant public sector scams or punitive taxes but here we are - neither side budges and you choose the one that is less likely to hurt you and your family. For many people it's Trump over Democrats.
It's going to happen in EU as well. Most Le Pen/AdF/Meloni voters will be in "those guys are less likely to hurt me" camp and I totally get it.
Americans never cared about any of these things. A shameless demagogue like Trump would have been elected long ago if the establishment in either party had allowed it. The current situation is the result of the demise of the much-maligned gatekeepers in politics and media who managed to save America from itself until now.
Remember, that half of the population is lower than 100 IQ.
And with LLMs being pushed everywhere, the active deskilling campaign / drug dealer first hit is free plan is working.
With dumb people, the louder and more emotional you are, the more the idiots trust you.
Intelligence and academics are the way out. And look how Republicans attack education and libraries. Their plan is straight forward, and the rubes have no clue. But they still vote for them cause of 'liberal cause of the week'.
The US has been untrustworthy and willing to weaponize its position for decades. The current US administration is just both less competent and more overt in doing so.
I many ways, I like Trump precisely because of this. He just dropped the façade.
Mind you, I would profoundly despise having anything like the current US admin in my country.
They understand just fine, they just don't care. Those young enough to live to see the long-term effects of their policies will be rich enough through the blatant corruption of the current administration to be essentially free from all serious impact.
Realistically, Americans aren't pulling out guillotines for the excessively rich any time soon, so why would they care?
> In 2022 the current Secretary of State, then a Senator, co-sponsored a resolution backing the Court’s jurisdiction over Russians accused of crimes in Ukraine.
He's used this admin as an opportunity to make war. Iran, Venezuela, and he hopes soon Cuba. He was instrumental in pushing for intervention in these cases.
The U.S. wants to retain the right to commit war crimes without someone charging U.S. officials or soldiers with them, they have the sovereign right to commit war crimes. Russia doesn't, Iraq doesn't. The U.S. does, Israel does.
That is the 'International rules-based order' as opposed to the U.N. international law order.
?? Not sure. Can you provide examples of condemning for war crimes those and other regimes in the current times? I may be wrong, but I am getting the vibe of "free for all until somebody bigger shouts that's enough" - more clearly, I am not seeing ethical stances defended.
--
Edit: thanks Newjazz for the reply. Did not notice, I thought they just decided "free for all". Yes, that makes it more appalling - shameless.
Having trouble with google since they only seem to report news from the last month, but rubio has definitely criticized Hamas, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba for war crimes and/or crimes against humanity. Note that I acknowledge that in many of these cases the criticism was rightful, but the context here is the double standard.
The 'international rules-based order' was established by the US at the end of WWII as the legal framework for rebuilding Europe after the war.
Honest question, what makes you think the US, China, or Russia need to abide by legal agreements made 80 years ago by people who aren't around anymore? Those three countries have since agreed amongst themselves that the 'international rules-based order' was a mistake, and nobody else has a big enough stick to do anything about it.
> I guess what he is saying is that work of International Criminal Court is a threat to US sovereignty ? Can someone make that make sense?
Why do you need help? It's obvious. The dictionary definition of sovereignty is "supreme power especially over a body politic" and "freedom from external control : autonomy sense 1." If the ICC has power over the US government or can externally control it (for instance by arresting its leaders), it is a straightforwardly impinges on US sovereignty.
I'm not sure if I buy that argument. I understand what they mean, but the US has sovereignty over what happens within its borders. The ICC isn't entering the US and arresting anyone.
By your logic, every other country "impinges on US sovereignty" because they can arrest US citizens within their own borders.
That's not sovereignty. Sovereignty doesn't imply anything and it is not a designation bestowed by some other entity. It is purely descriptive of an evident state. If you can defend your claim to sovereignty, you are sovereign. Moreover, no claim need be made.
and in what sense is it doing that at all? unlike the US, the signatories arent parachuting into other sovereign countries to effect their laws. they are enforcing their laws within their own borders.
for some reason that's offended the US, who then proceeds to extra-judiciously impose their will on citizens of other sovereign nations who aren't even in the US.
Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but the US govt has no power outside its territory. If some US citizen commits a crime abroad, he/she can be prosecuted outside the US. This does not interfere with US sovereignty.
US sovereignty requires being able to perform war crimes with impunity. Surprise double-tap strikes on civilian boats in the Atlantic are an example of them.
If America stood for any of the principles it claims to, the servicemembers and their commanders who performed them would be held to account for them.
I'll admit it's hard for me to debate which war crime is worse. I see your point, but I just can't fathom scores of dead children, even if it's negligence rather than purposeful.
It would be a farce to try, of course. The American Service-Members' Protection Act gives the president power to use "all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court."
The ICC doesn't have jurisdiction in states that haven't signed up to the Rome Statute, and the US has not signed up. As President, Trump is protected under the Vienna Convention when he travels abroad so he can't be arrested even in other countries.
Because the US could literally destroy the ICC without any repercussions aside from some reflexive gasps from European globalists.
If I were POTUS and this happened, the ICC would look like a smoldering crater just to remind the elites what real power is. The thing is, there's nothing Europe can do about it. Europe's economically between a rock and hard place, with no serious military to defend themselves. They've also decided to import foreigners with no allegiance to Europe instead of grow their native populations. This means Europeans can't form a defensive military without a very high risk of those soldiers turning their guns on the government.
Well, many of us had hoped USA wasn't the epitomy of evil that you declare yourself to be.
Yes, killing 1000+ people in a peaceful, country you say your allied to, for no reason beyond being angry that your abject sin has been noticed and people are saying you're morally bad, when you revel in that lack of morality...
The way the US would leave a crater where the ICC was would not be militarily.
Go ahead, indict Trump. Trump, being the provocateur that he is, would travel to the Hague, or wherever else, and he would not be arrested. The ICC would do nothing and exposes its toothlessness as a performative political tool of center left Europe.
Reminder that the US is responsible for the precision strike murder of at least 120 school children[1]. Are they still 'investigating'? No one went to prison, right?
Recently, Marco Rubio gave a speech in front of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. Seeing this, I immediately thought "what an oximoron".
One great thing about the Trump administration is that it exposed to the US’s mostly western allies what the rest of the World has known for a long time: that the US is just another oppressive empire that doesn’t hesitate to crush whomever they perceive to be a threat to their hegemony.
Which ones of the 51 European countries you believe I am ignorant of their history? Anyhow, my point had nothing to do with Europe’s history. I was just saying that except for Putin and allied fascists European now realize that at best the US is unreliable ally and a bully in decline.
As someone born and raised in Russia now living in the US as a naturalized citizen I still see a lot of difference, but not going to lie, it's shrinking quite a bit faster than I'm comfortable with.
Those fools, what a wasted opportunity! Picture this: the prisoner is methodically prepared for execution, meanwhile sprinkle a few interviews with victims, friends, etc... Seconds before the moment of execution BAM! hydration pause and five minutes of ads.
Can anyone with a level political head unwrap this?
Yes I know Trump is a deranged psychopath who fires from the hip. I'm looking for someone who can handle the challenge of steel manning the move. The political swamp has gotten so dense I feel like I am suffocating.
> "President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, first published by Reuters.
Can't think of a more flagrant and succinct declaration that the US believes itself "above the law."
All countries are above the law. When was the last time you saw a country in jail or meaningfully punished? The only one who can punish a country is another country if they are powerful and violent enough.
Who should be responsible for enforcing the Geneva Conventions and other international humanitarian law? Or are we finally admitting that the only "international law" we officially recognize is Might Makes Right?
All signatories to the Geneva Conventions are responsible for enforcing it. The USA never ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and thus has no responsibility to enforce it.
The us does actually agree that the crimes in question are crimes. They are crimes domestically in the united states, and the US has supported punishing people for them internationally. The US is arguably the group that came up with the idea of prosecuting people for international crimes in the first place (nuremburg)
they dont like the specific court, and more generally they dont like when the rule of law applies to them and their allies instead of just enemies. But they do recognize all these things as crime
Which is fine, inside the US. But when Americans leave the US, they are no longer under US law, theyre under the law of whatever country they enter. Which means, if the country acknowledges the ICC, any American in that country falls under it. Just like a tourist in America has to follow American laws.
Not exactly. Tourists are one thing, but US military personnel stationed in foreign countries typically operate under a status of forces agreement which limits the ways in which they are subject to the host country's laws.
yes when it comes to allies, but typically war crime stuff happens during conflicts, and usually in a conflict they are there without consent by definition.
People forget, that a war crime is simply a crime that (state) combatants dont have immunity for in war. The geneva convention gives immunity for everything that is not a war crime.
It has always been might makes right, are you under the impression it wasn’t that way at some point? I’m not endorsing the actions of the current administration, simply stating how global geopolitics works. There’s no such thing as a supranational organization that can force a nuclear power to do anything of consequence.
The only people that get prosecuted by the ICC are people that lose wars (no winner has ever been prosecuted) and are also from nations that do not have nuclear weapons / nuclear protection.
I mean... just about every 'enforcement' of international norms has been by american hard and soft power. Might has always made right, it's just that the guy with the biggest gun happened to have western liberal values.
Seems like that changed a little in the last decade. Hopefully it's not forever, but who knows.
We're repeating old social tropes the 50+ year old leadership lived through.
It's sad and pathetic. The youth reliance on old leadership and putting that on them is elder abuse. McConnell and Feinstein handlers should be prosecuted for such.
This is 100% on lazy, low-skilled, younger American public that doesn't need Depends expecting better from the generation glazing over live on TV and vanishing from office only to be found months later in an institution
The censored for TV era propped such olds up on screen for decades and refused to challenge their speculations and bullshit; everyone actually believes the elders are cogent and capable but they never were. Just puppets of a bygone era of televised circuses beamed to the Wonder Bread eating masses
It's one thing to say: "We will not recognize or abide by ICC verdicts".
It's another thing to say: "We will dismantle it if it goes after Americans".
It's also extremely hypocritical since Rubio himself co-sponsored a resolution backing the court's jurisdiction over Russians accused of war crimes.
So it's really more like: "If it says things we agree with, we will be on board. If it says things we disagree with, not only will we not be on board, we will erase the whole thing".
Which is why the ICC was established by several countries as part of an international agreement. It's literally other countries collaborating to punish bad actor countries.
> Which is why the ICC was established by several countries as part of an international agreement. It's literally other countries collaborating to punish bad actor countries.
What would you think of an agreement by ten guys that they'll work together to beat you up if they decide you're a "bad actor"? Is it somehow solemn and respectable merely because they came to an agreement? Even if you don't agree their self-declaration should give them power over you?
I think the way you've presented things is misleading. International relations is literally anarchy, and different groups have different points of view. Mere collaboration is only that.
> FWIW, that's not how the ICC works, any more than your national legal system is "ten guys working together to beat you up if they don't like you."
The point was the ten guys are self-appointed and have no connection to any legitimate higher authority that you recognize. Which is a akin to the US' relation to the UCC, given it's not ratified the treaty.
My "national legal system" is a higher authority (than me), which I recognize as legitimate, and in any case have no power to resist.
> International relations is only literally anarchy if you take the realist school of thought as representing IR.
It's literally the state of things: "there is no hierarchically superior, coercive power that can resolve disputes, enforce law, or order the system of international politics. In international relations, anarchy is widely accepted as the starting point for international relations theory." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_(international_relatio...).
If you know of such an authority, please point it out. The UN is not it.
Anarchy doesn't mean constant conflict or power politics or anything like that.
> > International relations is only literally anarchy if you take the realist school of thought as representing IR.
>
> It's literally the state of things: "there is no hierarchically superior, coercive power that can resolve disputes, enforce law, or order the system of international politics. In international relations, anarchy is widely accepted as the starting point for international relations theory." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_(international_relatio...).
>
> If you know of such an authority, please point it out. The UN is not it.
That is indeed true that the Cold War politicking reduced the UN to its current role from what it was originally meant for. UNGC resolutions of course were meant to be more comprehensive and more binding, with the UNSC being used to enforce the resolutions. Which is of course why the Four Policemen + France insisted upon veto power as a prerequisite of them joining the club.
RE: there not being any coercive power that can enforce laws and such, that is of course true in the sense that there is no universal power for that. However, institutions with such power do exist, at least in a smaller scale.
Let's for example take the EU and its relation to Orbán's Hungary. The European Union was explicitly removing Hungary's access to EU funds as a coercive measure to punish Hungary for its democratic backsliding and as a way to enforce its membership terms, that Hungary had agreed to when ascending to the bloc. And that's why reforms (and promises of reforms) by the still fairly recent government of Magyar Péter are a prerequisite for Hungary to get access to the funds that got frozen.
Also, NATO exists, which can also be used as an avenue for resolving disputes between its member states. See also the 1974 Cyprus coup d'état, the subsequent Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the collapse of the Greek junta afterwards. The Organization of American States was used as a vehicle for resolving the Football War between Honduras and El Salvador with political and economic pressure, etc. And for a more historical example, both the Comecon and the Warsaw Pact had major Soviet coercion, although to be fair, other member states did also have some breathing room as long as they didn't step out of line too much.
---
Also, your own Wikipedia link also says that not all IR theory takes anarchy between states as a given, mainly in that the liberal doctrine doesn't assume such, unlike for example realism, which I alluded to.
But Russia is not a member of ICC. So, ICC going after Putin contradicts the logic from your earlier post in this thread. It's not 125 countries agreeing to police each other, it's them going after a country outside their own group.
Well all countries have jurisdiction over what happens on their territory regardless of the citizenship of the criminals, it's not the gotcha you think it is. It's a bit like when the US went after Bin Laden, it was perfectly justified and universally agreed.
USA sovereignty is not at issue, it's who now holds it as your democracy has failed, and will a future sovereign demos choose to apply this moral law to those within it's sovereign estate.
But it's largely the court of center-left European thinking. It's a political tool without teeth, and since none of US, China, Russia are signatories, it can only prosecute people without a great power sponsor.
The USA isn't a party to the Rome Statute, and above and beyond that, reactively passed domestic legislation to thwart any attempt to prosecute crimes committed by its military, including in countries that are party to the Rome Statute -- more than 20 years ago. This is not a recent phenomenon.
You know what else is more than 20 years ago? Americans committing war crimes in other countries:
The USA, as a country, doesn't want to be held to account by other countries. As it outspends all the other militaries on the planet, it continues to get away with its crimes.
A country is an abstract idea at the end of the day. How can you put Uganda in a physical jail? Or how can one country "punish" another?
If you're talking about invading and occupying the people, every person is still theoretically under the law of whatever country they are in by default.
This is largely consistent with historical US views on international law. In 2002 the US passed the American Service-Members' Protection Act, which states that if any US service member or elected official is criminally prosecuted by the ICC, the president can use "any means necessary" (i.e. invading the Hague) to ensure their release.
In general any idea that international law is relevant except as a tool for the West to provide moral justification for its actions when it's convenient to do so is naive. At least the Trump administration being more vulgar and crude in expressing its disregard for international law compared to previous administrations may open more people's eyes.
>> "President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, first published by Reuters.
> Can't think of a more flagrant and succinct declaration that the US believes itself "above the law."
So would you think of yourself "above the law" if you refused to submit to my law?
Apparently the US never ratified the ICC treaty. International relations is literally an anarchy, there's no "higher authority" to impose law. Countries can only voluntarily submit to a treaty, or be violently coerced by another country.
I have a hard time seeing the alternative history where the nazis' won which lead to the formation of Israel 3 years later and consequent Israeli colony expansion, leading to the current conflicts and ICC stuff.
"making an agreement with Zionists did not make Hitler a supporter of Zionism any more than the Nazi–Soviet pact made him a supporter of communism."[33]
"Keith Kahn-Harris is a British sociologist and music critic. He is an honorary research fellow and senior lecturer at Birkbeck College,[1] an associate fellow of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research,[2] and a lecturer at Leo Baeck College."
No surviving Soviet Union and hence no Mao, no North Korea (and no Korean War), Viet Minh easily squashed, no Vietnam War (the American one -- but the one against the French would happen anyway). Half of Europe would not have been occupied by the Soviet Union.
This is not "the US", this is one or two very unpopular politicians whose tenure will be short. Wait until the midterm elections before you judge the whole country.
> This is not "the US", this is one or two very unpopular politicians whose tenure will be short
Trump has been in office for 6 years. Because 2/3 of America either voted him in or didn't bother showing up. I've been reading people say "he's unpopular" for a decade. But America voted him in again, this time with more power than he's ever had before.
There is no way to decouple his legacy from America anymore. You would have to have a blowout midterm with a Senate supermajority that can roll back everything he's done.
So much about the Trump administration is best understood, for everyone looking at it inside and outside the country, as criminals taking over the justice system.
What's probably as criminal, are the other two branches not stamping this out. Most of what everyone is despairing or angry about the administration is forbidden by the US constitution. The problem is that the people most able to uphold the constitution, by expunging the criminals in the executive branch (or preventing them from being there in the first place), are not enforcing it.
It's a rogue court in that it's not derived from the will of the people. In democracy, the people are sovereign and have a say in what their laws are. American[1] citizens don't have a say in what international laws are, they can't invalidate them, so why should they be subject to them?
This is akin to the Nuremberg trials, where Germans were tried by foreigners, without the consent of German citizens... The major difference is, the Germans lost the war so Americans got to impose their will on the vanquished. America did not lose a war to India, so why should Americans be judged by this Indian?
[1]: I'm not American, but like the US, I also wish my country was only subject to the laws of my people.
One can only hope that the next administration will not only embrace the ICC, but willingly hand over Trump and his advisors to it and let them do what they will. Exceptional handling for an exceptional administration.
How does the argument go? If they haven't done anything wrong, they have nothing to worry about. Heh.
Country that supports war criminals and helps genocidares and land thiefs by giving them free bombs and planes, sanctioned organization that punishes such acts. Not a big surprise.
Also directly targeting foreigners who provide evidence to the court is also pretty clear evidence of american intention here. Hide their crimes. Several such human rights organizations were targeted independently of this for cooperation with ICC, like Al-Haq, Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, and PCHR.
Every nation must ban companies operating in their country from conforming to unrecognized foreign sanctions. This has been long, long overdue, and the time is absolutely now.
If Visa, Mastercard, Microsoft, or any other company wants to operate in other countries, punitively obeying insane US sanctions is untenable.
And for the "yeah, but then the US will retaliate" chimps: You have literally nothing left. Your lame duck halfwit and his administration of grifters, fraudsters and charlatans blew their load.
Well, high time to break up toe Visa/Mastercard duopoly anyway, for many reasons. Any useless insanity like this just gives more argument to the interested parties wanting to see the breakup finally happen.
That would not be the smart thing to do. Sanctions would hurt EU economy more.
