it’s like you believe you can tariff them expecting they won’t do the same. Why do you believe the rest of the world is not going to retaliate and why do you believe America can prosper without the rest of the world?
What’s the point of having a military alliance with countries you puts tariffs on? That’s unfriendly to say the least.
The people you need to hear from aren’t using Lemmy.
Some of them are, you just have to scroll way way way down
Sadly true. We actively searched for alternatives when we realised other channels were getting too manipulative and full of hate. Those who stayed haven’t even realised it.
You’re never going to get a satisfying answer to this question, because there is no actual reason. If you want, you can go peek in on the conservative subreddits and watch their gold-medal winning mental gymnastics, but the reason Trump is doing this is Putin told him to. The U.S. is destroying themselves for no gain.
for no gain.
Nearly $3 billion USD flowed through the TRUMP cryptocoin rugpull, whoever owned initial coins made very, very large gains.
The $3 billion in quid buys a lot of anti-Ukraine pro quo
But, thanks to the Supreme Court, Trump could go on national TV and say he change US policy on Ukraine because he was bribed and he’d still be immune to any legal consequences (other than impeachment, but never anything criminal).
Because they think it owns the libs, plain and simple!
The reality is that these people were/are unhappy in their lives due to stagnation in their finances/jobs, poor healthcare, and they don’t have a tight local community. Then these dumb, angry people are primed to accept someone who says they’ll fix their lives, and knows how to talk right to them. Everything else is just toppings, but that’s really the meat of it.
It’s like that scene in the Incredibles where Mr. Incredible gets inside the robot, and has it tear itself to pieces. Except an entire country. And ~88,000,000 people voted against self-destruction and are being dragged off a cliff.
Trump only ran to stay out of prison. Now he’s ripping the copper out of the walls to get as much money as he can before it all collapses under his ineptitude.
Elon thinks he’s gonna be a trillionaire at the top of a technofeudal oligarchy. (He wants to be Arasaka from Cyberpunk but he’s gonna have a hard time doing that while all his businesses fail.)
PLEASE let them both end up in the poor house. That’d make me SO happy!
Removed by mod
The answer is: they do not give a shit.
They do not care about the US as a country.
They do not care about the Americans as a people.
They do not care about the economy.
They do not care about anything apart from their own personal interest. Lining their own pockets is all they care about. If someone helps them do that, they are friends with them. If they don’t, they do not matter.
Congratulations, you now officially live in a cleptocracy where they shake you down, take all of your money and give it to the guys who already have billions. All the taxes they claim to save by obliterating social security, affordable care etc? They are not going back to you, they will stuff them in Musk’s pockets through bullshit contracts and other schemes.
And at the same time, they are critically crippling the IRS to make sure the billionairs no longer even have to pretend to pay taxes.
Going to steel man this since theres obviously no one on here answering this question seriously. Not a republican and don’t agree with all this, just imagining what my republican dad would say about this:
For ukraine and Europe, we have no interest in protecting them besides sentimental attachments. Ukraine is not our problem, it’s Europe’s and if they want to dump money into a lost cause by all means go ahead, but leave the u.s. out of it unless your going to compensate us for it. The u.s. isn’t threatened by Russia, we have an ocean, the world’s largest navy and nukes to protect us. The larger threat is China and we should be focusing on them, not russia which can barely invade it’s neighbor, much less march across Europe and the atlantic. Europe can handle its own problems.
For Canada and Mexico and tarriffs in general. We need to bring manufacturing back to America and revitalize the rust belt. We can’t do that if companies find it more profitable to go over seas and pay people pennies when they’d have to pay Americans much more. The only way to get them to come back is to make it too expensive to import things.
This is all about putting America first. For decades America has been spending billions to protect Europe and has been sending billions of dollars over seas to build factories owhile factory after factory closes here in the u.s. We need to stop all of that and spend our money in America for Americans.
Feel free to use this comment as a punching bag, I don’t care, just trying to give OP an actual answer if this was a legitimate question and not some rhetorical question seeking affirmation on how dumb the Republicans are. They are, don’t get me wrong, but just say so and don’t dress it up in questions like this.
We need to bring manufacturing back to America and revitalize the rust belt. We can’t do that if companies find it more profitable to go over seas and pay people pennies when they’d have to pay Americans much more.
Canada has
- Higher wages
- More safety regs
One of those must be the issue. ;-)
This is a good steel man response, very much like Facebook posts I have seen lately. It’s really sad how much the right has abandoned listening to experts and just assuming we can apply “common sense” answers to fix problems that are complicated.
deleted by creator
its not like the us wasn’t getting anything in return
Thing is, what the USA was buying with its expensive umbrella over Europe was a disarmed Europe. At the time, the USA felt it was in their interest for EU to be weak.
For a variety of reasons, the rise of China perhaps being at the forefront, the USA no longer believes its in their interest to keep EU toothless.
deleted by creator
Dad? Is that you?!
