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.
"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."
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
I worry about those who can't. There's some serious anti-US psyops originating from Russia and China at the moment and it seems the Left (including a lot of Europeans) are lapping it up gleefully.
Are you suggesting the President of the United States and his administration are perpetrating Russian and Chinese psyops against the American people, because it's his and his administration's actions that everyone is reacting to.
If the media you’re consuming paints Trump in a worse light than Putin and Jianping, you really need to rethink the sources you’re reading. The Western media is ridiculously partisan and polarised.
China - authoritarian communist dictatorship, killing its own protesting students, concentration camps imprisoning 1M+ Muslims, forced sterilisation, forced labour, organised re-education of its own population, every company an arm of the intelligence agencies (by law), social credit system, biological weapons production (Wuhan), institutionalised IP theft from other countries
Russia - the most corrupt major dictatorship in Europe, military invasions of its peaceful neighbours, hybrid warfare against European countries, nerve agent assassination of political rivals both within and outside Russia. Indiscriminate killing of civilians in Ukraine with no remorse.
US - a constitutional democracy that has alternated leadership in the last decade in the same familiar way it always has. Attacked Iranian regime assets because Iran threatened it with nuclear weapons and fired hundreds of ballistic missiles at US ally Israel (a pluralist democracy that should be defended IMO). Widespread support for the US intervention from ordinary Iranians who has been oppressed by their Islamist dictator for decades; Removed a ruthless dictator in Venezuela due to massive human rights abuses and state narco trafficking, widespread US support from ordinary Venezuelans who have been oppressed by their dictator.
I don’t see all of the US actions as favorably as that description, I think a lot of recent actions are especially egregious and the US has a history of doing pretty terrible things.
But the scale really is completely different. I think the US is still overall good, and we do still have real elections, limits on government power, and genuine turnover in government where power can shift.
And even as the US govt is trying to scare people away from protesting and they’re building a corporate-government surveillance state, personal freedoms are still very high compared to China and Russia.
The US is unfortunately in the fortunate position of being the worlds active super power. This puts them in a bit of an "IT dept dilemma", where when things are going smoothly they are invisible, and when things are falling apart, it's their fault.
Migrate to a new mail server that is 30% faster? Ah, thats nice.
Migrate to a new mail server and things go awry? Fire that entire fucking department they are seriously incompetent and only ever fuck things up.
The USA has been dropping bombs on innocent people for 26 years. Not the case with China and Russia.
The US' phony "War on Terror" (a racist war) has killed millions and produced tens of millions of refugees. It has kidnapped sovereign leaders and demolish sovereign states, it has funded terror groups and armed them, it has literally provided the weapons for a genocide.
What the hell? Just this week Russia has killed tens of civilians by bombing apartment buildings and passenger buses, for no reason, just because they can.
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".
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.
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.
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...
Specifically, they could stop using the USD a clearing currency... causing hyperinflation in the US.
They could embargo US firms, Visa and Mastercard first. Tech firms second.
They could sell Dutch lithography to China. In fact they could ally with China in return for turning a blind eye on Taiwan.
They could stop spending billions on US arms, in fact that is well underway.
US shot its bolt in Iran.... everyone is much less scared of the US since it attempted to use its force. It can't sustain a single carrier in the gulf with allied countries at its back. It has already spent 80% of its patriot missiles.
Theres a lot of American military bases inside the EU that could be turned into craters within 24 hours. And even if Europe decides to not retaliate violently and simply says "you have 24 hours to leave the continent", thats still a lot of material and arms lost.
No actually a significant portion of all humans are really just this fucking stupid.
Even if this specific comment is a psyop or shill of some sort, they make these comments partially because a lot of people nod their head in agreement.
Like, Trump himself screamed about obliterating Iran on like easter, despite the utter logistical impossibility of the US doing that without resorting to nuclear weapons. A lot of his supporters are explicitly upset he hasn't done it yet.
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.
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.
> "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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> "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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
nailed to a cross
sadly it no longer feels absurd
Seems like behavior you'd expect from someone who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize though, right?
Only the FIFA Peace Prize.
"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."
They are trying to desensitise the public before moving on to more extreme things.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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 see how they could possibly do that AND have money leftover to fund space laser research. The math just doesn’t add up.
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.
> 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.
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.
Crazy take. Kamala and Hilary were fine candidates. Trump won by convincing the electorate "she's for them". Just straight up fake news
And after he tried to overturn an election he lost.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
You sure are letting the U.S. voter off the hook here…
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?
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.
Related ongoing thread:
Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 to Navanethem Pillay - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50018420 - Oct 2026 (163 comments)
Given the fact that signatories to the Rome Statute outnumber countries that aren’t, I’m not quite sure who the rogue is here…
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
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...
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...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Establishing precedent. Uncovering who is with him and who is "the enemy".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
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
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.
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%.
the Trump era is an interesting lesson in psychology
> 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.
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.
> 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
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?
At least we will have televised executions.
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!
You mean the allies that have been comfortably riding the coat tails of it for 75 years? Those ones?
There's not that much difference here. Sometimes you hate a golden cage.
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.
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.
Can you see any difference between america, china and Russia?
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.
I worry about those who can't. There's some serious anti-US psyops originating from Russia and China at the moment and it seems the Left (including a lot of Europeans) are lapping it up gleefully.
While I agree to a certain extent, Americans aren't exactly helping the case against them.