There are a lot better responses: reduce copyright length, to let's say... 50 years? Make everything after 1976 public domain. EU economy could even get a boost from that.
Or, if EU wanted to keep this limited to justice, denounce extradition treaties for all but most serious crimes (expecially not allowing any future Assange to be extradited), repeal laws that forbid bypassing DRM protections and reverse engineering.
We have a proxy war with Russia and need US oil/gas. There is zero strength or political will to oppose US now, EU strategy seems to be just wait it out.
There is zero mechanism by which the ICC can indict Trump. Its jurisdiction is only over signature countries and their territories; the US is not a signatory country.
There are 100's of millions that hope so, not only him but the rest of the fools who are in his orbit.This has been the most disgusting and corrupt Administration since the founding of America.
Although I need to preface this by saying that the Trump administration is one of the stupidest and pettiest in history, the Nobel peace price lost all credibility after it was awarded to Barack Obama for no reason. It seems to be a mechanism for trumpeting the political views of those on the committee.
Trump is upset about not getting the peace price Obama got, and the latest winner of the peace price was an ICC judge.
He was already upset about the ICC existing after the ICC tried to hold Israel accountable for its war crimes, but the timing makes it obvious that is just the president of the United States of America is being petty here.
Bush nomination? You know there are hundreds of people that can nominate whoever they want? A nomination means nothing, they aren't coming from the Nobel committee.
> "President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans"
... but his government does support the ICC prosecuting Russians, on behalf of Ukraine, even though none of the two states is a party to the Rome statute / member of the court.
Another reason to fund the efforts to decouple from US companies, including payment processors. More investment in open source software and open weight models should be the priority of all governments and initiatives.
This is probably the most short-sighted aspect of America's oligarchs decision to support the modern GOP. They just keep increasing the incentive for other countries to reduce business with America.
It's not one or two things, either. It's an endless parade of decisions, nearly all of which reward de-coupling from America.
The company I work for just removed its last dependency on any US tech service providers last month (except for Anthropic). No more Microsoft, Adobe, Cloudflare, Amazon. They still pay for Claude, but they're in talks with local inference providers.
Just a few years ago, this wouldn't even have been remotely on people's radar as something they should or could do.
It might be the goal. Based on "The Nerd Reich" which is based on public statements of Thiel and company, the goal is a set of small feudal states each ruled by one company. With no rights for people inside.
there are a few weird nerds who want that; but _most_ of America's ultra-rich aren't part of the network state bitcoin whatever nonsense, and would be better served by helping America thrive.
Oligarchs supporting the GOP is getting exactly what they want: personal gain. The fact that a much larger group is going to be worse off in every way doesn't matter.
The oligarchs would be happier being in strict control over a US that barely functioned than they are being insanely wealthy in a wealthy country with a functioning government. That's all.
Rich people just really fucking hate the fact that the general public get to tell them "No" sometimes. They feel they are above us.
A US with no external friends is perfectly fine for them.
Industrialists were pretty happy and supportive of the Third Reich for similar reasons. Better to be on top of a mud pile than near the top of a golden pyramid.
This isn't novel, it's literally how Russia has been for decades now. The oligarchs there don't care that it's a shithole, because they get to pilfer most of what little wealth that shithole gets, so they are enormously wealthy and only ever answer to putin, who mostly lets them do whatever.
The same effect happens in little island nations with petty dictators or african warlords. People who pursue power aren't pursuing actual tangible things. They just want "power" for it's own sake. They get off on it.
that would happen regardless of if americas oligarchs support the GoP. its the american people that voted in trump and got him majorities in both the house and senate
FIFA did, in fact, award the official FIFA Peace Prize – Football Unites the World™ to Trump.
The fact that this rogue organization thinks it can undermine the official FIFA Peace Prize – Football Unites the World™ by being associated with someone who received this fake prize is probably why they are now being justly sanctioned.
That was a bribe, a chunk of gold wrapped on a poor excuse to gave it legally.
The funny part is that Apple did exactly the same. Everybody did exactly the same in a "pay per access" endless chain of CEOS. but for some reason nobody has mocked them for that. Only South Park, that never miss one.
Is true that the FIFA excuse was particularly imbecile.
The Israeli lobby poured a lot of money into his campaign after 10-7 and the entire reason the current administration even has beef with the ICC is because they issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu.
I don't doubt that Israeli lobby poured a lot of money for him, but just that isn't enough for more than half of the people of a country to vote for a pathetic moron.
He has always been openly racist, sexist, misogynist, idot for as long as I remember.
Turnout was 63.7% of eligible voters (lower than 2020, and even 100% would exclude certain felons, underage folks, mentally incapable folks, minors). And from that subgroup of a subgroup "only" 49.9% of voters selected Trump.
Still a crazy number, but not "half of the people of a country".
By your numbers, 31.8% of eligible voters actively voted in favor of fascism, and 36.3% of eligible voters chose to let it happen. That's 68.1% of voters that allowed your country to be turned into a shithole.
Nothing incongruent there. The campaign funds can of course be used on wedge issues that don't actually relate to Israel. Changing public perception towards scenes of destroyed homes and dead children is much more difficult.
It's not some magic wand to "make sure Trump is elected". It's give him a slight bump up and Harris a slight push down (mostly by demotivating left-leaning voters so they stay home). Affecting thin margins in an election is different from changing everybody's mind about something.
I think the actual postmortem analysis is that cosigning a genocide against an ethnic group whose members and sympathizers are a must-win bloc in a must-win state (Michigan) was a tactical error. Kamala could have distanced herself from Biden's "bear hug" relationship with Israel. Other Dems won statewide races in Michigan who didn't carry the genocide baggage.
How is this surprising? Let's just call a spade a space: Arab muslims are anything but leftist, especially on social issues. So making them vote against Kamala Harris was probably a lot easier than a lot of people think.
In the Netherlands a party called "DENK" (think, in Dutch) was created, by 2 Turkish muslims, and immediately half the leftist voters (PvdA, party of labour) switched sides. They are more rightist, but especially they are extremely socially conservative. They want extreme punishments for crime and harsh application of the law, except on immigration. Along with the obvious issues (like essentially abolishing animal rights and standards of treatment, allowing islamic schooling, including extremist islamic schooling, pro-minority, except for that one minority with "confusion" between Judaism and Israel, ...)
Anyone who thinks about it for 10 seconds will realize that a long-term alliance between progressives and muslims is impossible. They are forced into that as long as they are very weak, but there's a point where that stops.
It'll be very funny when what has happened in Eastern Europe before happens first in Western Europe, and then in the US. Extreme "friction" will develop between leftist parties and any concentration of muslim voters. This has already happened in a few locations but you've seen nothing yet.
I do not think that Arabs in Michigan voted against her because of Israel. I think people make their votes based on the variety of factors, and not a single one.
They voted against her because she was progressive on social issues, in a country and a party that already makes these voters extremely uncomfortable with what is allowed in the US. Probably including that she was, well, a female presidential candidate.
Plus, if I can be less than subtle, muslim Arabs are antisemitic and strongly anti-Israel. They are not pro-Palestinian. The big difference being that do not want Palestinians to have a good life, you will have big problems bringing the conversation to that. They want to eliminate Israel by pushing the Palestinians into misery and using them as a weapon against Israel. Sorry, but that's the reality of Arabs' political position on Israel/Palestine. They are not looking for compromise here. They are not looking for peace.
This viewpoint does not match in the slightest with Kamala Harris or any part of the democrat party as a whole, in fact it's almost the direct opposite. It has the most overlap with extreme leftists ("tankies") and republicans (because of their viewpoint social issues, LGBT, repression of viewpoints, ...), and while everyone is 100% accurate to say republicans absolutely don't share this opinion, they just want to use them for votes, it's still by far the biggest overlap.
No one voted for Trump, they simply did not vote for Harris because she supports Zionism. This is very clear and easy to understand. I'm a progressive atheist and proud to support my Muslim brothers and sisters. Zionism is modern day Nazism (well, it actually pre-dates Nazism).
Plenty of muslims from Michigan voted for Trump, some even made it to the news regretting their votes. You can easily find a variety of news articles from different outlets about this.
Some definitely voted against her, others didn't vote as a consequence. You have to realize that Biden's administration was enthusiastically backing the people who were killing their families overseas, and Kamala not distancing herself from that position made her unsupportable. Of course it's naive to think Trump would be better, but when the Dems were supporting the gleeful killing of their family members can you perhaps understand the skepticism toward Kamala?
No, I’m not buying this argument at all. I think most voters are not single issue voters as you make them to be. Democratic Party on average advocates for pretty progressive values compared to those held by a typical middle eastern person, e.g., gay marriage, abortion, etc. For me it’s easier to believe that they weighted the issue of supporting Israel vs progressive social causes and decided based on that not to support democratic nominee.
That's ridiculous. The uncommitted movement and pro-Palestinians in general were very clear that they were not voting for Harris because she refused to back away from Biden's genocidal and pro-Israel policies. I didn't vote for her (or anyone) either. I was excited when Biden dropped out and she became the candidate because I thought she might make a change, but she explicitly stated that she would not, losing my vote. I'm not Arab or Muslim, I just don't want to support Israel and genocide. This is common among younger people (thankfully).
Also, Trump is obviously awful and extremely pro-Israel, but so was Biden. In fact, more Palestinians were killed under Biden. I do think the Democrats are starting to shift though, they simply cannot support Israel any more and hope to win elections.
Ask me in 2023 "will Palestinians be better off under Trump or Harris" and the answer was a no-brainer. We Americans would have been better off too. And a bunch of now dead Iranian citizens. Sheesh, crazy logic by some American voters.
I'm not sure voting for the admin literally slaughtering your family is a "no-brainer". I won't vote for anyone who supports Israel. Period. Let's put it this way, would you vote in a Nazi election?
>That's ridiculous. The uncommitted movement and pro-Palestinians in general were very clear that they were not voting for Harris because she refused to back away from Biden's genocidal and pro-Israel policies.
What is ridiculous is to think that "pro-Palestinians" are a monolithic body that voted and thought exactly like you. First of all, even among the "pro-Palestinians" the opinions on what does it mean to be "pro-Palestinians" range from one extreme to the other, and second, it is ridiculous, in my opinion, to assume that Arabs and muslims did not vote for Trump at all despite his pro-Israeli stance.
I have heard the analysis by political pundits and I agree with it in context, but it’s still incredibly insane.
We basically cannot trust America anymore since its people have, as a whole, have lost the ability to reason and think critically. And the people in power want it that way. They prefer do disenfranchise most of their population so they can win elections using their core base who will believe anything.
>In this particular case the credit goes go the opposite side. They screwed up so much as to make this possible.
I'm sorry, but this is complete horse manure, albeit it's become a favorite fantasy/apologist/woe-is-me take on the right as the Trump disaster continues to unfold. But the opposition had NOTHING to do with Trump being chosen for POTUS. The Right had a perfectly decent choice: Nikki Haley. She had plenty right policies and no doubt would have made much of the left very upset, but she is also intelligent, sane, and cares to the normal degree about the country and basics of the constitution. She'd have been fine. She'd also have trivially creamed Democrats, and be holding Congress vastly better fwiw.
But out of the entirety of the US, only a single state (Vermont) voted against Trump. Every single last bit of the rest of the country chose Trump. There were no Democrats on the list for the Republican primary. Republicans could have sent Trump packing no problem, and then taken the WH and a bigger chunk of the House/Senate to boot. Trump being in the general and then WH was and forever will be 100% on the GOP.
> But the opposition had NOTHING to do with Trump being chosen for POTUS. The Right had a perfectly decent choice […]
So did the Democrats. They clung to the worst possible choice, and in the last minute replaced him with the second-worst possible choice. Absolving them of fault and putting 100% of the blame on Trump voters is the fantasy of the Left.
No. It is fault of conservatives, republicans and their supporters. Primary and absolitely. And same everywhere. AfD rise is on the AfD and those voters. The person doing the bad things is the culpable one.
Blaming everyone except those who worked hard to achieve this is absurd.
The people most responsible for getting their candidate elected is the campaign team. If the plan is just for your opponents to do a bad job, you don't deserve to win.
The people respomsible for actions of republicans are republicans. There is no natural law tgat says "republicans must be immoral psychopaths". They became one through own choices.
And the only way to win over them is to stop centrist two sides nonsense and blame them, later prosecute them.
If half the voting population elects a vicious moron completely unsuitable for power, that's not the fault of the opposition. *They actively chose to vote for the fascist.*
> If half the voting population elects a vicious moron completely unsuitable for power, that's not the fault of the opposition.
Don't let the opposition off the hook: as you said they lost to "a vicious moron completely unsuitable for power." How does someone fuck up an election like that so badly? It should have been a slam dunk.
It's the fault of the opposition for not doing a better job (at all manner of political competencies). One thing I've noticed over the last ten or so years, is that Democrats/Liberals/Progressives are very averse to admitting to and learning from their own mistakes. They'd much rather focus on blaming someone else for their own incompetence.
This is still unbelievable to me, up to this day. If the opposition choses to run for office with a moron, couldn't you at least find a candidate that is not demented.. You can't make this up..
> You sure are letting the U.S. voter off the hook here…
Because blaming the voters for not supporting you is foolish and stupid.
Not only do they have far less room to maneuver to express themselves (essentially through a single, unclear multiple-choice question), but blaming them prevents actual political actors from doing needed self-reflection and adjustments needed to win.
It's like if you had a failing business selling poop-in-a-bag, and focused on blaming your potential customers being too dumb to see how superior and high-quality your poop is. You think it's awesome, so they must be idiots! Stop wasting your time doing that, and re-evaluate the products you're selling. Maybe no one wants to buy poop?
Your comparison rests on the idea that politics is an elastic marketplace where people are not bringing in priors when deciding on who to vote for. It completely ignores that at least part of that market is propagandized to the point where no matter how you sell you will not make the sale. Voters overwhelmingly support policies that Democrats support when polled. You can blame Democrats for not finding an effective way to sell those policies. I think your comparison is far too simplistic to be useful.
When the history of this time is written I believe it will be exceedingly obvious that the MAGA and the Republican Party were an incurable cancer and there was nothing that the Democratic Party could have done within the context of the existing political structure to stop it from spreading. They might have had one opportunity to avoid it by focusing more on supporting individuals and less on supporting financial institutions in 2008, but the political context of that time was entirely different. At some point it is worthless to blame one political party for another driving the country off a cliff. Yes, they should have done things differently in hindsight, but there is little value in holding them accountable for information they did not have at the time.
> Your comparison rests on the idea that politics is an elastic marketplace where people are not bringing in priors when deciding on who to vote for.
Not really.
> It completely ignores that at least part of that market is propagandized to the point where no matter how you sell you will not make the sale. Voters overwhelmingly support policies that Democrats support when polled.
If that's actually the case, it just means the Democrats need to work harder, for longer. But this "nothing we can do, country too propagandized, STAY THE COURSE, DON'T CHANGE," idea is just weird. It really sounds like excuses to avoid the psychological discomfort of being wrong or needing to make compromises with people you disagree with to win.
Also, polls are a data-point, but I'd never use them to jump to the conclusion they're an accurate representation of what people really want. For one, they're too easily to get wrong or even manipulate.
> I think your comparison is far too simplistic to be useful.
Sure, my poop-selling business example is pretty simplistic and exaggerated to make a point. But I think it's still useful in illustrating the foolishness and stupidity of blaming the people you need to reach.
> When the history of this time is written I believe it will be exceedingly obvious that the MAGA and the Republican Party were an incurable cancer and there was nothing that the Democratic Party could have done within the context of the existing political structure to stop it from spreading.
I am sure some history will be written that says that. It will be a lie, but of psychological comfort for some.
If there's any truth to "there was nothing that the Democratic Party could have done within the context of the existing political structure to stop it from spreading," it's about the internal dysfunctions of the Democratic party officials and partisans. This idea that "MAGA/Trump is so powerful, nothing could be done about it" is a stupid lie.
> They might have had one opportunity to avoid it by focusing more on supporting individuals and less on supporting financial institutions in 2008, but the political context of that time was entirely different. At some point it is worthless to blame one political party for another driving the country off a cliff.
I'm not blaming the Democrats for that. I'm blaming them for being incompetent (a state which continues). There's a big difference.
> Yes, they should have done things differently in hindsight, but there is little value in holding them accountable for information they did not have at the time.
What specific information did they not have at the time? Because I don't think the problem is a lack of information; it's their attitudes, priorities, and ultimately competence.
But I'm not blaming the voter for not supporting me. I'm blaming the voter for supporting the person that they supported.
Sure, I might be selling poop in a bag, and maybe nobody wants that. I can't blame people for not buying things they don't want. But the guy next to me is selling the Handmaid's Tale But In Real Life, and people are queuing up round the block to buy it. Those people looked at all the options -including abstaining and not buying anything at all - and still made a decision. They have to take ownership of that decision.
From the perspective of the Democrats, sure, self-reflection is necessary to figure out what went wrong. They should go and do that. But from the perspective of someone voting for Trump, no, you don't get to use that excuse. You looked at an admittedly very limited field of options and voted for the guy who was backed by a group who had literally written a manifesto on overturning the US constitution, the guy who boasted about his ability to sexually assault women, the guy who had already had a full term and caused tremendous damage with it, the guy who had spent four years complaining about rigged elections and threatening to do something about it, the guy who supported an attempted insurrection and promised to pardon the people who were involved, etc etc etc.
Stop blaming other people here - if you voted for Trump, it was perfectly clear what you were getting, and you still made that decision. That's on you.
> But I'm not blaming the voter for not supporting me. I'm blaming the voter for supporting the person that they supported.
You're getting hung up. What the fuck good does any of that do? Tell me.
> Sure, I might be selling poop in a bag, and maybe nobody wants that. I can't blame people for not buying things they don't want. But the guy next to me is selling the Handmaid's Tale But In Real Life, and people are queuing up round the block to buy it. Those people looked at all the options -including abstaining and not buying anything at all - and still made a decision.
The point I was making with the poop-selling example is: you need to get outside your own head and your own biases. I don't think you're doing that. You're doubling down, making excuses for your side.
> They have to take ownership of that decision.
Sure, that would make you feel good, but it ain't going to happen. Quit tripping over it and move on.
If I were a Democrat or a part of the DNC, then sure, introspection would be very important. But I'm not — I'm not even American, I'm watching from the sidelines trying to figure out what on earth has gone wrong and how I prevent it happening again in my own country.
The answer to Trump cannot be "the Democrats needed to try harder", because if democracy relies on one side never slipping up while the other side can do whatever they like, then of course that system is going to collapse eventually. We have to look at the deeper causes. And one of the most fundamental causes here is that a lot of people in the US looked at a man who openly promised a multi-pronged attack on the constitutional basis of the United States and said "yes, that's the man for me". If your analysis of the 2024 election doesn't include that point, then it's a flawed analysis.
