Comment by palmotea

This completely ignores the very real, very serious damage he's doing right now, and the doors he's opening for future leaders. Discounting the dumb things he says is very dangerous. His words could lead to oh, I don't know - an insurrection?

it takes time to build up an army, we are not a unified Europe. I think both are happening at the moment - We are building our military, we are taking over "supporting" Ukraine as Trump is stepping away from that. And im sure there is some hope that the US will go back to the way it was.

Imagine you outsourced your entire company to a third party company and only have a few managers around. Then, you need to move all that support from the 3rd parties back in-house. Its not a task that is easy to do, and if we also take into account the required factories etc that need to be built to support, that takes even more time.

Its something that is happening, we are building new trade agreements with countries around the world, excluding the US. We are working on our own defense packs, and eventually if the US decides to leave NATO, or we form our own alliance, then that will happen.

And Trump was elected with the support and influence of the very cadre of oligarchs running much of silicon valley: Elon Musk, Alex Karp, Palmer Luckey, etc., etc.

Elon Musk (not Trump) is actively still weaponizing algorithmic control of X to try to destabilize US "allies". Larry Ellison is doing the same thing with a whole swathe of media companies and TikTok.

The issue is the authoritarianism and patriarchal narcissism of an American-centered global elite who have gotten so used to "winning" they began to think it was God-given right and not something they'd achieved because their winning had (broadly speaking) been in everyone else's interest.

Now that their mindset has shifted to win at all (read: everyone one else's) cost(s) - do you REALLY think that everyone is going to blindly keep following? For how long?

> Trump says a lot of things. It's foolish to take every outrage seriously. It's pretty clear it's just a tactic of his (albeit a dumb one).

And he has also acted on a lot of the things he has said. It's foolish to ignore him.

> Ok, then. If you're serious: kick the US out of NATO. Increase military spending, go it alone. Really treat the US as a non-ally.

What? It's not possible to expell a country from NATO as per its charter. And European countries are increasing military spending, by and large buying, in that order, domestic, European, major NATO aligned suppliers (most notably South Korea), and the US only when there is no choice (so F-35 and munitions/replacements for existing systems). And of course this ignores that current European military capabilities are plenty for European strategic autonomy.

> Or, you know. Wait for him to leave office or die (he's 80!), and write the Democrats and tell them to get their fucking house in order. Trump didn't win so much as the Democrats were utterly incompetent.

I don't think you're getting it. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. The trust with the US is irreversibly broken and not getting repaired in the decades to come. The American political system is broken beyond repair, and even the opposition to the current wannabe fascist regime are not campaigning to change anything about it. This means that regardless of who's in power next, even if they're the best thing since sliced bread, there is no guarantee the following elections won't bring another bout of wannabe fascists threatening to invade their allies.

There is no going back from that without major political reform in the US and years to earn back trust. AKA not happening. Even the opposition, even the most radical opposition, venerate American political institutions as the works of deities that can only be slightly changed, not replaced wholesale. And, from the outside, the whole system - how elections are done (you need proportional representation, term limits, no janky districts), representative structures (flat two seat per state senate doesn't work anymore, house of representatives having skewed and fixed numbers doesn't either), judicial system (political appointments and elections, and for life appointments, do not work), supreme court (political appointments and for life appointments do not work), etc are overdue by decades for serious structural reforms.