Are you suggesting the President of the United States and his administration are perpetrating Russian and Chinese psyops against the American people, because it's his and his administration's actions that everyone is reacting to.
If the media you’re consuming paints Trump in a worse light than Putin and Jianping, you really need to rethink the sources you’re reading. The Western media is ridiculously partisan and polarised.
What is a critique of Russia or China in this context that isn't true of the US?
China - authoritarian communist dictatorship, killing its own protesting students, concentration camps imprisoning 1M+ Muslims, forced sterilisation, forced labour, organised re-education of its own population, every company an arm of the intelligence agencies (by law), social credit system, biological weapons production (Wuhan), institutionalised IP theft from other countries
https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/china/ch...
Russia - the most corrupt major dictatorship in Europe, military invasions of its peaceful neighbours, hybrid warfare against European countries, nerve agent assassination of political rivals both within and outside Russia. Indiscriminate killing of civilians in Ukraine with no remorse.
US - a constitutional democracy that has alternated leadership in the last decade in the same familiar way it always has. Attacked Iranian regime assets because Iran threatened it with nuclear weapons and fired hundreds of ballistic missiles at US ally Israel (a pluralist democracy that should be defended IMO). Widespread support for the US intervention from ordinary Iranians who has been oppressed by their Islamist dictator for decades; Removed a ruthless dictator in Venezuela due to massive human rights abuses and state narco trafficking, widespread US support from ordinary Venezuelans who have been oppressed by their dictator.
I don’t see all of the US actions as favorably as that description, I think a lot of recent actions are especially egregious and the US has a history of doing pretty terrible things.
But the scale really is completely different. I think the US is still overall good, and we do still have real elections, limits on government power, and genuine turnover in government where power can shift.
And even as the US govt is trying to scare people away from protesting and they’re building a corporate-government surveillance state, personal freedoms are still very high compared to China and Russia.
The US is unfortunately in the fortunate position of being the worlds active super power. This puts them in a bit of an "IT dept dilemma", where when things are going smoothly they are invisible, and when things are falling apart, it's their fault.
Migrate to a new mail server that is 30% faster? Ah, thats nice.
Migrate to a new mail server and things go awry? Fire that entire fucking department they are seriously incompetent and only ever fuck things up.
Don't go easy on China here! They also has the Invade Neighbouring Country card on hand and is slowly pushing it across the table.
--signed, the guy who owns a chinese car and thinks china is winning
this makes a lot of sense if you are living under a rock sponsored by sinclair broadcast group and aipac.
The USA has been dropping bombs on innocent people for 26 years. Not the case with China and Russia.
The US' phony "War on Terror" (a racist war) has killed millions and produced tens of millions of refugees. It has kidnapped sovereign leaders and demolish sovereign states, it has funded terror groups and armed them, it has literally provided the weapons for a genocide.
You're whitewashing.
What the hell? Just this week Russia has killed tens of civilians by bombing apartment buildings and passenger buses, for no reason, just because they can.
And the US has done this continuously over the last few decades. GP shouldn't have excused Russia, but the US is just as guilty.
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
> 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.
Why do you call Rubio a committed criminal? To my knowledge, he isn't.
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.
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.
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.
What response? Strong words? Sadly, the EU depends on the US more than vica versa.
Specifically, they could stop using the USD a clearing currency... causing hyperinflation in the US.
They could embargo US firms, Visa and Mastercard first. Tech firms second.
They could sell Dutch lithography to China. In fact they could ally with China in return for turning a blind eye on Taiwan.
They could stop spending billions on US arms, in fact that is well underway.
US shot its bolt in Iran.... everyone is much less scared of the US since it attempted to use its force. It can't sustain a single carrier in the gulf with allied countries at its back. It has already spent 80% of its patriot missiles.
Theres a lot of American military bases inside the EU that could be turned into craters within 24 hours. And even if Europe decides to not retaliate violently and simply says "you have 24 hours to leave the continent", thats still a lot of material and arms lost.
You can't be real? It seems impossible that this is anything beyond psy ops to anger those with even a shred of morality.
No actually a significant portion of all humans are really just this fucking stupid.
Even if this specific comment is a psyop or shill of some sort, they make these comments partially because a lot of people nod their head in agreement.
Like, Trump himself screamed about obliterating Iran on like easter, despite the utter logistical impossibility of the US doing that without resorting to nuclear weapons. A lot of his supporters are explicitly upset he hasn't done it yet.
You realise the rest of the world together has bigger armed forces than the US right? Several of them have nukes too
Yeah, we're working on that... As are most people...
Very normal thing to say.
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.
This is without reserve the most idiotic thing I've ever read on HN.
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.
> "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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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"
"Rules for thee, but not for me!"
The US has always been “above the law.” This is about Israel and its genocide against the Palestinians.
Words have meaning. Please lookup what genocide means, before using it.
Yes, the world's leading experts on what constitutes genocide have agreed with the use. Please google it before saying things behind a new account.
Words have meaning. Gaza qualifies. So does Ukraine.
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.
The USA is a technofascist state dismantling itself and every democratic institution that stands against the coming technocracy.
I am so disgusted by this current regime.
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....
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.
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.
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.
I agree with that and what I think about Trump might get me arrested if I expressed it openly.
> "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.
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...
[delayed]
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.
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...
Brigading is a real thing and hard to combat, so the votes don't necessarily carry the signal they appear to.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
Democratic cries bring tears to my eyes, the happy ones.
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?