You're kinda correct but making the mistake that the democratic party is a uni-party and not a vibrant political group made up of hundreds of different vying interests.
There is only one group to blame and it's the same group that has controlled the party since the 90s: neoliberals. Neoliberals do not have a vision of the future worth fighting for, more corporate control, so it's not hard to see when other opposing forces can simply offer something different.
It's the same problem we saw in the 1920s that lead to growing fascism: pushing for austerity, more corporate control over society, and deregulation are all things that help fascists and authoritarians thrive.
I agree neoliberals are a very big part of the problem (and giving them the finger was one of Trump's trump cards, pardon the pun), but I don't think it stops there.
Another aspect, which applies to neoliberals and many other groups in the Democratic coalition, is the seeming abandonment the idea of representing voters (in a district) in favor of persuading/lecturing them. That really appeals to the true-believer partisans (who are getting represented), but alienates everyone else.
I'm pretty sure the Democrats would have at least 5 more Senate seats if they consistently ran candidates that focused on representing the state they're running in as a whole (and continued to do that after the election was over).
Factually, Harris as a candidate was orders of magnitude better than Trump: a boring, competent, left-leaning centrist. In a functioning society, a reactionary revolutionary like Trump -- complete with Project 2025 manifesto -- should have scraped off maybe 5-to-10% of the vote, almost regardless of his competition.
The problem wasn't really Harris, who got very close to half the vote. The problem is that half the voting population does not think that electing a fascist demagogue is that big of a deal, or compares favorably to electing a boring centrist. This suggests that our civic culture is fundamentally broken at the moment. You can't run a society like this!
> Factually, Harris as a candidate was orders of magnitude better than Trump: a boring, competent, left-leaning centrist.
OK, so now we know how you voted. What fraction of the electorate are you?
> The problem wasn't really Harris, who got very close to half the vote.
Which in this case is called "losing." Trump even won the popular vote that time.
> The problem is that half the voting population does not think that electing a fascist demagogue is that big of a deal, or compares favorably to electing a boring centrist.
IMHO, one of the Democrats' many fuck-ups was they overdid the "fascist demagogue" line of attack, basically neutering it.
It's pretty clear roughly what your political views are, but let me hazard a guess that you're far away from being a swing voter. IMHO, another one of the Democrats' fuck-ups was being unwilling to make their most loyal voters uncomfortable, and instead demanding that persuadable voters tolerate discomfort, which is a tough sell.
> This suggests that our civic culture is fundamentally broken at the moment. You can't run a society like this!
How very convenient! Doesn't that mean you don't have to adapt in any way that's uncomfortable to you?
The most common vote in any presidential is an (implicit) abstention.
It's very important to try to persuade centrists that you're a better candidate than the opposition, but it's also very important to persuade your voters that you're worth going to the polls for. The latter requires making your loyal voters comfortable at the expense of the swing voters.
This entire comment is a giant strawman that fails to address the point I was making.
Half the voting population elected a fascist demagogue. Fundamentally, swing state voters are not the issue: that's just a weird artifact of our electoral system. The issue is that something like 40-45% of the population will literally vote for *anyone* in the Republican party, even if they're "America's Hitler". Project 2025 made it blatantly obvious what they were voting for.
Even if the Democratic party better adapts to swing voters' needs -- even if they win! -- that 40-45% remains a ticking time bomb. A democracy can't survive when close to half the voting population values party victory over democracy.
"To drive the point home she [Pelosi] picked up a water glass next to her and said: “This glass of water would win with a ‘D’ next to its name in those districts.”"
Let's not pretend that only one 40-45% part of the population votes on a party line.
There is no evidence that Democratic voters would vote en masse for somebody running on a platform of *undermining democracy*. (In fact, there's evidence that they would reject such a candidate, given how quickly candidates with any sort of problematic past -- like Platner and Franken -- are discarded.)
In contrast, MAGA Republicanism is fundamentally centered on accruing power and codifying hierarchy at the expense of everything else.
> This entire comment is a giant strawman that fails to address the point I was making.
Frankly, the point that you were making was dumb. Complaining about the voters will get you nowhere.
> Half the voting population elected a fascist demagogue.
You're high on your own rhetoric. That's not smart.
> The issue is that something like 40-45% of the population will literally vote for anyone in the Republican party, even if they're "America's Hitler". Project 2025 made it blatantly obvious what they were voting for.
So why is that? Try not to reach for some explanation that makes you feel good about yourself or your guys, because that's self-deception.
What do you have to do to change situation? If your answer is something that's comfortable and easy for you to swallow, it probably won't work. You're prioritizing your own comfort over an effective action.
There have been people that claimed they would have voted for the worst rulers registered in history before the dems; and at the same time John Bolton recurretly used the phrase "a cardboard cutout would be better than".
The question on whether they perceived (actually, whether they can perceive) what others like e.g. Bolton see is valid - nonetheless, you have to face that they explicitly, vocally refused to vote for the dems, "whatever it takes".
And the system in the USA is very broken - among the issues, there are only two options in the choice, with all the paradoxes it brings.
That's like blaming a rape victim for being bad at fighting off her rapist.
If you want the answer, look at Republicans. They nominated him twice, and the second time around the Republican base ignored all of the moral issues they knew about and voted for him anyway because they wanted the chaos and anger.
Look at the polling right now: even after Trump's policies have destroyed millions of Republican lives, those voters are still convinced that Trump has their best interests at heart and its really those dastardly Democrats' fault somehow even though the GOP controls all 3 branches of government.
> That's like blaming a rape victim for being bad at fighting off her rapist.
WTF? The Democrats lost some important elections to a fool, that's nothing like getting raped.
> If you want the answer, look at Republicans. They nominated him twice, and the second time around the Republican base ignored all of the moral issues they knew about and voted for him anyway because they wanted the chaos and anger.
I'm not saying there are no problems with Republicans, but that the bigger, more important, and more tractable issue is that the Democrats could lose to someone like that, twice.
Complain about how bad Trump is all you want, but if you lose to him, it's pretty clear you are in some important sense worse than him. Focus on fixing that, because bitching about the other side is going to do no good.
There you go again trying to shift the blame from Republicans to Democrats.
Trump won with 49.8% of the vote, which is the lowest % since Bush in 2000. Democrats voted against him. Independents voted against him. But MAGA voters loved his race-baiting and voted for him in overwhelming numbers, and even anti-Trump Republican voters decided that they could live with the racism and corruption and destruction of civil liberties if they could end abortion at the federal level and make all dozen trans athletes in the country disappear.
The problem is, and always was, the Republican voters. Blame them.
> There you go again trying to shift the blame from Republicans to Democrats.
The only thing blaming Republicans does is make Democrats feel better about their own incompetence and failure. Do you think the Republicans are going to take any blame you give them? It's psychological comfort for partisans who find adaptation too uncomfortable, nothing else.
Sadly it's not possible to replace the American electorate with one to your liking. It is possible for the democrats to choose a more appealing candidate though.
> I don’t wonder anymore [how Trump won twice]. I think he won for that exact reason. Because he carried at least one broken shard to reflect the broken shards in millions of others.
> If you’re a racist, you found your guy. If you’re a misogynist, you found your guy. If money is your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart is armored shut, you found your guy. If you mock the disabled, you found your guy. If intelligence makes you insecure, you found your guy. If you’re a sexual predator, you found your guy. If you trade in humiliation and conspiracy and filth, you found your guy.
[…]
> If he’d only carried one or two of these pathologies, he might have been dismissed as just another loud, damaged man. But he carried a buffet of them. That was the appeal. Millions could locate themselves somewhere in the wreckage. They didn’t have to agree with all of it. They just had to recognize a piece of themselves in it.
[…]
> Trump is a symptom. The deeper illness is collective. If there’s one sentence that defines his power, it’s this: “He says the things I’m thinking.”
Nah that is not Cyberpunk Tech enough, and also far too close to visuals and ideas of the working class rebelling against the people in power.
I could imagine something _like_ that happen, but it would be a different kind of spectacle, where it is ensured that it projects ideas that _stabilize_ the current structure.
__
Hmm.. although, if they have a good propaganda guy, they might actually do the Guillotine and annex that symbol as an ultimate power move.
> I could imagine something _like_ that happen, but it would be a different kind of spectacle, where it is ensured that it projects ideas that _stabilize_ the current structure.
Perhaps the government could hold a lottery for a spot on the firing squad. I’m sure there are plenty of loyal patriots that would be willing to pay* the $500 entry fee. The patriotic non-fake news media could do a human* interest story on the lucky winner, with before and after interviews and maybe a photo-op with SecWar.
"Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America."
Only three countries carry out public executions: Iran, Afghanistan, and North Korea. I guess there will be four now, with the U.S. joining this "prestigious" group.
Do something about it. Don't just let it happen. Don't say it's too hard or nothing is going to change. Don't let them win by default. Your government is supposed to be by the people, for the people. Remind them of that.
In Serbia, people protested for two years straight, giant protests, marches all over the country, until the government resigned and new elections were called.
> In Serbia, people protested for two years straight, giant protests, marches all over the country, until the government resigned and new elections were called.
We already reelect the entire Congress every two years, we don't have to do this.
Moreover, we also have set record protests in recent years larger than the ones you cite. Hands Off protest was a million+. No Kings I, II, and III (we protest so much we've started just numbering them) was like 20 million people across those protests.
Furthermore, we did do something about it and we got rid of all these people once already. The problem is about half the country wants this to happen, so they were invited back to do more.
Also genuine question, did the Serbian government execute anyone in the street and label them a terrorist, as the American government did last winter to multiple Americans who were protesting?
It should be sad but not shocking. They deliberately campaigned on causing maximum destruction, grief and chaos, and frequently used the phrase "we're going to make so much money." It was totally transparent and out in the open what the plan was, and people voted for that plan.
it's not really what we wanted, it's what we were taught. decades of defunding education and not modernizing the system that was originally based on apartheid, the creation of media conglomerates that advocate for anti-intellectualism, all of it just run rampant and increasingly unchecked, the large scale smearing of academic institutions from the outside and the insidious internal replacement of academics by administrators
the current version of the US was orchestrated deliberately by our wealthiest elites (eg Koch, Murdoch, etc) - the pleebs were becoming too powerful and now they're over-correcting
I don't disagree, but you're explaining _why_ they want it, not that they don't want it.
They've, for sure, been manipulated into wanting it, needing to believe it, but that's where the US is at, in a high enough percentage for the current administration to happen. The path of the US hasn't changed direction though, the travel down that path had just been accelerated somewhat by Tmurp.
They sure don't need it though.
(I agree with your comment below, but I'm unable to reply to it, so I replied here via edit)
sure, the why is to explain how it's happening and how to combat it - funding education, modernizing our systems, getting rid of unnecessary middlemen
a flat description is just an accusation that you can do nothing with except feel a kind of anti-social catharsis that doesn't net any progress in the other direction
since when have we been defunding education? over the past 60 years the per pupil spending on education has increased pretty substantially. you can argue that the funds aren't well allocated but it's objectively false that we've been reducing funding for education over multiple decades.
the per-pupil number is a deliberate red herring. spending increases only cover increasingly expensive private contracts, expensive middle-managers who often contribute little of value in terms of actually educating pupils, and liabilities
The % of GDP numbers seem to show, for elementary and secondary schools, rises and falls. It, fluctuates. Except for a dip in the 80s its been between 4.0% and 4.5% since 1967.
> the per-pupil number is a deliberate red herring. spending increases only cover increasingly expensive private contracts, expensive middle-managers who often contribute little of value in terms of actually educating pupils, and liabilities
Is that not just a more detailed explanation of what the comment said? jayglow said
> you can argue that the funds aren't well allocated
You have explained how they have been badly allocated. Its a general pattern in the western world's government expenditure on many things.
I said nothing about non-voters. I voted. NOT for Trump and not for Spiderman or some fantastical shit. My point was, of those who voted, near 50% of us DID NOT VOTE for Trump. We, have been for a decade, fighting this monstrous trash fire.
those two thirds living in the wrong states for it to matter, wouldn’t have voted the way you wanted and would have resulted in the same distribution of votes we already have?
Correct, the sentiment would have been the same distribution of votes across states. The electoral college distribution would have been the same 312 to 226 and not close at all
The way you talk about things could have easily resulted in California’s 54 electoral college votes flipping to the majority resulting in 366 electoral votes for the winner. Your numbers are spread across where people actually live after all, as opposed to a campaign swing state
Maybe I wouldn't need table as harsh about it were the stakes lower - if things were relatively sane like Clinton, Bush, or Obama (I'm not saying they are perfect, just sane).
When facing the prospect of Trump there is no such excuse as "there were no good options." Yeah, dems are also evil and incompetent, but Trump takes it to an existential level. You're not abstaining, you're leaving the door wide open to the worst of humanity.
And civil war, where we're probably headed, is a much bigger nuisance than voting.
I am also not American, and I also voted for a party that did not win the national elections. However, to put in perspective, the last local elections I voted”strategically” (meaning, not my favorite party but the one I thought had better chances to win in my district and was a lot better than the other party projected to win) - I looked up the numbers after the election and the party I voted for ended up winning by about 40 votes. Had I and 39 other people decided not to vote at all, a much worse party would be governing my district..
Seems completely irrelevant? You were arguing that non-voters had no role in a candidate winning, and now you're pivoting to "but was your vote satisfying." Do you have a point or is this just general misanthropy?
People don't vote because it's perfectly satisfying every time, or they expect to win every time. That's a pretty childish way to look at the democratic process. But if you believe the current president is obviously terrible and you wonder, aloud, how he came to power, revealing that you didn't vote is bound to earn you some groans.
i think both questions are irrelevant. why would i be satisfied or dissatisfied with not voting?
i'm not american, i voted for a losing party in my countries election, i'm not pleased with my government, but had i not voted and the situation was the same, i would not feel any differently.
Nope. If you're one of four people voting for something, you have 25% of the voting power.
If you decide to abstain, everyone else's vote is now more valuable, at 33.33%. You have given your voting power to other people, it didn't just disappear. And now whatever the outcome, you are participatory in it.
In the U.S. this matters more on a state level, but it still applies.
abstaining doesn't transfer voting power to the winning side, it increases every remaining voters relative share equally regardless of which side theyre on. you can't retroactively attribute abstention to the winner simply because they won.
I don't know why I'm getting down-voted by HN oligarchs for saying that over 1/2 of Americans were NOT for Trump and his dictatorial BS. Keep down-voting though, this is par for the course here.
The US' problems won't end when Trump leaves office, and things wouldn't have been much different if he'd not been elected the second time: the wars and calamity have been on the table for a long time.
Nobody cares about Americans having prosperity and happiness when their nation has been dropping bombs on innocent human beings every 15 minutes on average, for the past 26 years.
YES! I agree with you. I am an American standing in opposition to this admin and all government corruption. No one should care about our prosperity when we are acting the same and China, Russia, N Korea et al. Its disgusting and we are propagandized to the hilt.
True, but this does not mean that both acts were equal.
For example, voting is a political act, and so is voter suppression. We wouldn't argue that both are equal acts. One is liberating, and the other is oppressive.
The ICC was created with 120 countries voting in favor and 7 against, opposition mostly coming from Israel, the US and china. It's creation is due to a moderate prime minister from Tobago.
But the South African judge is really out of touch with reality. I remember it was South Africa who pushed an alternative UN resolution for Russo-Ukraine war trying to remove any blame from Russia.
The South African judiciary and the dept. for international relations (who pushed the pro-russian motion) are two very very separate and sometimes-at-odds-with-one-another state bodies.
Do you have some sources that corroborate your claim that Judge Pillay is out of touch? What specifically is she out of touch about?
Given the fact that signatories to the Rome Statute outnumber countries that aren’t, I’m not quite sure who the rogue is here…
The picture changes if you count by countries' population, since the 5 most populous nations are not parties to the ICC. I wish it were not so.
Friendly reminder that if you look at population numbers its AFAIR less than 1/3rd of the world population whose countries recognize the ICC, which is an absolute minority.
How easy it’s to see a certain speaking point being launched into the media, it’s chilling.
> Friendly reminder that if you look at population numbers
i think it's funny that you tried to cast doubt but couldn't even do that because you lead with the glaring flaw in your reasoning instead of your rhetorical point. congrats.
The countries with healthy democracies and who value science and the rule of law support the ICC. It's the better 3rd to be in.
Reuters isn't owned by the US Govt, but AFP is a public body (although with a pretense of independence) built in the office of the former OFI in 1944, which was Vichy's propaganda ministry.
How do you call a country where public press is so much owned or subsidized by the govt that other press can't survive, where press has guidelines of things to say, where voting happens without the ability for voters to check their vote was counted (witnesses were removed from witnessing the vote counting in France, when it's not total electronic), where they import voters to sway elections, and where the FISC publishes lists of people with a house and account numbers and amoints so hostage takers can target the right house and ask the right thing? Where police or train conductors take no action against fraudsters unless they are white, preferrably grandmas? SNCF has always been the most participant to exactions, they're breaking no tradition here.
What's holding me in Europe is clearly not democracy. Candidate for US or AU visa here, I'm rich but AU has closed the wealth-based visa.
You would think google, microsoft and apple would be having kittens over this. How will any government or large corporation trust their goods and services if they can be disabled at will because the USA government takes offence to you, or someone in your department. Good for linux I guess but pain for the rest of us.
They issued a General License concurrent to the ICC sanctions designation to authorize IT/ICT services, similar to licenses that exist for many sanctioned countries. https://ofac.treasury.gov/media/937191/download?inline
Never heard the idiom "having kittens" before. It sounds very cute, but the origin, the belief of birthing kittens because the mother unknowingly ate cat semen, will stop me from ever using it.
https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/3/messages/139.htm...
That's citing the pocket trivia book How Did It Begin? Customs, Superstitions and Their Romantic Origins by Rudolph Brasch. As he cites "a superstition, once prevalent among Scottish people" he likely based his claims on Notes on the Folk-Lore of the North-East of Scotland by Rev. Walter Gregor. This reads: "It was a notion that a male cat, when he jumped, emitted urine, and at times semen. Hence great care was used to keep male cats at a distance from food, for another notion was, that, if a cat did chance to jump over food, the one, who was unfortunate enough to partake of it, conceived cats."
This doesn't seem to match the use of the idiom. Meanwhile Greens Dictionary of Slang suggests the meaning is related to the nervousness of pregnant cats. https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/42jrf3i#nizqrgq
I guess so, I now know of a lot of sovereign activities gaining traction (ie the Dutch NixOS based government desktop).
But then again with out politicians being this unwilling to experience some papercuts for freedom [0] I guess they have nothing to worry about. (Although the certainly endured the Teams papercuts until they didn't feel them anymore.) I honestly don't understand why they're crying so hard, I really enjoy Element "ascii shrug".
Ah well, the old saying "Privacy is for Nerds" remains true as always.
[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-microsoft-teams-alternati...
He just gave awards to the whole crew yesterday
>National Medal of Science: Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Jensen Huang, Lisa Su
>National Medal of Technology and Innovation: Michael Dell, Satya Nadella
https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/10/president-trump-...
Also daily reminder that Jensen Huang and Lisa Su are first cousins once removed. It's a big club, and you ain't in it.
It's almost amusing reading this through the lens of the visa shuttering article from yesterday (which a lot were cheering) because none of the receivers were born in the US.
Fucking immigrants stealing our … corruption?
Is that amusing, or is it cherry-picking to create an imagined hypocrite that is easier to attack? You should decline the temptation to be smug (in general, but especially regarding people who haven't actually done anything hypocritical).
The administration is the thing to criticize here: Not all individual people who agree with some arbitrary other thing the administration did or said.
You should assign rationality to individuals, rather than assigning irrationality to groups, especially on HN. If you can't resist, I would earnestly ask you to vent in this way outside of HN, on the rest of the internet.
I'm not smug, I'm disappointed. I don't think hypocrisy is necessarily irrational but it is self-serving, morally bankrupt and, in this particular instance, self-defeating.
Not in the least, people are highly irrational, I don't know how you can say this with a straight face. Even me, here, if I were rational, I would STFU, who am I helping pointing out the hypocrisy of it all? Nonetheless, I still think it's hypocrisy. And being bothered by it does not make it not so.
And not the least, this administration did not appear out of thin air. The US population voted it. I sure view the administration as a mirror (and the responsibility) of the US population.
But I do understand your wider point, and I think you're right, this whole thing is non-prodictive.
Dell was born in Houston.
I updated my comment originally Dell and Nadella was missing
Insane these awards are going mostly to executives, Musk getting it for engineering sciences is a slap in the face to anyone that previously received the award.
He's a fascist, so obviously he might be good at enginerreing electrical meat grinder opression vehicles or cost cutting departments using AI.
You know what's funny? I live in a very progressive town. Everyone is pissed at Elon. Everyone drives Teslas. And not old one, clearly tons of them were purchased after he went "bad". Clearly people's principles are contingent on the car sale discounts.
> Clearly people's principles are contingent on the car sale discounts.
Okay, I'll bite. Do you routinely make your purchase decisions solely on a single factor? Especially big ones, probably second only in size to your home?
It is possible to loathe Elmo but also conclude that given all the various factors driving your decision making, a Tesla ends up being the best fit.
When buying our refrigerator, I didn’t look into how evil the CEO of whirlpool is. It’s quite possible he is as bad or worse. However, at least he has the good sense to be quiet about it.
> at least he has the good sense to be quiet about it
For sure, I think a good CEO stays the hell out of politics altogether, because it will never recruit more customers, it can only alienate.
Yea, for most CEOs, I have no idea what their politics are because they don't wear it on their sleeve and make it part of their company's brand. I can probably guess their politics, but it's not going to affect my purchase decision.
There are a handful of CEOs who just can't seem to keep it to themselves, to the point where they're just begging for people to include those politics in their purchase decisions.
It's all quite true. What is surprising though, that the SAME people who are very outspoken in criticizing Musk are driving Teslas. First, they would put some lame stickers to make the whole thing seem like a joke, now they don't even care to do that. It's almost like their self-proclaimed virtue ends where (tiny) financial pain begins.
Where I grew up in the US it was not uncommon for people to intentionally only buy union made vehicles. Not sure how that works out now when things are built and assembled in a dozen factories but it used to be more simple and union workers supported other union workers. (this reads like the rantings of an old boomer, I'm not either I swear)
> It is possible to loathe Elmo but also conclude that given all the various factors driving your decision making, a Tesla ends up being the best fit.
Musk is unambiguously an unashamedly a Nazi, and not just for the triviality of his arm gestures. He calls people like my parents traitors for not sticking with their respective races and says people like me should “remigrate” because the west should be white only. He says people like my wife express “hatred against whites” and routinely retweets antisemitic posts. He called his ai system the “mechahitler” and it routinely returns racist responses when asked.
And when people patronize his businesses it amplifies his own wealth, which he then spends to spread his vitriol in multiple countries.
So yes, if you support Nazis financially or otherwise it makes you one too.
> So yes, if you support Nazis financially or otherwise it makes you one too.
Wow.
What’s your “wow”?
You somehow managed not to know the extent of his racism and cruelty?
Or you don’t think that anyone who provides material support to Nazis/Communists/Hamas/the IDF/MAGA is is basically one of them?
Or?
How casually you decide other people are nazis.
That's a conversation-ending statement. And so it is.
For you, out of convenience, nazi supporter and actual nazi (what, performer? activist?) are positions just micrometers apart, if at all. Not everybody considers moral fluidity some sort of virtue to brag about, in contrary
It’s hardly casual, but also hardly complex: if someone is a Nazi in both word and action, that’s pretty clear. It’s duck typing in the real world: the actual origin of the term.
But your defense of racist speech, acts, and the propagation of same sends a clear message too.
Ugh. Rootus made no such defence.
I was about to purchase a £6 tool on ebay, but noticed the seller was named truth_com. I decided to buy it from another seller simply because i intensely dislike the noise coming from that direction. Had i not noticed, and completed the sale, would i be a Nazi?
If i drop pennies in a collection box on a shop counter, unwittingly supporting a terrorist organisation, have i blown up schoolchildren?
What if i see the collection box, research the charity, discover that it funds terrorism, correctly decline to contribute, but then fail to immediately kill the shopkeeper and his entire family? Am i supporting terrorism, by suffering a terrorist to contribute his activities?
Develop some fucking nuance. Your direction is fine, but your insistence on your authority as the ultimate arbiter of morality is not. Calling all Tesla owners Nazis is petulant and self-satisfied.
I do, something about having actual moral values and stances, not some pathetic when-it-suits-me. Can make life sometimes a bit more complex but then I can look myself in the mirror and be content with what I see without some advanced mental gymnastics.
Nazi germany may have been making the best cars of that era, would you still give them money out of convenience? Not that teslas are best electric cars in the world in quite a few aspects, but they have emotional momentum of early starters.
One simply does not have strong moral opinions and then act directly against them at first minor inconvenience.
There are enough EVs on the market these days that people can afford to include more frivolous factors into their decision making. I was in the market for an EV a few years ago. Solely because I dislike Elon and don't wish to support his business, I took teslas off the table after 5 minutes of research to make sure they weren't drastically superior.
Sold mine after running it a few months covered with stickers saying what I thought of him. Drive another EV now and will not go back. No discount on the car. Stop generalizing.
There is no contradiction between "most people do X" and "anyone can do whatever they decide".
Gosh darn goombas.
I personally know people who drive a Tesla and hate Elon. It's strange that you think no one acts contrary to their beliefs?
Hard to understand why anyone would buy a car from a company that has very publicly lost interest in making cars.
Isn't the Model Y the best selling car several years running? It could be argued that Tesla is losing interest in making cars, though the counterpoint would be that they keep making incremental improvements. Looks to me like they are trying not to mess up what appears to be a working formula.
It’s not a case of could be argued. Musk said “We should be thought of as an AI robotics company”.
>>Also daily reminder that Jensen Huang and Lisa Su are first cousins once removed. It's a big club, and you ain't in it.
It's almost like culture you are brought in and family values have big influence over what you are able to do in your life. Neither of them were handed their success. It's a good opportunity to learn what makes them different.
Also daily reminder that Jensen Huang and Lisa Su are first cousins once removed. It's a big club, and you ain't in it.
Isn't this basically how WWI started?
People at the time thought it would prevent war but it was irrelevant (neither hurt nor helped)
> How will any government or large corporation trust their goods and services
Same as before. Only if you're insane.
Trump, just yesterday-
"The White House considers anyone that uses the term, “Artificial Intelligence,” as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, “Super Intelligence,” THE ENEMY! President DONALD J. TRUMP"
All because this simple-minded, vile rapist desperately wants to put his worthless fingerprint on everything, and his addled, time-locked imbecile brain decided that he would rename AI. So far I've only seen one pathetic simp so completely busted and worthless they would follow suit, and that's the equally vile and drug-abuse obliterated Elon Musk.
The US has fallen. These companies don't go against outrageously stupid dictums by this terroristic administration because they know there are zero checks and balances, and this vile creep will punish any who counter him.
Astonishing that this guy isn't polling at 0%. Do Americans fully comprehend that this self-dealing clown has destroyed your future?
Is he really going to insist on this super intelligence thing? Like he's actually going to somehow punish people who don't adopt it?
Pretty insane to literally make enemies over terminology. I don't understand what he's thinking.
It's a loyalty test. And he's given his supporters permission to classify anyone who doesn't follow along as 'the enemy' aka 'the other'. It's a shortcut so his supporters know they don't have to give any credence to anything else they say, since now they assign all the other labels and insults he's hurled at 'his enemies' to the person they are talking to.
Gulf of Mexico -> Gulf of America
Department of Defense -> Department of War
Lake Ontario -> Lake America
AI -> SI
He's been doing this for years. Change the name from something widely used/adopted to something brand new and watch who follows along. Anyone who starts using the new name is a friend, and anyone who doesn't is an enemy.
Kennedy Center:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Center#Second_Trump_pr...
Including threats to demolish it:
* https://abcnews.com/Politics/trump-administration-suggests-k...
Twitter -> X
Same playbook.
I don't want to defend Musk, but renaming a thing you own is a far cry from renaming geography.
(And on that spectrum, DoD > Department of War is somewhere in the middle)
Since he deadnames his own child, I’m happy to deadname his business.
In English?
Trans people typically whose a new name, referring to their old name as their “deadname”. People who insist on using the deadname when they know the person has a new name are deliberately mocking, and even being cruel to, the person who has changed their name.
Musk continues to refer to his trans child by their birth name and gender. I can’t understand how someone would do that to their own child (much less anyone at all).
After purchasing twitter he chose for it a new name and wants everyone to use it, but by not bothering to I’m simply following his example.
Apple Computer -> Apple
Google -> Alphabet
Facebook -> Meta
Each of these cases makes sense, though, because the scope of the wider companies had expanded well beyond their original product.
Unlike “Lake America” or “X”, they weren’t renamed just because of ego or out of spite.
I think that is different, alone because the companies still call it "Google" and "Facebook" themself.
This is the right answer. People should start pronouncing it see as in yes in Spanish. Let’s see how long he sticks with it then.
So he renamed AI to SI and decreed that all must use it, and whoever acquiesces is loyal and everyone else is a traitor?
Surely there are less embarrassing ways of doing that sort of thing...
That's pretty par for the course - at least, as far as authoritarian regimes go. It's getting very difficult to think of the US as anything but, at this point.
It's meant to be embarrassing, that's part of the control strategy. Once you start doing embarrassing things on Trump's behalf, everyone will know you've done a shameful thing, and you can only escape the shame by digging your way deeper into his cult where it becomes a virtue.
There's already been a few media outlets (and not just the obvious way right pseudo-media) who have started using it, eager to stay in his good book.
He doesn't really think, he reacts. And his every reaction is centered around "How can I make this about me?"
True, but his "handlers" are very smart and behind his rants there's usually a very deliberate motivation and accompanying action.
Yeah, that's what I'm trying to puzzle out... Surely there's some kind of objective here to justify this overtly aggressive language?
I mean he invaded Venezuela, and everybody knows he wanted the oil, it makes sense. This super intelligence stuff is not making any sense.
Maybe it's just a loyalty filter to easily see who is actively "bending the knee". If you use "AI" in your discourse it's a subtle sign you don't align with Trump. I'm not sure but we'll know soon!
Peter Thiel recently said that Trump's handlers are not smart but very loyal. Loyal to him, if that wasn't clear.
I don't consider Peter Thiel to be very smart. I've read his "sermons" for lack of a better word and they're just pseudointellectual nonsense, and tech-babble with a dash of religious justification to appeal to conservatives (Federalist Society/Heritage Foundation etc.) I wouldn't seriously consider anything he says to be viable. They're (Trump's cabinet/oligarchs) only loyal as long as MAGA loyalists keep blindly supporting Trump, the second the tide turns they'll scatter like cockroaches.
Terminology should not be underestimated, propaganda is a lot about terminology, and whoever designed this renaming campaign knows what he's doing. The politics behind this SI push is pretty transparent to those who really care about these issues.
Please expand on this... I can't think of a reason to rename AI to "super" intelligence. What objective does this accomplish?
Propaganda is simply spammed until it sticks. How could it be worth it to literally make an enemy out of anyone who doesn't take to the new terminology?
> What objective does this accomplish?
Why do you want to know this? Are you planning to do something about it? Anyway, see below.
> How could it be worth it to literally make an enemy out of anyone who doesn't take to the new terminology?
You seem to be mixing the ends here, you think he is the one who's supposed to be afraid of "literally making enemies"?
I'm going to update my world view based on this new information. I used to think Trump was just a right wing guy who put his country first. His actions seem to have become increasingly unhinged.
This is relevant to me because Brazil is going to have a presidential election soon and the right wing is taking over. Trump's brazilian ally is expected to win. I'm gonna start paying a lot more attention to US-Brazil relations.
Thanks for sharing. Also, just for clarity, if you look at how my previous comment to you was moderated, you'll understand why I write the way I write here.
> I used to think Trump was just a right wing guy who put his country first.
I struggle to remember when I would have ever believed that. I know it is a meme, but there is still so much unfortunate truth to the notion "what would Donald Trump do differently if he were actually a Russian asset?" Because the only good explanation that fits is that he intends to do lasting damage to the USA. Like he is spiteful, feels like we have collectively shat all over him his whole life, taunted him, and now we are to be punished.
A foreigner's amateurish assessment: to me many of Trump's actions at least try in spirit to increase the leverage of the American people.
Tariffs on other countries is exactly what my country did last century in order to foment national industry. It did produce results, including a national computer. I'm not exactly sure why it backfired when Trump did it.
If Trump's someone's asset, he's probably Israel's.
A weak marionette can be played by many skillful hands. He is very weak in his predictable childish tantrums and narcisstic ego polishing.
I'll add he is a china asset - he is really paving way for their unchallenged hegemony in few decades. Also making Europe stronger long term, despite trying hard the opposite. For that and that only, I surprisingly commend him. Not best move for US but we dont care about that.
Maybe its actually better for the world overall, china is now looking as best moral new leader by virtue of just doing nothing, its enough these days. Imagine if ie Xi or puttin' would do same ai -> clains, the laugh around the world would be loud and long
You're a victim of "sane washing". The media has been suppressed to the point of trying to justify every move of this administration as serving some kind of brilliant purpose. Surely the usual special interests are getting their gifts, but a lot of our national policies can strictly be explained by narcissism and dementia. Big Gulf and Big Lake aren't making billions off his other name changes.
Establishing precedent. Uncovering who is with him and who is "the enemy".
Creating a partisan naming controversy sabotages nonpartisan discussion, and the specific choice of name makes it extremely challenging to talk about the unique dangers of superintelligent AI.
Artificial has bad connotations. Super gas good connotations. Trump speaks to the feral mind that drives survival instincts and overrides rational thought. If you’re influenced by it he warps your world in a way that is overwhelming. If you’re immune it’s hard to comprehend because is seems so glaringly stupid.
It's not about whether or not "Super" makes sense. He could have just as easily changed the name to "potato." The point is to change a commonly-used word to something else, and measure who follows along. If you go along with it, you're a loyal friend, and if you don't you're an enemy.
It's like the Facebook -> Meta rebrand, Facebook was a dirty word at the time while Meta wasn't (gosh that didn't last long though) so it was an attempt to try and get rid of the accumulated negativity and hope that searches for the topic of Meta only returned bland and positive results instead of dredging up the many ongoing court cases.
It’s a dog whistle. Plenty of political zealots coin their own idiosyncratic terms to affirm loyalty.
Can someone PLEASE convince him to hold back the tides at beach somewhere?
He is a bit of a Cnut, to be sure.
i feel like it’s something Elon probably said and he ran with it
That would be a very original way if this is what finally pops the bubble. :)
Kind of annoying for all the people with .ai tlds
It's literally just a blatant favour to Mark Zuckerberg in exchange for ??????
Here, let me prove it: Meta is the only one that has used that term in the past, going back to the announcement that they were founding "Meta Superintelligence Labs" (end of June last year). Zuckerberg reinforced their plans to use that term back in August when that essay of his that was the talk of the town for like a few days, which used the term "superintelligence" 50+ times. Then, just this week, we found out about Meta's ICANN bid to own .superintelligence TLD. The deadline for those submissions was August 12th. Trump signed the EO on Sept 29th, and now Zuckerberg effectively "owns" that term.
Of course, if it ever caught on, I'm pretty sure Slovenia would benefit more from it (by owning .si).
Yes. Trump is not a rational actor, it is textbook narcissism, not as a critique of his personality but I think he meets the criteria for clinical diagnosis.
If you don't listen to him then it results in narcissistic injury and he will retaliate.
It's a loyalty test. He has done this repeatedly. Just like the hilariously dumb Lake America nonsense, where he stomped on 400 years of American history to think he's somehow punishing Canada -- only to us it was just incredibly pathetic, and yet another example why we need to move on from the fallen husk idiocracy the US has become -- and then celebrated that it was "ratified" because Apple and Google foolishly changed according to the government GIS changes.
Trump is an insanely stupid person. Like, this is beyond doubt at this point. But he is so utterly shameless and unaware of his own endless limitations that it somehow breaks the brains of tens of millions of Americans. It's astonishing.
Important distinction: Google’s official, publicly declared policy is to follow the government names. Apple has never publicly declared any such policy. It was a choice.
(If Apple have indeed said this somewhere I’m happy to be proven wrong)
He does not think, he simply has no filter and that appeals to the working class people who feel like they have been shunned by elitist democrats and their woke fluff (while maintaining the status quo on anything that actually matters). He would have not stood a chance against someone like Bernie Sanders, who cares deeply about working class people without the fluff.
I don't disagree with your feelings on 45/47, or your assessment of the quote. I just think in terms of analysis it's really vague, very free-association and fatalistic. I think in this context, if you want to land your hit you should tie it to the substance of the article and make a point about how this changes something. I think "45/47 Bad" and "Elon Bad" are well represented takes (and not even wrong!) but people will tune it out because it feels like a repetition of something they already know, or at least that they've already heard.
They’re welcome to tune out reality all they want. The damage is done. It’s too late. Convincing people of that is a waste of time.
I replied to someone asking why multinational corporations aren't pushing back. Many US corporations make most of their revenue outside the US, and you would think these corporations would be more outspoken about the very dark, insular, war-criming path the US has gone down.
My comment directly addressed that. These aren't like incidental character comments, they directly address why the US is so completely broken right now. And this is damage that is permanent. This isn't just another lark that the US will recover from. The days of the US being the centre of the "free world", of commerce, and so on, is obliterated. Inertia is a hell of a thing and it might keep the illusion of maintenance going for a while, but the path is set now and there will be no recovery.
And when this disastrous government is ousted, successive governments are going to be so catastrophically crippled in every dimension that they'll look like failures, which surely will see the enlightened American public vote for the next foolish charlatan, rinse and repeat. I see no way out of this cycle now, and there's no way I can candy coat it.
Surprised he did not choose "American Intelligence"
That wouldn't let his cronies make a lot of money: https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/trump-super-int...
Surprised it did not choose "Super America".
I can't honestly even look at this.
SI (Stupid Idiocracy) has more punch.
But then the acronym is still “AI.” Now, whether Trump realized that in advance, is unknown.
Yes, sadly. My discussions with tech people outside the US indicate that the rest of the world is learning to route around the US. The damage is more or less permanent at this point.
FWIW his polls have been pointing downward at a steady rate for almost 2 years:
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump...
(Posted on the same day one of my coworkers received a $500 check and nastygram about the unusually bipartisan Afoordable Healthcare Act.)
Super Intelligence name change is most likely about enrichment - there were reports about sales of .si (slovenia) increased significantly many months ahead of annoucement - most likely insiders.
If only he had read a single book at some point in his lifetime.
Artificial Intelligence is objectively the correct term. He's just using stupid Trumpian word-play for fun. It's so stupid and so sad. At least we won't need to listen to this for thaaaat much longer, at least I hope.
How can we even be mentioning that.
What happens is (also) the typical: we work at some level (rational), abscesses work at another level (ventral). The two worlds do not meet.
I get the (somehow understandable) reasons for trying to "boost the spirits" towards RnD in face of campaigns against it (cpr. bernie sander's proposal "20 years of prison to those trying to implement intelligence"), but of course ventral discourse should not be acceptable to people given a right to vote - vote should be for adults.
> Astonishing that this guy isn't polling at 0%.
As an American, I agree. The unfortunate reality is that this kind of thing will continue until his supporters love things like the rule of law, checks on presidential power, and basic decency more than they hate "woke".
The idiocy will continue until it hurts enough, then people might not change but they might make different choices. Until then, we can only hope we fall far enough to learn the lesson, but not break our legs
The question is will it hurt them enough before it's too late for your collective choices to matter more than Thiel and friends' wealth and power. I have serious doubts. It's pretty obvious that the existing checks and balances in this country's constitution simply do not work as they were assumed to function, if at all.
> more than they hate
It cannot be a choice.
By the way, speaking of "awakening" by people that intend to substantially refer to asses is blasphemy.
Trump voters I know love those things but think the other side is worse. I mean it would be easy for the other side to give up wokeness, blatant racism under cover of DEI and some of the most blatant public sector scams or punitive taxes but here we are - neither side budges and you choose the one that is less likely to hurt you and your family. For many people it's Trump over Democrats.
It's going to happen in EU as well. Most Le Pen/AdF/Meloni voters will be in "those guys are less likely to hurt me" camp and I totally get it.
> … more than they hate "woke".
Or develop the cognitive powers to discern cause and effect.
Americans never cared about any of these things. A shameless demagogue like Trump would have been elected long ago if the establishment in either party had allowed it. The current situation is the result of the demise of the much-maligned gatekeepers in politics and media who managed to save America from itself until now.
> Astonishing that this guy isn't polling at 0%.
the Trump era is an interesting lesson in psychology
> All because this simple-minded, vile rapist desperately wants to put his worthless fingerprint on everything […]
Well, he has, just maybe not in the way he may be hoping (i.e., being positively remembered).
It really is astonishing
Remember, that half of the population is lower than 100 IQ.
And with LLMs being pushed everywhere, the active deskilling campaign / drug dealer first hit is free plan is working.
With dumb people, the louder and more emotional you are, the more the idiots trust you.
Intelligence and academics are the way out. And look how Republicans attack education and libraries. Their plan is straight forward, and the rubes have no clue. But they still vote for them cause of 'liberal cause of the week'.
Look on the bright side, we don't need to make up any new memes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palazzo_Braschi#/media/File:Pa...
It's wild that this is getting downvoted. Just goes to show how many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Not a good look for the elections.
> Good for linux
Torvalds lives in the USA. Linux Foundation is in the USA. Good (luck) for Linux. /s
I don’t think anyone expects the sanctions to last very long
Current administration expects ICC to change
Future administration can reverse sanctions since its just the stroke of a pen, economic sanctions don’t require Congress
It does not matter.
The US is untrustworthy, and governments are at the mercy of ridiculous hostile actions that even if shortlived may cause a lot of damage and losses.
Countries should speed up untangling themselves from the US. Be it by creating alternatives to Swift, effectively stop relying on US big tech, etc.
The US is a hostile power and its corporations are venues for it to cause harm.
I agree about that but I responded to a comment about US corporations reacting at all
I dont see why they should react
You are commenting about something else
Hyperbolic much? The current regime is untrustworthy. And they are pretty adept at dominating the headlines.
This argument would have so much more weight if he hadn’t been elected twice
Actually, no.
The US has been untrustworthy and willing to weaponize its position for decades. The current US administration is just both less competent and more overt in doing so.
I many ways, I like Trump precisely because of this. He just dropped the façade.
Mind you, I would profoundly despise having anything like the current US admin in my country.
In all of this, the US has not mentioned one American that was prosecuted by the ICC
Hopefully this helps lead to US sanctions having less global power.
yeah and I hope it accelerates the move away from using microsoft
Trump and his cronies simply don't understand the concept of "overplaying your hand"...
They understand just fine, they just don't care. Those young enough to live to see the long-term effects of their policies will be rich enough through the blatant corruption of the current administration to be essentially free from all serious impact.
Realistically, Americans aren't pulling out guillotines for the excessively rich any time soon, so why would they care?
Related ongoing thread:
Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 to Navanethem Pillay - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50018420 - Oct 2026 (163 comments)
Little Marco announcement,
https://x.com/SecRubio/status/2108565647667904647
> In 2022 the current Secretary of State, then a Senator, co-sponsored a resolution backing the Court’s jurisdiction over Russians accused of crimes in Ukraine.
https://www.npwj.org/press-release/an-assault-on-sovereign-r...
Little hypocrite.
Seems like this is Little Marco's moment to establish himself as a legit 2028 candidate.
He's used this admin as an opportunity to make war. Iran, Venezuela, and he hopes soon Cuba. He was instrumental in pushing for intervention in these cases.
"This action should encourage our Allies within the Court to work for solutions to end this threat to U.S. sovereignty forever."
I guess what he is saying is that work of International Criminal Court is a threat to US sovereignty ? Can someone make that make sense?
The U.S. wants to retain the right to commit war crimes without someone charging U.S. officials or soldiers with them, they have the sovereign right to commit war crimes. Russia doesn't, Iraq doesn't. The U.S. does, Israel does.
That is the 'International rules-based order' as opposed to the U.N. international law order.
> Russia doesn't, Iraq doesn't
?? Not sure. Can you provide examples of condemning for war crimes those and other regimes in the current times? I may be wrong, but I am getting the vibe of "free for all until somebody bigger shouts that's enough" - more clearly, I am not seeing ethical stances defended.
--
Edit: thanks Newjazz for the reply. Did not notice, I thought they just decided "free for all". Yes, that makes it more appalling - shameless.
Having trouble with google since they only seem to report news from the last month, but rubio has definitely criticized Hamas, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba for war crimes and/or crimes against humanity. Note that I acknowledge that in many of these cases the criticism was rightful, but the context here is the double standard.
The 'international rules-based order' was established by the US at the end of WWII as the legal framework for rebuilding Europe after the war.
Honest question, what makes you think the US, China, or Russia need to abide by legal agreements made 80 years ago by people who aren't around anymore? Those three countries have since agreed amongst themselves that the 'international rules-based order' was a mistake, and nobody else has a big enough stick to do anything about it.
> I guess what he is saying is that work of International Criminal Court is a threat to US sovereignty ? Can someone make that make sense?
Why do you need help? It's obvious. The dictionary definition of sovereignty is "supreme power especially over a body politic" and "freedom from external control : autonomy sense 1." If the ICC has power over the US government or can externally control it (for instance by arresting its leaders), it is a straightforwardly impinges on US sovereignty.
I'm not sure if I buy that argument. I understand what they mean, but the US has sovereignty over what happens within its borders. The ICC isn't entering the US and arresting anyone.
By your logic, every other country "impinges on US sovereignty" because they can arrest US citizens within their own borders.
That's not sovereignty. Sovereignty doesn't imply anything and it is not a designation bestowed by some other entity. It is purely descriptive of an evident state. If you can defend your claim to sovereignty, you are sovereign. Moreover, no claim need be made.
> By your logic, every other country "impinges on US sovereignty"
Trump has claimed exactly that several different times.
They consider their sovereignty to be unlimited. They bomb other countries, starve other countries, sanction other countries...
and in what sense is it doing that at all? unlike the US, the signatories arent parachuting into other sovereign countries to effect their laws. they are enforcing their laws within their own borders.
for some reason that's offended the US, who then proceeds to extra-judiciously impose their will on citizens of other sovereign nations who aren't even in the US.
so who is coloring outside the lines here?
Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but the US govt has no power outside its territory. If some US citizen commits a crime abroad, he/she can be prosecuted outside the US. This does not interfere with US sovereignty.
> Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but the US govt has no power outside its territory.
I don't know what planet you live on but this hasn't been true for the better half of the last century.
US sovereignty requires being able to perform war crimes with impunity. Surprise double-tap strikes on civilian boats in the Atlantic are an example of them.
If America stood for any of the principles it claims to, the servicemembers and their commanders who performed them would be held to account for them.
Or strikes on Iranian schools killing hundreds of kids, later blamed on AI.
Bombing a school in an air war is slightly different from hitting a boat with a missile and then after its immobilized, murdering all the survivors.
One can be blamed on fog of war, the other is straight up murder, and all involved need to be prosecuted as such.
I'll admit it's hard for me to debate which war crime is worse. I see your point, but I just can't fathom scores of dead children, even if it's negligence rather than purposeful.
I'd like to put the following article next to the one about the US imposing sanctions on the ICC:
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/09/trump-putin-russian-diesel-u...
Trump strikes deal with Putin to supply Russian diesel to U.S. and global markets
Didn't he previously announce 100% tariffs on India and China if they buy Russian petrol?
The legislation signed by Trump authorises tariffs of up to 100% on major buyers of Russian oil or natural gas, subject to specified exceptions.
I looked it up. He did. https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/us-news/donald-trump-r...
At least we will have televised executions.
Some weird perverted rebuttal to Gil-Scott Heron. "The Execution Will Be Televised".
From the Rome Statute of the ICC
> Article 70. Offences against the administration of Justice
> 1. The Court shall have jurisdiction over the following offences against its administration of justice when committed intentionally:
> (e) Retaliating against an official of the court on account of duties performed by that or another official;
Can the ICC now please just put an arrest warrant out for Trump, Rubio, and anyone else involved in these sanctions.
It would be a farce to try, of course. The American Service-Members' Protection Act gives the president power to use "all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained or imprisoned by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court."
It would, at the very least, effectively bar them from visiting any country that has ratified the Rome statute.
I don't think any Rome signatory attempting to arrest a former US head of state would go well for them. And I don't think they would try.
> effectively
of course it would not have this effect
on paper: yes
but do you think for example germany would really arrest the american president?
or even arrest trump after his term?
I think they would refuse any future state visits to avoid having to make that decision.
The ICC doesn't have jurisdiction in states that haven't signed up to the Rome Statute, and the US has not signed up. As President, Trump is protected under the Vienna Convention when he travels abroad so he can't be arrested even in other countries.
for the duration of his mandate
Because the US could literally destroy the ICC without any repercussions aside from some reflexive gasps from European globalists.
If I were POTUS and this happened, the ICC would look like a smoldering crater just to remind the elites what real power is. The thing is, there's nothing Europe can do about it. Europe's economically between a rock and hard place, with no serious military to defend themselves. They've also decided to import foreigners with no allegiance to Europe instead of grow their native populations. This means Europeans can't form a defensive military without a very high risk of those soldiers turning their guns on the government.
Well, many of us had hoped USA wasn't the epitomy of evil that you declare yourself to be.
Yes, killing 1000+ people in a peaceful, country you say your allied to, for no reason beyond being angry that your abject sin has been noticed and people are saying you're morally bad, when you revel in that lack of morality...
> Because the US could literally destroy the ICC without any repercussions aside from some reflexive gasps from European globalists.
Similar to how the US literally destroyed the dictatorship in Iran?
I don't think US bombing an EU country would not trigger a response.
Very normal thing to say.
This is without reserve the most idiotic thing I've ever read on HN.
The way the US would leave a crater where the ICC was would not be militarily.
Go ahead, indict Trump. Trump, being the provocateur that he is, would travel to the Hague, or wherever else, and he would not be arrested. The ICC would do nothing and exposes its toothlessness as a performative political tool of center left Europe.
Reminder that the US is responsible for the precision strike murder of at least 120 school children[1]. Are they still 'investigating'? No one went to prison, right?
Recently, Marco Rubio gave a speech in front of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. Seeing this, I immediately thought "what an oximoron".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_airstrike
One great thing about the Trump administration is that it exposed to the US’s mostly western allies what the rest of the World has known for a long time: that the US is just another oppressive empire that doesn’t hesitate to crush whomever they perceive to be a threat to their hegemony.
Boy are you going to be surprised when you get to the section in history class about european countries!
Which ones of the 51 European countries you believe I am ignorant of their history? Anyhow, my point had nothing to do with Europe’s history. I was just saying that except for Putin and allied fascists European now realize that at best the US is unreliable ally and a bully in decline.
Can you see any difference between america, china and Russia?
As someone born and raised in Russia now living in the US as a naturalized citizen I still see a lot of difference, but not going to lie, it's shrinking quite a bit faster than I'm comfortable with.
China and Russia aren't planning to perform public executions, like only Iran and Afghanistan currently do.
Those fools, what a wasted opportunity! Picture this: the prisoner is methodically prepared for execution, meanwhile sprinkle a few interviews with victims, friends, etc... Seconds before the moment of execution BAM! hydration pause and five minutes of ads.
Official post from State https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesman/2026/...
Can anyone with a level political head unwrap this?
Yes I know Trump is a deranged psychopath who fires from the hip. I'm looking for someone who can handle the challenge of steel manning the move. The political swamp has gotten so dense I feel like I am suffocating.
At what point does steelmanning become whitewashing? There's no particularly nuance as to why the US is doing this.
> "President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, first published by Reuters.
Can't think of a more flagrant and succinct declaration that the US believes itself "above the law."
All countries are above the law. When was the last time you saw a country in jail or meaningfully punished? The only one who can punish a country is another country if they are powerful and violent enough.
Who should be responsible for enforcing the Geneva Conventions and other international humanitarian law? Or are we finally admitting that the only "international law" we officially recognize is Might Makes Right?
Nobody is. Russia is repeatedly violating them despite being signers of the treaty, and nobody does anything.
I don't like it, but I'm not signing up to do anything about it, and I'm not going to sign my kids up for it either.
Usually that happens after the conflict. Like Yugoslavia or the Neurenberg trials.
I'm not holding my breath for Russia to be prosecuted, for starters because they're one of the countries that don't recognize it
I wouldn’t call the sanctions against Russia nothing
The sanctions were never about Geneva violations.
Because the war is already considered illegal and Russia sanctioned for that.
Not need for extra sanctions because of Geneva violations
All signatories to the Geneva Conventions are responsible for enforcing it. The USA never ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and thus has no responsibility to enforce it.
Sure, but there is a difference between not helping and actively interfering with a court punishing international crimes.
>... with a court punishing international crimes.
that's the whole thing, the US doesn't agree with that assessment.
The us does actually agree that the crimes in question are crimes. They are crimes domestically in the united states, and the US has supported punishing people for them internationally. The US is arguably the group that came up with the idea of prosecuting people for international crimes in the first place (nuremburg)
they dont like the specific court, and more generally they dont like when the rule of law applies to them and their allies instead of just enemies. But they do recognize all these things as crime
Which is fine, inside the US. But when Americans leave the US, they are no longer under US law, theyre under the law of whatever country they enter. Which means, if the country acknowledges the ICC, any American in that country falls under it. Just like a tourist in America has to follow American laws.
Not exactly. Tourists are one thing, but US military personnel stationed in foreign countries typically operate under a status of forces agreement which limits the ways in which they are subject to the host country's laws.
yes when it comes to allies, but typically war crime stuff happens during conflicts, and usually in a conflict they are there without consent by definition.
People forget, that a war crime is simply a crime that (state) combatants dont have immunity for in war. The geneva convention gives immunity for everything that is not a war crime.
See the "Hague Invasion Act"
US does agree with that assessment. US however think that international crimes are cool. Especially if they do it, but not only then.
> Or are we finally admitting that the only "international law" we officially recognize is Might Makes Right?
People like Trump and Hegseth have been saying that very explicitly in at least the past couple years
It has always been might makes right, are you under the impression it wasn’t that way at some point? I’m not endorsing the actions of the current administration, simply stating how global geopolitics works. There’s no such thing as a supranational organization that can force a nuclear power to do anything of consequence.
The only people that get prosecuted by the ICC are people that lose wars (no winner has ever been prosecuted) and are also from nations that do not have nuclear weapons / nuclear protection.
This precedent of victor's justice dates from the Nuremberg trials, where Soviet war crimes were never prosecuted or even discussed.
Netanyahu
I mean... just about every 'enforcement' of international norms has been by american hard and soft power. Might has always made right, it's just that the guy with the biggest gun happened to have western liberal values.
Seems like that changed a little in the last decade. Hopefully it's not forever, but who knows.
"Finally admitting"
Google League of Nations
We're repeating old social tropes the 50+ year old leadership lived through.
It's sad and pathetic. The youth reliance on old leadership and putting that on them is elder abuse. McConnell and Feinstein handlers should be prosecuted for such.
This is 100% on lazy, low-skilled, younger American public that doesn't need Depends expecting better from the generation glazing over live on TV and vanishing from office only to be found months later in an institution
The censored for TV era propped such olds up on screen for decades and refused to challenge their speculations and bullshit; everyone actually believes the elders are cogent and capable but they never were. Just puppets of a bygone era of televised circuses beamed to the Wonder Bread eating masses
It's one thing to say: "We will not recognize or abide by ICC verdicts".
It's another thing to say: "We will dismantle it if it goes after Americans".
It's also extremely hypocritical since Rubio himself co-sponsored a resolution backing the court's jurisdiction over Russians accused of war crimes.
So it's really more like: "If it says things we agree with, we will be on board. If it says things we disagree with, not only will we not be on board, we will erase the whole thing".
Which is why the ICC was established by several countries as part of an international agreement. It's literally other countries collaborating to punish bad actor countries.
> Which is why the ICC was established by several countries as part of an international agreement. It's literally other countries collaborating to punish bad actor countries.
What would you think of an agreement by ten guys that they'll work together to beat you up if they decide you're a "bad actor"? Is it somehow solemn and respectable merely because they came to an agreement? Even if you don't agree their self-declaration should give them power over you?
I think the way you've presented things is misleading. International relations is literally anarchy, and different groups have different points of view. Mere collaboration is only that.
> What would you think of an agreement by ten guys that they'll work together to beat you up if they decide you're a "bad actor"?
FWIW, that's not how the ICC works, any more than your national legal system is "ten guys working together to beat you up if they don't like you."
> FWIW, that's not how the ICC works, any more than your national legal system is "ten guys working together to beat you up if they don't like you."
The point was the ten guys are self-appointed and have no connection to any legitimate higher authority that you recognize. Which is a akin to the US' relation to the UCC, given it's not ratified the treaty.
My "national legal system" is a higher authority (than me), which I recognize as legitimate, and in any case have no power to resist.
> which I recognize as legitimate
I'm sure you can see the problem with your own argument.
> I'm sure you can see the problem with your own argument.
Which is?
The US doesn't recognize the ICC as legitimate, and has the power to resist.
International relations is only literally anarchy if you take the realist school of thought as representing IR.
> International relations is only literally anarchy if you take the realist school of thought as representing IR.
It's literally the state of things: "there is no hierarchically superior, coercive power that can resolve disputes, enforce law, or order the system of international politics. In international relations, anarchy is widely accepted as the starting point for international relations theory." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_(international_relatio...).
If you know of such an authority, please point it out. The UN is not it.
Anarchy doesn't mean constant conflict or power politics or anything like that.
> > International relations is only literally anarchy if you take the realist school of thought as representing IR. > > It's literally the state of things: "there is no hierarchically superior, coercive power that can resolve disputes, enforce law, or order the system of international politics. In international relations, anarchy is widely accepted as the starting point for international relations theory." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy_(international_relatio...). > > If you know of such an authority, please point it out. The UN is not it.
That is indeed true that the Cold War politicking reduced the UN to its current role from what it was originally meant for. UNGC resolutions of course were meant to be more comprehensive and more binding, with the UNSC being used to enforce the resolutions. Which is of course why the Four Policemen + France insisted upon veto power as a prerequisite of them joining the club.
RE: there not being any coercive power that can enforce laws and such, that is of course true in the sense that there is no universal power for that. However, institutions with such power do exist, at least in a smaller scale.
Let's for example take the EU and its relation to Orbán's Hungary. The European Union was explicitly removing Hungary's access to EU funds as a coercive measure to punish Hungary for its democratic backsliding and as a way to enforce its membership terms, that Hungary had agreed to when ascending to the bloc. And that's why reforms (and promises of reforms) by the still fairly recent government of Magyar Péter are a prerequisite for Hungary to get access to the funds that got frozen.
Also, NATO exists, which can also be used as an avenue for resolving disputes between its member states. See also the 1974 Cyprus coup d'état, the subsequent Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the collapse of the Greek junta afterwards. The Organization of American States was used as a vehicle for resolving the Football War between Honduras and El Salvador with political and economic pressure, etc. And for a more historical example, both the Comecon and the Warsaw Pact had major Soviet coercion, although to be fair, other member states did also have some breathing room as long as they didn't step out of line too much.
---
Also, your own Wikipedia link also says that not all IR theory takes anarchy between states as a given, mainly in that the liberal doctrine doesn't assume such, unlike for example realism, which I alluded to.
> What would you think of an agreement by ten guys that they'll work together to beat you up if they decide you're a "bad actor"?
The ICC is 125 guys agreeing with each other that if one of them does bad things the others will hold them accountable.
It's not random people asking strangers to follow their rules.
What does the US have to do with it then? How did they go after Trump and Putin, who aren’t part of those 125?
The ICC did not go after Trump (edit or any US citizen ever, afaik).
It condemned Putin for crimes committed in Ukraine, which is a member.
But Russia is not a member of ICC. So, ICC going after Putin contradicts the logic from your earlier post in this thread. It's not 125 countries agreeing to police each other, it's them going after a country outside their own group.
Well all countries have jurisdiction over what happens on their territory regardless of the citizenship of the criminals, it's not the gotcha you think it is. It's a bit like when the US went after Bin Laden, it was perfectly justified and universally agreed.
Bad actor _people_. The court tries people.
USA sovereignty is not at issue, it's who now holds it as your democracy has failed, and will a future sovereign demos choose to apply this moral law to those within it's sovereign estate.
But it's largely the court of center-left European thinking. It's a political tool without teeth, and since none of US, China, Russia are signatories, it can only prosecute people without a great power sponsor.
How’s that going ?
It'd be going great if a bunch of idiots hadn't voted in a bunch of fascists.
As I hope you're aware:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Prot...
The USA isn't a party to the Rome Statute, and above and beyond that, reactively passed domestic legislation to thwart any attempt to prosecute crimes committed by its military, including in countries that are party to the Rome Statute -- more than 20 years ago. This is not a recent phenomenon.
You know what else is more than 20 years ago? Americans committing war crimes in other countries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisone...
Remember?
The USA, as a country, doesn't want to be held to account by other countries. As it outspends all the other militaries on the planet, it continues to get away with its crimes.
What makes the US actions crimes?
Your comment seems focused in today’s portion of history,
when the ICC has never been able to do anything meaningful to any American administration.
Whenever the ICC has moved close to scrutinizing the U.S. or its close allies, Washington has retaliated with severe consequences.
This isn’t a new phenomenon limited to the Trump administration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche
A country is an abstract idea at the end of the day. How can you put Uganda in a physical jail? Or how can one country "punish" another?
If you're talking about invading and occupying the people, every person is still theoretically under the law of whatever country they are in by default.
International law isn't real. If Americans do crimes, they will be tried for them (or not) in American courts.
This is largely consistent with historical US views on international law. In 2002 the US passed the American Service-Members' Protection Act, which states that if any US service member or elected official is criminally prosecuted by the ICC, the president can use "any means necessary" (i.e. invading the Hague) to ensure their release.
In general any idea that international law is relevant except as a tool for the West to provide moral justification for its actions when it's convenient to do so is naive. At least the Trump administration being more vulgar and crude in expressing its disregard for international law compared to previous administrations may open more people's eyes.
>> "President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, first published by Reuters.
> Can't think of a more flagrant and succinct declaration that the US believes itself "above the law."
So would you think of yourself "above the law" if you refused to submit to my law?
Apparently the US never ratified the ICC treaty. International relations is literally an anarchy, there's no "higher authority" to impose law. Countries can only voluntarily submit to a treaty, or be violently coerced by another country.
The ICC would be unconstitutional in the United States.
https://usunrome.usmission.gov/why-were-dismantling-the-icc/
That link doesn't make that argument, and I wouldn't find Marco Rubio convincing at steelmanning that point even if he tried.
"Rules for thee, but not for me!"
> Can't think of a more flagrant and succinct declaration that the US believes itself "above the law."
I don't think you understand the concept of "sovereignty"
The US has always been “above the law.” This is about Israel and its genocide against the Palestinians.
We don’t have even need to imagine what would have happened if the Nazis had won
As in, they would have forgiven themselves and punished international courts who tried to prosecute them.
I have a hard time seeing the alternative history where the nazis' won which lead to the formation of Israel 3 years later and consequent Israeli colony expansion, leading to the current conflicts and ICC stuff.
but it would probably an an entertaining novel.
The Nazis actually supported the Zionists, so this would have been the likely outcome regardless of who won the war unfortunately: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haavara_Agreement
It makes sense if you think about them wanting to ethnically cleanse Jewish people out of Germany.
From your own linked article
"making an agreement with Zionists did not make Hitler a supporter of Zionism any more than the Nazi–Soviet pact made him a supporter of communism."[33]
Well, that's a quote from a British music critic so I'm not sure it's very definitive.
"Keith Kahn-Harris is a British sociologist and music critic. He is an honorary research fellow and senior lecturer at Birkbeck College,[1] an associate fellow of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research,[2] and a lecturer at Leo Baeck College."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Kahn-Harris
Yes, hardly an authoritative or impartial source.
On the other hand America justified using 2 nukes on people
No surviving Soviet Union and hence no Mao, no North Korea (and no Korean War), Viet Minh easily squashed, no Vietnam War (the American one -- but the one against the French would happen anyway). Half of Europe would not have been occupied by the Soviet Union.
And the Nazis wouldn't have lasted long, anyway.
Random bombings of boats in the Caribbean is another.
That’s a war crime confession, isn’t it?
This is not "the US", this is one or two very unpopular politicians whose tenure will be short. Wait until the midterm elections before you judge the whole country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
one or two? this has been standing us law since the bush era.
That'd be nice, but it's fantasy. This, as I gesture at the state of the world, was inevitable if Trump was voted in, and Trump was voted in.
The US has very large problems far beyond one or two politicians.
> This is not "the US", this is one or two very unpopular politicians whose tenure will be short
Trump has been in office for 6 years. Because 2/3 of America either voted him in or didn't bother showing up. I've been reading people say "he's unpopular" for a decade. But America voted him in again, this time with more power than he's ever had before.
There is no way to decouple his legacy from America anymore. You would have to have a blowout midterm with a Senate supermajority that can roll back everything he's done.
> Rubio calls tribunal a 'rogue court'
Of course, from the perspective of a committed criminal, upholding the law is "going rogue".
So much about the Trump administration is best understood, for everyone looking at it inside and outside the country, as criminals taking over the justice system.
What's probably as criminal, are the other two branches not stamping this out. Most of what everyone is despairing or angry about the administration is forbidden by the US constitution. The problem is that the people most able to uphold the constitution, by expunging the criminals in the executive branch (or preventing them from being there in the first place), are not enforcing it.
It's a rogue court in that it's not derived from the will of the people. In democracy, the people are sovereign and have a say in what their laws are. American[1] citizens don't have a say in what international laws are, they can't invalidate them, so why should they be subject to them?
This is akin to the Nuremberg trials, where Germans were tried by foreigners, without the consent of German citizens... The major difference is, the Germans lost the war so Americans got to impose their will on the vanquished. America did not lose a war to India, so why should Americans be judged by this Indian?
[1]: I'm not American, but like the US, I also wish my country was only subject to the laws of my people.
Why do you call Rubio a committed criminal? To my knowledge, he isn't.
One can only hope that the next administration will not only embrace the ICC, but willingly hand over Trump and his advisors to it and let them do what they will. Exceptional handling for an exceptional administration.
How does the argument go? If they haven't done anything wrong, they have nothing to worry about. Heh.
Well the GOP has gotta try and protect their guy. And Trumps a pedophile so this makes sense.
Country that supports war criminals and helps genocidares and land thiefs by giving them free bombs and planes, sanctioned organization that punishes such acts. Not a big surprise.
Also directly targeting foreigners who provide evidence to the court is also pretty clear evidence of american intention here. Hide their crimes. Several such human rights organizations were targeted independently of this for cooperation with ICC, like Al-Haq, Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, and PCHR.
Every nation must ban companies operating in their country from conforming to unrecognized foreign sanctions. This has been long, long overdue, and the time is absolutely now.
If Visa, Mastercard, Microsoft, or any other company wants to operate in other countries, punitively obeying insane US sanctions is untenable.
And for the "yeah, but then the US will retaliate" chimps: You have literally nothing left. Your lame duck halfwit and his administration of grifters, fraudsters and charlatans blew their load.
Well, high time to break up toe Visa/Mastercard duopoly anyway, for many reasons. Any useless insanity like this just gives more argument to the interested parties wanting to see the breakup finally happen.
This is only possible if the world moves off the US Dollar.
Europe is getting dog-walked by Trump because they refuse to impose heavy sanctions on America. I'm an American. Take us down, cowards.
That would not be the smart thing to do. Sanctions would hurt EU economy more.
There are a lot better responses: reduce copyright length, to let's say... 50 years? Make everything after 1976 public domain. EU economy could even get a boost from that.
Or, if EU wanted to keep this limited to justice, denounce extradition treaties for all but most serious crimes (expecially not allowing any future Assange to be extradited), repeal laws that forbid bypassing DRM protections and reverse engineering.
We have a proxy war with Russia and need US oil/gas. There is zero strength or political will to oppose US now, EU strategy seems to be just wait it out.
When your opponent is making a mistake - don't interrupt them!
Why is it up to other countries to solve your domestic issues?
He knows they're coming for him.
They're really not though
There's still time, and they know it.
There is zero mechanism by which the ICC can indict Trump. Its jurisdiction is only over signature countries and their territories; the US is not a signatory country.
There are 100's of millions that hope so, not only him but the rest of the fools who are in his orbit.This has been the most disgusting and corrupt Administration since the founding of America.
Junk away snowflakes....
I am so disgusted by this current regime.
Although I need to preface this by saying that the Trump administration is one of the stupidest and pettiest in history, the Nobel peace price lost all credibility after it was awarded to Barack Obama for no reason. It seems to be a mechanism for trumpeting the political views of those on the committee.
What does that have to do with trump attempting to harm people?
Trump is upset about not getting the peace price Obama got, and the latest winner of the peace price was an ICC judge.
He was already upset about the ICC existing after the ICC tried to hold Israel accountable for its war crimes, but the timing makes it obvious that is just the president of the United States of America is being petty here.
the last peace price was also not very credible after the recipient... promptly tried to gift it to trump iirc.
It was the Bush nomination which tainted the whole thing for me. That was ridiculous.
Bush nomination? You know there are hundreds of people that can nominate whoever they want? A nomination means nothing, they aren't coming from the Nobel committee.
I agree with that and what I think about Trump might get me arrested if I expressed it openly.
The USA is a technofascist state dismantling itself and every democratic institution that stands against the coming technocracy.
> "President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans"
... but his government does support the ICC prosecuting Russians, on behalf of Ukraine, even though none of the two states is a party to the Rome statute / member of the court.
Ukraine actually did finally ratify the Rome Statute; we're down to 29 signatories who haven't ratified it.
Signed but not ratified:
Algeria, Angola, Bahamas, Bahrain, Cameroon, Egypt, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Iran, Israel, Jamaica, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Monaco, Morocco, Mozambique, Oman, Russia, São Tomé and Príncipe, Solomon Islands, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United States, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Zimbabwe.
Not signed: China, North Korea, India.
Burundi and The Philippines withdrew from the treaty.
Hasn't Israel repealed its signature at some point?
Full list of the 29 signatories who have not ratified it: https://www.pgaction.org/ilhr/rome-statute/signed-but-not-ra...
Another reason to fund the efforts to decouple from US companies, including payment processors. More investment in open source software and open weight models should be the priority of all governments and initiatives.
This is probably the most short-sighted aspect of America's oligarchs decision to support the modern GOP. They just keep increasing the incentive for other countries to reduce business with America.
It's not one or two things, either. It's an endless parade of decisions, nearly all of which reward de-coupling from America.
The company I work for just removed its last dependency on any US tech service providers last month (except for Anthropic). No more Microsoft, Adobe, Cloudflare, Amazon. They still pay for Claude, but they're in talks with local inference providers.
Just a few years ago, this wouldn't even have been remotely on people's radar as something they should or could do.
It might be the goal. Based on "The Nerd Reich" which is based on public statements of Thiel and company, the goal is a set of small feudal states each ruled by one company. With no rights for people inside.
there are a few weird nerds who want that; but _most_ of America's ultra-rich aren't part of the network state bitcoin whatever nonsense, and would be better served by helping America thrive.
The problem is that these are Thiel and his associates. They evwn have Vance in white house.
Otherwise said, ultra rich are either exactly those or silent careful never oppose them.
Oligarchs supporting the GOP is getting exactly what they want: personal gain. The fact that a much larger group is going to be worse off in every way doesn't matter.
The oligarchs would be happier being in strict control over a US that barely functioned than they are being insanely wealthy in a wealthy country with a functioning government. That's all.
Rich people just really fucking hate the fact that the general public get to tell them "No" sometimes. They feel they are above us.
A US with no external friends is perfectly fine for them.
Industrialists were pretty happy and supportive of the Third Reich for similar reasons. Better to be on top of a mud pile than near the top of a golden pyramid.
This isn't novel, it's literally how Russia has been for decades now. The oligarchs there don't care that it's a shithole, because they get to pilfer most of what little wealth that shithole gets, so they are enormously wealthy and only ever answer to putin, who mostly lets them do whatever.
The same effect happens in little island nations with petty dictators or african warlords. People who pursue power aren't pursuing actual tangible things. They just want "power" for it's own sake. They get off on it.
that would happen regardless of if americas oligarchs support the GoP. its the american people that voted in trump and got him majorities in both the house and senate
In no small part because oligarchs have spent the last 40 years shaping public perception, allowing increased concentration of media, etc.
Sanctions ffs ... what a pathetic administration ...
I thought it was FIFA the one in charge of the Peace prize now. I'm confused.
FIFA is currently looking to find find 11,780 peace points...
what should not confuse you is that FIFA is in charge of corruption, for decades now.
FIFA did, in fact, award the official FIFA Peace Prize – Football Unites the World™ to Trump.
The fact that this rogue organization thinks it can undermine the official FIFA Peace Prize – Football Unites the World™ by being associated with someone who received this fake prize is probably why they are now being justly sanctioned.
That was a bribe, a chunk of gold wrapped on a poor excuse to gave it legally.
The funny part is that Apple did exactly the same. Everybody did exactly the same in a "pay per access" endless chain of CEOS. but for some reason nobody has mocked them for that. Only South Park, that never miss one.
Is true that the FIFA excuse was particularly imbecile.
How the US president became president is still the question that baffles me the most.
Twice. You did it twice.
The Israeli lobby poured a lot of money into his campaign after 10-7 and the entire reason the current administration even has beef with the ICC is because they issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu.
I don't doubt that Israeli lobby poured a lot of money for him, but just that isn't enough for more than half of the people of a country to vote for a pathetic moron.
He has always been openly racist, sexist, misogynist, idot for as long as I remember.
A lot of labels are used in your observation. The problem is you only assigned them to one person and not the other subjects.
Turnout was 63.7% of eligible voters (lower than 2020, and even 100% would exclude certain felons, underage folks, mentally incapable folks, minors). And from that subgroup of a subgroup "only" 49.9% of voters selected Trump.
Still a crazy number, but not "half of the people of a country".
By your numbers, 31.8% of eligible voters actively voted in favor of fascism, and 36.3% of eligible voters chose to let it happen. That's 68.1% of voters that allowed your country to be turned into a shithole.
I don’t see how they could possibly do that AND have money leftover to fund space laser research. The math just doesn’t add up.
> The Israeli lobby poured a lot of money into his campaign after 10-7
Israeli lobby has enough money to elect Trump but not to change perception of Israel?
Can it be that Trump won because the public was fed up by the previous administration?
Nothing incongruent there. The campaign funds can of course be used on wedge issues that don't actually relate to Israel. Changing public perception towards scenes of destroyed homes and dead children is much more difficult.
> Nothing incongruent there.
Doesn’t look this way to me. If Israeli lobby is so powerful to make sure that Trump is elected, then why stop there?
It seems to me that it’s always easier to blame someone for failures than to do an actual post mortem.
It's not some magic wand to "make sure Trump is elected". It's give him a slight bump up and Harris a slight push down (mostly by demotivating left-leaning voters so they stay home). Affecting thin margins in an election is different from changing everybody's mind about something.
I think the actual postmortem analysis is that cosigning a genocide against an ethnic group whose members and sympathizers are a must-win bloc in a must-win state (Michigan) was a tactical error. Kamala could have distanced herself from Biden's "bear hug" relationship with Israel. Other Dems won statewide races in Michigan who didn't carry the genocide baggage.
The must-win bloc voted against Kamala knowing that it will help to elect even worse candidate w.r.t. relationship with Israel?
Turnout was lower in 2024 vs. 2020
How is this surprising? Let's just call a spade a space: Arab muslims are anything but leftist, especially on social issues. So making them vote against Kamala Harris was probably a lot easier than a lot of people think.
In the Netherlands a party called "DENK" (think, in Dutch) was created, by 2 Turkish muslims, and immediately half the leftist voters (PvdA, party of labour) switched sides. They are more rightist, but especially they are extremely socially conservative. They want extreme punishments for crime and harsh application of the law, except on immigration. Along with the obvious issues (like essentially abolishing animal rights and standards of treatment, allowing islamic schooling, including extremist islamic schooling, pro-minority, except for that one minority with "confusion" between Judaism and Israel, ...)
Anyone who thinks about it for 10 seconds will realize that a long-term alliance between progressives and muslims is impossible. They are forced into that as long as they are very weak, but there's a point where that stops.
It'll be very funny when what has happened in Eastern Europe before happens first in Western Europe, and then in the US. Extreme "friction" will develop between leftist parties and any concentration of muslim voters. This has already happened in a few locations but you've seen nothing yet.
I do not think that Arabs in Michigan voted against her because of Israel. I think people make their votes based on the variety of factors, and not a single one.
They voted against her because she was progressive on social issues, in a country and a party that already makes these voters extremely uncomfortable with what is allowed in the US. Probably including that she was, well, a female presidential candidate.
Plus, if I can be less than subtle, muslim Arabs are antisemitic and strongly anti-Israel. They are not pro-Palestinian. The big difference being that do not want Palestinians to have a good life, you will have big problems bringing the conversation to that. They want to eliminate Israel by pushing the Palestinians into misery and using them as a weapon against Israel. Sorry, but that's the reality of Arabs' political position on Israel/Palestine. They are not looking for compromise here. They are not looking for peace.
This viewpoint does not match in the slightest with Kamala Harris or any part of the democrat party as a whole, in fact it's almost the direct opposite. It has the most overlap with extreme leftists ("tankies") and republicans (because of their viewpoint social issues, LGBT, repression of viewpoints, ...), and while everyone is 100% accurate to say republicans absolutely don't share this opinion, they just want to use them for votes, it's still by far the biggest overlap.
No one voted for Trump, they simply did not vote for Harris because she supports Zionism. This is very clear and easy to understand. I'm a progressive atheist and proud to support my Muslim brothers and sisters. Zionism is modern day Nazism (well, it actually pre-dates Nazism).
> No one voted for Trump
Plenty of muslims from Michigan voted for Trump, some even made it to the news regretting their votes. You can easily find a variety of news articles from different outlets about this.
Some definitely voted against her, others didn't vote as a consequence. You have to realize that Biden's administration was enthusiastically backing the people who were killing their families overseas, and Kamala not distancing herself from that position made her unsupportable. Of course it's naive to think Trump would be better, but when the Dems were supporting the gleeful killing of their family members can you perhaps understand the skepticism toward Kamala?
No, I’m not buying this argument at all. I think most voters are not single issue voters as you make them to be. Democratic Party on average advocates for pretty progressive values compared to those held by a typical middle eastern person, e.g., gay marriage, abortion, etc. For me it’s easier to believe that they weighted the issue of supporting Israel vs progressive social causes and decided based on that not to support democratic nominee.
That's ridiculous. The uncommitted movement and pro-Palestinians in general were very clear that they were not voting for Harris because she refused to back away from Biden's genocidal and pro-Israel policies. I didn't vote for her (or anyone) either. I was excited when Biden dropped out and she became the candidate because I thought she might make a change, but she explicitly stated that she would not, losing my vote. I'm not Arab or Muslim, I just don't want to support Israel and genocide. This is common among younger people (thankfully).
Also, Trump is obviously awful and extremely pro-Israel, but so was Biden. In fact, more Palestinians were killed under Biden. I do think the Democrats are starting to shift though, they simply cannot support Israel any more and hope to win elections.
Ask me in 2023 "will Palestinians be better off under Trump or Harris" and the answer was a no-brainer. We Americans would have been better off too. And a bunch of now dead Iranian citizens. Sheesh, crazy logic by some American voters.
I'm not sure voting for the admin literally slaughtering your family is a "no-brainer". I won't vote for anyone who supports Israel. Period. Let's put it this way, would you vote in a Nazi election?
Yes I'd vote for "continues supporting rogue client states" versus Nazis.
>That's ridiculous. The uncommitted movement and pro-Palestinians in general were very clear that they were not voting for Harris because she refused to back away from Biden's genocidal and pro-Israel policies.
What is ridiculous is to think that "pro-Palestinians" are a monolithic body that voted and thought exactly like you. First of all, even among the "pro-Palestinians" the opinions on what does it mean to be "pro-Palestinians" range from one extreme to the other, and second, it is ridiculous, in my opinion, to assume that Arabs and muslims did not vote for Trump at all despite his pro-Israeli stance.
Most of the times the opposition doesn't get enough credit. It feels as if the winner did everything.
In this particular case the credit goes go the opposite side. They screwed up so much as to make this possible.
I have heard the analysis by political pundits and I agree with it in context, but it’s still incredibly insane.
We basically cannot trust America anymore since its people have, as a whole, have lost the ability to reason and think critically. And the people in power want it that way. They prefer do disenfranchise most of their population so they can win elections using their core base who will believe anything.
>In this particular case the credit goes go the opposite side. They screwed up so much as to make this possible.
I'm sorry, but this is complete horse manure, albeit it's become a favorite fantasy/apologist/woe-is-me take on the right as the Trump disaster continues to unfold. But the opposition had NOTHING to do with Trump being chosen for POTUS. The Right had a perfectly decent choice: Nikki Haley. She had plenty right policies and no doubt would have made much of the left very upset, but she is also intelligent, sane, and cares to the normal degree about the country and basics of the constitution. She'd have been fine. She'd also have trivially creamed Democrats, and be holding Congress vastly better fwiw.
But out of the entirety of the US, only a single state (Vermont) voted against Trump. Every single last bit of the rest of the country chose Trump. There were no Democrats on the list for the Republican primary. Republicans could have sent Trump packing no problem, and then taken the WH and a bigger chunk of the House/Senate to boot. Trump being in the general and then WH was and forever will be 100% on the GOP.
> But the opposition had NOTHING to do with Trump being chosen for POTUS. The Right had a perfectly decent choice […]
So did the Democrats. They clung to the worst possible choice, and in the last minute replaced him with the second-worst possible choice. Absolving them of fault and putting 100% of the blame on Trump voters is the fantasy of the Left.
Careful, hackernews has loads of redditors these days, and they hate any of their fantasy narratives being challenged by common reason.
Crazy take. Kamala and Hilary were fine candidates. Trump won by convincing the electorate "she's for them". Just straight up fake news
Kamala was pretty bad. I think she had the left most voting record in the senate when they needed a centralist?
Bullshit. She was centrist. It did not mattered, because lies from the right.
Most likely, they needed someone actually radical, actually more on the left to actually put up the fight.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/kamala-harris-farther-...
They need someone like Bill Clinton or Obama who get the position on merit rather than Hillary or Kamala getting there by being the wife or assistant.
Who was their opponent? Oh. A dude who inherited everything he has?
There’s a term for the thing you’re doing here: misogyny.
I don't think the sex is relevant.
> How the US president became president is still the question that baffles me the most.
> Twice. You did it twice.
If you want the answer, look at the Democrats. That's why he got elected twice: they were that bad at politics.
No. It is fault of conservatives, republicans and their supporters. Primary and absolitely. And same everywhere. AfD rise is on the AfD and those voters. The person doing the bad things is the culpable one.
Blaming everyone except those who worked hard to achieve this is absurd.
Always someone else's fault.
The people most responsible for getting their candidate elected is the campaign team. If the plan is just for your opponents to do a bad job, you don't deserve to win.
The people respomsible for actions of republicans are republicans. There is no natural law tgat says "republicans must be immoral psychopaths". They became one through own choices.
And the only way to win over them is to stop centrist two sides nonsense and blame them, later prosecute them.
If half the voting population elects a vicious moron completely unsuitable for power, that's not the fault of the opposition. *They actively chose to vote for the fascist.*
Party of personal responsibility and all that.
> If half the voting population elects a vicious moron completely unsuitable for power, that's not the fault of the opposition.
Don't let the opposition off the hook: as you said they lost to "a vicious moron completely unsuitable for power." How does someone fuck up an election like that so badly? It should have been a slam dunk.
It's the fault of the opposition for not doing a better job (at all manner of political competencies). One thing I've noticed over the last ten or so years, is that Democrats/Liberals/Progressives are very averse to admitting to and learning from their own mistakes. They'd much rather focus on blaming someone else for their own incompetence.
This is still unbelievable to me, up to this day. If the opposition choses to run for office with a moron, couldn't you at least find a candidate that is not demented.. You can't make this up..
You sure are letting the U.S. voter off the hook here…
> You sure are letting the U.S. voter off the hook here…
Because blaming the voters for not supporting you is foolish and stupid.
Not only do they have far less room to maneuver to express themselves (essentially through a single, unclear multiple-choice question), but blaming them prevents actual political actors from doing needed self-reflection and adjustments needed to win.
It's like if you had a failing business selling poop-in-a-bag, and focused on blaming your potential customers being too dumb to see how superior and high-quality your poop is. You think it's awesome, so they must be idiots! Stop wasting your time doing that, and re-evaluate the products you're selling. Maybe no one wants to buy poop?
Your comparison rests on the idea that politics is an elastic marketplace where people are not bringing in priors when deciding on who to vote for. It completely ignores that at least part of that market is propagandized to the point where no matter how you sell you will not make the sale. Voters overwhelmingly support policies that Democrats support when polled. You can blame Democrats for not finding an effective way to sell those policies. I think your comparison is far too simplistic to be useful.
When the history of this time is written I believe it will be exceedingly obvious that the MAGA and the Republican Party were an incurable cancer and there was nothing that the Democratic Party could have done within the context of the existing political structure to stop it from spreading. They might have had one opportunity to avoid it by focusing more on supporting individuals and less on supporting financial institutions in 2008, but the political context of that time was entirely different. At some point it is worthless to blame one political party for another driving the country off a cliff. Yes, they should have done things differently in hindsight, but there is little value in holding them accountable for information they did not have at the time.
> Your comparison rests on the idea that politics is an elastic marketplace where people are not bringing in priors when deciding on who to vote for.
Not really.
> It completely ignores that at least part of that market is propagandized to the point where no matter how you sell you will not make the sale. Voters overwhelmingly support policies that Democrats support when polled.
If that's actually the case, it just means the Democrats need to work harder, for longer. But this "nothing we can do, country too propagandized, STAY THE COURSE, DON'T CHANGE," idea is just weird. It really sounds like excuses to avoid the psychological discomfort of being wrong or needing to make compromises with people you disagree with to win.
Also, polls are a data-point, but I'd never use them to jump to the conclusion they're an accurate representation of what people really want. For one, they're too easily to get wrong or even manipulate.
> I think your comparison is far too simplistic to be useful.
Sure, my poop-selling business example is pretty simplistic and exaggerated to make a point. But I think it's still useful in illustrating the foolishness and stupidity of blaming the people you need to reach.
> When the history of this time is written I believe it will be exceedingly obvious that the MAGA and the Republican Party were an incurable cancer and there was nothing that the Democratic Party could have done within the context of the existing political structure to stop it from spreading.
I am sure some history will be written that says that. It will be a lie, but of psychological comfort for some.
If there's any truth to "there was nothing that the Democratic Party could have done within the context of the existing political structure to stop it from spreading," it's about the internal dysfunctions of the Democratic party officials and partisans. This idea that "MAGA/Trump is so powerful, nothing could be done about it" is a stupid lie.
> They might have had one opportunity to avoid it by focusing more on supporting individuals and less on supporting financial institutions in 2008, but the political context of that time was entirely different. At some point it is worthless to blame one political party for another driving the country off a cliff.
I'm not blaming the Democrats for that. I'm blaming them for being incompetent (a state which continues). There's a big difference.
> Yes, they should have done things differently in hindsight, but there is little value in holding them accountable for information they did not have at the time.
What specific information did they not have at the time? Because I don't think the problem is a lack of information; it's their attitudes, priorities, and ultimately competence.
But I'm not blaming the voter for not supporting me. I'm blaming the voter for supporting the person that they supported.
Sure, I might be selling poop in a bag, and maybe nobody wants that. I can't blame people for not buying things they don't want. But the guy next to me is selling the Handmaid's Tale But In Real Life, and people are queuing up round the block to buy it. Those people looked at all the options -including abstaining and not buying anything at all - and still made a decision. They have to take ownership of that decision.
From the perspective of the Democrats, sure, self-reflection is necessary to figure out what went wrong. They should go and do that. But from the perspective of someone voting for Trump, no, you don't get to use that excuse. You looked at an admittedly very limited field of options and voted for the guy who was backed by a group who had literally written a manifesto on overturning the US constitution, the guy who boasted about his ability to sexually assault women, the guy who had already had a full term and caused tremendous damage with it, the guy who had spent four years complaining about rigged elections and threatening to do something about it, the guy who supported an attempted insurrection and promised to pardon the people who were involved, etc etc etc.
Stop blaming other people here - if you voted for Trump, it was perfectly clear what you were getting, and you still made that decision. That's on you.
> But I'm not blaming the voter for not supporting me. I'm blaming the voter for supporting the person that they supported.
You're getting hung up. What the fuck good does any of that do? Tell me.
> Sure, I might be selling poop in a bag, and maybe nobody wants that. I can't blame people for not buying things they don't want. But the guy next to me is selling the Handmaid's Tale But In Real Life, and people are queuing up round the block to buy it. Those people looked at all the options -including abstaining and not buying anything at all - and still made a decision.
The point I was making with the poop-selling example is: you need to get outside your own head and your own biases. I don't think you're doing that. You're doubling down, making excuses for your side.
> They have to take ownership of that decision.
Sure, that would make you feel good, but it ain't going to happen. Quit tripping over it and move on.
If I were a Democrat or a part of the DNC, then sure, introspection would be very important. But I'm not — I'm not even American, I'm watching from the sidelines trying to figure out what on earth has gone wrong and how I prevent it happening again in my own country.
The answer to Trump cannot be "the Democrats needed to try harder", because if democracy relies on one side never slipping up while the other side can do whatever they like, then of course that system is going to collapse eventually. We have to look at the deeper causes. And one of the most fundamental causes here is that a lot of people in the US looked at a man who openly promised a multi-pronged attack on the constitutional basis of the United States and said "yes, that's the man for me". If your analysis of the 2024 election doesn't include that point, then it's a flawed analysis.
You're kinda correct but making the mistake that the democratic party is a uni-party and not a vibrant political group made up of hundreds of different vying interests.
There is only one group to blame and it's the same group that has controlled the party since the 90s: neoliberals. Neoliberals do not have a vision of the future worth fighting for, more corporate control, so it's not hard to see when other opposing forces can simply offer something different.
It's the same problem we saw in the 1920s that lead to growing fascism: pushing for austerity, more corporate control over society, and deregulation are all things that help fascists and authoritarians thrive.
I agree neoliberals are a very big part of the problem (and giving them the finger was one of Trump's trump cards, pardon the pun), but I don't think it stops there.
Another aspect, which applies to neoliberals and many other groups in the Democratic coalition, is the seeming abandonment the idea of representing voters (in a district) in favor of persuading/lecturing them. That really appeals to the true-believer partisans (who are getting represented), but alienates everyone else.
I'm pretty sure the Democrats would have at least 5 more Senate seats if they consistently ran candidates that focused on representing the state they're running in as a whole (and continued to do that after the election was over).
Factually, Harris as a candidate was orders of magnitude better than Trump: a boring, competent, left-leaning centrist. In a functioning society, a reactionary revolutionary like Trump -- complete with Project 2025 manifesto -- should have scraped off maybe 5-to-10% of the vote, almost regardless of his competition.
The problem wasn't really Harris, who got very close to half the vote. The problem is that half the voting population does not think that electing a fascist demagogue is that big of a deal, or compares favorably to electing a boring centrist. This suggests that our civic culture is fundamentally broken at the moment. You can't run a society like this!
> Factually, Harris as a candidate was orders of magnitude better than Trump: a boring, competent, left-leaning centrist.
OK, so now we know how you voted. What fraction of the electorate are you?
> The problem wasn't really Harris, who got very close to half the vote.
Which in this case is called "losing." Trump even won the popular vote that time.
> The problem is that half the voting population does not think that electing a fascist demagogue is that big of a deal, or compares favorably to electing a boring centrist.
IMHO, one of the Democrats' many fuck-ups was they overdid the "fascist demagogue" line of attack, basically neutering it.
It's pretty clear roughly what your political views are, but let me hazard a guess that you're far away from being a swing voter. IMHO, another one of the Democrats' fuck-ups was being unwilling to make their most loyal voters uncomfortable, and instead demanding that persuadable voters tolerate discomfort, which is a tough sell.
> This suggests that our civic culture is fundamentally broken at the moment. You can't run a society like this!
How very convenient! Doesn't that mean you don't have to adapt in any way that's uncomfortable to you?
The most common vote in any presidential is an (implicit) abstention.
It's very important to try to persuade centrists that you're a better candidate than the opposition, but it's also very important to persuade your voters that you're worth going to the polls for. The latter requires making your loyal voters comfortable at the expense of the swing voters.
This entire comment is a giant strawman that fails to address the point I was making.
Half the voting population elected a fascist demagogue. Fundamentally, swing state voters are not the issue: that's just a weird artifact of our electoral system. The issue is that something like 40-45% of the population will literally vote for *anyone* in the Republican party, even if they're "America's Hitler". Project 2025 made it blatantly obvious what they were voting for.
Even if the Democratic party better adapts to swing voters' needs -- even if they win! -- that 40-45% remains a ticking time bomb. A democracy can't survive when close to half the voting population values party victory over democracy.
"To drive the point home she [Pelosi] picked up a water glass next to her and said: “This glass of water would win with a ‘D’ next to its name in those districts.”"
Let's not pretend that only one 40-45% part of the population votes on a party line.
There is no evidence that Democratic voters would vote en masse for somebody running on a platform of *undermining democracy*. (In fact, there's evidence that they would reject such a candidate, given how quickly candidates with any sort of problematic past -- like Platner and Franken -- are discarded.)
In contrast, MAGA Republicanism is fundamentally centered on accruing power and codifying hierarchy at the expense of everything else.
> This entire comment is a giant strawman that fails to address the point I was making.
Frankly, the point that you were making was dumb. Complaining about the voters will get you nowhere.
> Half the voting population elected a fascist demagogue.
You're high on your own rhetoric. That's not smart.
> The issue is that something like 40-45% of the population will literally vote for anyone in the Republican party, even if they're "America's Hitler". Project 2025 made it blatantly obvious what they were voting for.
So why is that? Try not to reach for some explanation that makes you feel good about yourself or your guys, because that's self-deception.
What do you have to do to change situation? If your answer is something that's comfortable and easy for you to swallow, it probably won't work. You're prioritizing your own comfort over an effective action.
There have been people that claimed they would have voted for the worst rulers registered in history before the dems; and at the same time John Bolton recurretly used the phrase "a cardboard cutout would be better than".
The question on whether they perceived (actually, whether they can perceive) what others like e.g. Bolton see is valid - nonetheless, you have to face that they explicitly, vocally refused to vote for the dems, "whatever it takes".
And the system in the USA is very broken - among the issues, there are only two options in the choice, with all the paradoxes it brings.
The alternative was a woman who spent over a year committing genocide, while also covering up the fact that the President had severe dementia
"…a woman who spent over a year committing genocide"
Wild, if true.
That's like blaming a rape victim for being bad at fighting off her rapist.
If you want the answer, look at Republicans. They nominated him twice, and the second time around the Republican base ignored all of the moral issues they knew about and voted for him anyway because they wanted the chaos and anger.
Look at the polling right now: even after Trump's policies have destroyed millions of Republican lives, those voters are still convinced that Trump has their best interests at heart and its really those dastardly Democrats' fault somehow even though the GOP controls all 3 branches of government.
> That's like blaming a rape victim for being bad at fighting off her rapist.
WTF? The Democrats lost some important elections to a fool, that's nothing like getting raped.
> If you want the answer, look at Republicans. They nominated him twice, and the second time around the Republican base ignored all of the moral issues they knew about and voted for him anyway because they wanted the chaos and anger.
I'm not saying there are no problems with Republicans, but that the bigger, more important, and more tractable issue is that the Democrats could lose to someone like that, twice.
Complain about how bad Trump is all you want, but if you lose to him, it's pretty clear you are in some important sense worse than him. Focus on fixing that, because bitching about the other side is going to do no good.
There you go again trying to shift the blame from Republicans to Democrats.
Trump won with 49.8% of the vote, which is the lowest % since Bush in 2000. Democrats voted against him. Independents voted against him. But MAGA voters loved his race-baiting and voted for him in overwhelming numbers, and even anti-Trump Republican voters decided that they could live with the racism and corruption and destruction of civil liberties if they could end abortion at the federal level and make all dozen trans athletes in the country disappear.
The problem is, and always was, the Republican voters. Blame them.
> There you go again trying to shift the blame from Republicans to Democrats.
The only thing blaming Republicans does is make Democrats feel better about their own incompetence and failure. Do you think the Republicans are going to take any blame you give them? It's psychological comfort for partisans who find adaptation too uncomfortable, nothing else.
Sadly it's not possible to replace the American electorate with one to your liking. It is possible for the democrats to choose a more appealing candidate though.
And after he tried to overturn an election he lost.
the purpose of a system is what is does.
> I don’t wonder anymore [how Trump won twice]. I think he won for that exact reason. Because he carried at least one broken shard to reflect the broken shards in millions of others.
> If you’re a racist, you found your guy. If you’re a misogynist, you found your guy. If money is your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart is armored shut, you found your guy. If you mock the disabled, you found your guy. If intelligence makes you insecure, you found your guy. If you’re a sexual predator, you found your guy. If you trade in humiliation and conspiracy and filth, you found your guy.
[…]
> If he’d only carried one or two of these pathologies, he might have been dismissed as just another loud, damaged man. But he carried a buffet of them. That was the appeal. Millions could locate themselves somewhere in the wreckage. They didn’t have to agree with all of it. They just had to recognize a piece of themselves in it.
[…]
> Trump is a symptom. The deeper illness is collective. If there’s one sentence that defines his power, it’s this: “He says the things I’m thinking.”
* https://minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/p/the-thing...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jochum (?)
(AFAICT, originally posted on Facebook, but I don’t have an account so can’t really search it.)
For anyone who hasn't seen Mitchell and Webb's "Are We the Baddies?"
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h242eDB84zY&pp=ygUSYXJlIHdlIHR...
I opened the news and almost threw my phone after reading just the first two headlines - ICC sanctions and televised executions.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-livestream-army-execution-f...
Here's the second news thing mentioned for people that also did go "what??" but do not want to spend 5 extra seconds to Google like me.
Next thing is probably setting up a guillotine in front of the White Hose or the planned Arc de Trump.
Nah that is not Cyberpunk Tech enough, and also far too close to visuals and ideas of the working class rebelling against the people in power.
I could imagine something _like_ that happen, but it would be a different kind of spectacle, where it is ensured that it projects ideas that _stabilize_ the current structure.
__
Hmm.. although, if they have a good propaganda guy, they might actually do the Guillotine and annex that symbol as an ultimate power move.
I can see that working out and doing double duty.
Might I suggest Monday Night Rehabilitation from Idiocracy? The Idiocracy playbook has worked pretty well so far.
Oh I have a good idea.
Have some robot surgeon give people neuralink implants that humiliate them in some way. Maybe give the twitch chat some interactivity.
Punch yourself in the face, convict. Do a backflip and fail doing so. Make the guy say things he despises.
There's so much fuel in the cyberpunk dystopia tank.
> I could imagine something _like_ that happen, but it would be a different kind of spectacle, where it is ensured that it projects ideas that _stabilize_ the current structure.
Perhaps the government could hold a lottery for a spot on the firing squad. I’m sure there are plenty of loyal patriots that would be willing to pay* the $500 entry fee. The patriotic non-fake news media could do a human* interest story on the lucky winner, with before and after interviews and maybe a photo-op with SecWar.
* payments to be made in Trump coin.
* for some definition of “human”
/s
Delivery driver showed up early though....
https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/uscp-arrest...
The guillotine is too French, too modern and too humane.
America is run by extremist Christians so eventually it will be death by drowning, stoning or whatever else the Bible recommends.
Caring for the poor? Getting money out of the temple? Treating immigrants with respect?
Despite what these "christians" do their book has a few good ideas. Wonder if they've read it.
Nah they just sell signed versions of it for profit.
nailed to a cross
sadly it no longer feels absurd
I mean, they had already set up a gallows in front of the Capitol in 2021, so sounds about right.
Seems like behavior you'd expect from someone who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize though, right?
"Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America."
Only the FIFA Peace Prize.
The Peace Prize that can be purchased with blood money.
They are trying to desensitise the public before moving on to more extreme things.
Only three countries carry out public executions: Iran, Afghanistan, and North Korea. I guess there will be four now, with the U.S. joining this "prestigious" group.
It takes some doing to behave even more despicably than Saudi Arabia (which stopped public executions in 2022).
Do something about it. Don't just let it happen. Don't say it's too hard or nothing is going to change. Don't let them win by default. Your government is supposed to be by the people, for the people. Remind them of that.
In Serbia, people protested for two years straight, giant protests, marches all over the country, until the government resigned and new elections were called.
Check out a video here: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1jc29fk/breathtakin...
Be more like Serbia. Change doesn't just happen every four years at the ballot box. Politics is always and everywhere.
You underestimate how powerless the American citizen feels.
Yeah and it's by design.
That is exactly how Putinism works, too. Not necessarily by enthusiastic consent, but by feelings of powerlessness, apathy and checking out.
Do something. Go protest. Block some roads. Occupy some buildings. Don't just let things happen. You're an actor in history, not a spectator to it.
> In Serbia, people protested for two years straight, giant protests, marches all over the country, until the government resigned and new elections were called.
We already reelect the entire Congress every two years, we don't have to do this.
Moreover, we also have set record protests in recent years larger than the ones you cite. Hands Off protest was a million+. No Kings I, II, and III (we protest so much we've started just numbering them) was like 20 million people across those protests.
Furthermore, we did do something about it and we got rid of all these people once already. The problem is about half the country wants this to happen, so they were invited back to do more.
Also genuine question, did the Serbian government execute anyone in the street and label them a terrorist, as the American government did last winter to multiple Americans who were protesting?
This isn't as bad as I expected it to be, but there's two more years to go so we'll see.
surprised by this.. the amount of steam rollering, wrecking balling, and pocket-lining is sad and shocking to me.
It should be sad but not shocking. They deliberately campaigned on causing maximum destruction, grief and chaos, and frequently used the phrase "we're going to make so much money." It was totally transparent and out in the open what the plan was, and people voted for that plan.
1. ICC are commies
2. the shooter deserves it
This makes me think of all the guys with Punisher logos on their trucks. Very American.
https://www.advocate.com/media-library/pete-hegseth.jpg?id=6...
It seems that US Exceptionalism is what the US people wanted, and they're getting it in spades.
it's not really what we wanted, it's what we were taught. decades of defunding education and not modernizing the system that was originally based on apartheid, the creation of media conglomerates that advocate for anti-intellectualism, all of it just run rampant and increasingly unchecked, the large scale smearing of academic institutions from the outside and the insidious internal replacement of academics by administrators
the current version of the US was orchestrated deliberately by our wealthiest elites (eg Koch, Murdoch, etc) - the pleebs were becoming too powerful and now they're over-correcting
I don't disagree, but you're explaining _why_ they want it, not that they don't want it.
They've, for sure, been manipulated into wanting it, needing to believe it, but that's where the US is at, in a high enough percentage for the current administration to happen. The path of the US hasn't changed direction though, the travel down that path had just been accelerated somewhat by Tmurp.
They sure don't need it though.
(I agree with your comment below, but I'm unable to reply to it, so I replied here via edit)
sure, the why is to explain how it's happening and how to combat it - funding education, modernizing our systems, getting rid of unnecessary middlemen
a flat description is just an accusation that you can do nothing with except feel a kind of anti-social catharsis that doesn't net any progress in the other direction
since when have we been defunding education? over the past 60 years the per pupil spending on education has increased pretty substantially. you can argue that the funds aren't well allocated but it's objectively false that we've been reducing funding for education over multiple decades.
As far as I can tell this is factually true. Do people care to refute rather downvote shooting the messenger?
Some US states seem to spend more per pupil than excellent independent ("private") schools in the UK. That is a lot of money.
the per-pupil number is a deliberate red herring. spending increases only cover increasingly expensive private contracts, expensive middle-managers who often contribute little of value in terms of actually educating pupils, and liabilities
teacher pay-rate and total comp are better indicators of defunding and they are dismal: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_211.60.a... - this shows pay rates have stagnated since the late 2000s with some trending downwards since
even then the rising costs don't reflect an increase in percent-of-GDP spending - that's actually gone down in the past decade: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_106.10.a...
The % of GDP numbers seem to show, for elementary and secondary schools, rises and falls. It, fluctuates. Except for a dip in the 80s its been between 4.0% and 4.5% since 1967.
> the per-pupil number is a deliberate red herring. spending increases only cover increasingly expensive private contracts, expensive middle-managers who often contribute little of value in terms of actually educating pupils, and liabilities
Is that not just a more detailed explanation of what the comment said? jayglow said
> you can argue that the funds aren't well allocated
You have explained how they have been badly allocated. Its a general pattern in the western world's government expenditure on many things.
Brigading is a real thing and hard to combat, so the votes don't necessarily carry the signal they appear to.
I am not sure its that, so much as people not liking to hear anything that contradicts their politlcal beliefs.
Ahem, less than half of us voted for this trash.
Nearly 50 percent of voters have been voting for him for a decade now. The non-voters don't care. Let that sink in.
I said nothing about non-voters. I voted. NOT for Trump and not for Spiderman or some fantastical shit. My point was, of those who voted, near 50% of us DID NOT VOTE for Trump. We, have been for a decade, fighting this monstrous trash fire.
two thirds of you didn't think it was worth voting against.
The Americans who saw this coming and stayed home are just as complicit.
AGREED - as a US citizen.
Also, anyone who voted 3rd-party, because that is literally refusing to keep him out of office.
those two thirds living in the wrong states for it to matter, wouldn’t have voted the way you wanted and would have resulted in the same distribution of votes we already have?
prefrontal cortex moment
You don't think an extra 66% of people in any state getting off their asses and voting could affect the vote in a meaningful way?
Correct, the sentiment would have been the same distribution of votes across states. The electoral college distribution would have been the same 312 to 226 and not close at all
The way you talk about things could have easily resulted in California’s 54 electoral college votes flipping to the majority resulting in 366 electoral votes for the winner. Your numbers are spread across where people actually live after all, as opposed to a campaign swing state
Apathy is part of the equation.
No, no... among people who voted, less than 50% of votes were for Trump (49.81%). Harris got 48.34%. I think this is what GP is referring to.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/2024
This is what I am referring too! Ty.
If you can vote and you don't go to the polls, you vote for the winner.
Not caring about the outcome is not the same as wanting the outcome that ends up happening.
no you just didn't vote
No, you actually acquiesce to whatever outcome.
Maybe I wouldn't need table as harsh about it were the stakes lower - if things were relatively sane like Clinton, Bush, or Obama (I'm not saying they are perfect, just sane).
When facing the prospect of Trump there is no such excuse as "there were no good options." Yeah, dems are also evil and incompetent, but Trump takes it to an existential level. You're not abstaining, you're leaving the door wide open to the worst of humanity.
And civil war, where we're probably headed, is a much bigger nuisance than voting.
You voted with your unmoving ass to accept the election results.
“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”
yes, that choice would be to abstain.
assuming you didn't vote, are you satisfied with your choice?
assuming you did, are you satisfied with the outcome of the process you engaged in?
I am also not American, and I also voted for a party that did not win the national elections. However, to put in perspective, the last local elections I voted”strategically” (meaning, not my favorite party but the one I thought had better chances to win in my district and was a lot better than the other party projected to win) - I looked up the numbers after the election and the party I voted for ended up winning by about 40 votes. Had I and 39 other people decided not to vote at all, a much worse party would be governing my district..
Seems completely irrelevant? You were arguing that non-voters had no role in a candidate winning, and now you're pivoting to "but was your vote satisfying." Do you have a point or is this just general misanthropy?
People don't vote because it's perfectly satisfying every time, or they expect to win every time. That's a pretty childish way to look at the democratic process. But if you believe the current president is obviously terrible and you wonder, aloud, how he came to power, revealing that you didn't vote is bound to earn you some groans.
i think both questions are irrelevant. why would i be satisfied or dissatisfied with not voting?
i'm not american, i voted for a losing party in my countries election, i'm not pleased with my government, but had i not voted and the situation was the same, i would not feel any differently.
Nope. If you're one of four people voting for something, you have 25% of the voting power.
If you decide to abstain, everyone else's vote is now more valuable, at 33.33%. You have given your voting power to other people, it didn't just disappear. And now whatever the outcome, you are participatory in it.
In the U.S. this matters more on a state level, but it still applies.
abstaining doesn't transfer voting power to the winning side, it increases every remaining voters relative share equally regardless of which side theyre on. you can't retroactively attribute abstention to the winner simply because they won.
I don't know why I'm getting down-voted by HN oligarchs for saying that over 1/2 of Americans were NOT for Trump and his dictatorial BS. Keep down-voting though, this is par for the course here.
2/3 of German voters(!) were not for Adolf Hitler[1]. Doesn't change the fact they got 1/3 of their country removed for that choice.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1933_German_federal_elec...
The US' problems won't end when Trump leaves office, and things wouldn't have been much different if he'd not been elected the second time: the wars and calamity have been on the table for a long time.
Nobody cares about Americans having prosperity and happiness when their nation has been dropping bombs on innocent human beings every 15 minutes on average, for the past 26 years.
YES! I agree with you. I am an American standing in opposition to this admin and all government corruption. No one should care about our prosperity when we are acting the same and China, Russia, N Korea et al. Its disgusting and we are propagandized to the hilt.
As Mark Carney keeps repeating, the "rules based" world order we thought we had is gone and we nothing will bring it back the way it was.
What matters now is what the rest of the world will create to replace it.
Both actions were 100% political.
True, but this does not mean that both acts were equal.
For example, voting is a political act, and so is voter suppression. We wouldn't argue that both are equal acts. One is liberating, and the other is oppressive.
In your flawed analogy it would be more like unlimited mail-in ballot harvesting vs. supervision inside the voting booth.
The ICC is an attempt by European leftists to impose their value system on the smaller or poorer countries.
Where are the ICC cases against Saudi? Syria? Yemen? Egypt? Most of Africa? North Korea? Haiti? Nicaragua? India? Iran?
It's a kangaroo court that gives retired judges jobs and powerless liberals the illusion they're doing something.
The ICC was created with 120 countries voting in favor and 7 against, opposition mostly coming from Israel, the US and china. It's creation is due to a moderate prime minister from Tobago.
But the South African judge is really out of touch with reality. I remember it was South Africa who pushed an alternative UN resolution for Russo-Ukraine war trying to remove any blame from Russia.
The South African judiciary and the dept. for international relations (who pushed the pro-russian motion) are two very very separate and sometimes-at-odds-with-one-another state bodies.
Do you have some sources that corroborate your claim that Judge Pillay is out of touch? What specifically is she out of touch about?
She said that on October 7 both sides committed war crimes. Yes, on October 7.