For Canada and Mexico and tarriffs in general. We need to bring manufacturing back to America and revitalize the rust belt.
For Canada anyway, there is a manufacturing trade surplus in favour of US. Canadians buy more autos than they make, and also provide affordability for US made products, through components. So it means a reduction in US manufacturing jobs, when better products are available from less hateful countries, and US made goods are too expensive for Americans.
Nailed it on the head. I think also that you need to include that Canada’s relationship vis-a-vis trade with China will be affected by tariffs the US is placing on Canada, and same with Mexico. I think much of everything is from the viewpoint that China is a bigger problem than Russia at the moment. China is also recovering from some economic turmoil, and one way to do so includes expanding their reach, and so the intent is to limit China in other areas.
The answer is disappointingly simple: emotional satisfaction.
For decades, these people have been told that they are incredibly generous towards their allies, and that they get nothing in return. That their allies are abusing their relationships. Of course this is false, but they’ve been told so every day.
Now they get to abuse their “abusers” right back.
Project 2025. The goal is to remove all tariffs and other limitations against the US.
Canada for instance has laws on antibiotics for dairy, foreign ownership for banks and telcos, various things like that. India has tariffs on everything.
The document outlines crazy things like capital punishment and a border wall, its clearly Trumps handbook. It’s all in there.
It’s the most obvious powerplay in my memory. Isolate and remove America on the world stage from the inside. And it’s being highly successful. You couldn’t get a better Russian agent then trump.
Easy answer. The entire Government of Putin is working for shit Kremlin.
this question could be rephrased to:
dear idiots, why are you so stupid?
OR
dear sociopaths, why are you so selfish?
the motivations don’t matter. they can;t be reasoned with.
conclusion: guns.
You could replace all the above by “trumpist”. There is no such thing as american conservatives anymore, the only thing remaining is trumpism, a soon to be modern form of nazism.
you could also waste your time splitting hairs about words.
Shit like the other comment is why the left will never win in the US. They don’t care about your point or even progressing the conversation.
As long as they get their little point they don’t care. They got to “ackshually” on the internet and that hit of dopamine is good enough.
Go ahead and start shooting people, seems to be your proposition (edit: look at his post history lol). But are you only about words or will you actually do something? If not then stfu.
you’re too stupid to understand what the point of any of this is. how about YOU STFU?
You comment on every post about guns lol. Well go ahead fucking do something with you guns, now’s the best time. But like most american, all you do is run your mouth like you know everything but you wont do shit. Because like most americans your either an under-educated facsist or a privilege-ass wannabe rebel. What a stupid country you have, hope you will all enjoy being billionaire’s bitches cause that’s your future.
thanks for the support but if you don’t have any constructive commentary, please fuck off.
Here’s a constructive comment : Dear americans, please start shooting each other before we need to do it for you. It’s really hard for us to make the distinction between an under-educated fat-ass who support pedo-president and an under-educated fat-ass who doesn’t care what he does. Hope that helps.
deleted by creator
This feels so much closer to the real truth than anything. It really can be this simple for the trump cult.
You won’t get logical answers to this because there isn’t one. Maybe they’re just that dumb. Maybe they just want to tank the economy a bit so the rich and gobble up more during the dip. Maybe they just actually love Russia. Maybe they’re being secretly black mailed by Russia.
I do think it’s a Russia thing. Putin getting America to alienate all of its closest allies, so that it’s only Russia left to aid.
I think y’all are overthinking it, giving them too much credit for having a plan. For Trump it’s just narcissism and bullying. Everyone else is a grifter seeing their chance. Musk must have just read Ayn Rand
I’m not a conservative but there’s a logic to it beyond this, “because Putin!” circlejerk nonsense. Tariffs are a reaction against Neoliberalism and the economic intelligencia that has fucked everyone over. Many of them blame NAFTA and the offshoring of union jobs to other countries with cheaper labor and fewer protections, and they think they can bring them back through tariffs.
Many of these people understand well that they have been fucked, but can’t really name capitalism directly because it’s a sacred cow. Still they’re going to react poorly to “the establishment” telling them they’re dumb and wrong, and that includes libs screaming at them that they’re “serving Putin” without even understanding what they’re actually trying to do.
Tariffs aren’t going to bring those jobs back, at least not without significant subsidies that the government will never do. Also, for the record, those jobs have raised the living conditions of the people they went to, and are one of the reasons China was able to lift 800 million people out of extreme poverty in the past 40 years, but the pitch of, “You might not be able to find a decent job, but hey, at least a poor Chinese rice farmer can afford a washing machine now,” doesn’t exactly go over well with the right. We should be focusing on the super-rich who have enough hoarded wealth to make everyone rich, regardless of national borders and whatnot, but they see that as communism, because it is communism.
Ultimately, tariffs are a way of rebelling against an economic orthodoxy that isn’t working for a growing number of people and they fit into the nationalist narratives about why things are so bad (because of foreigners) without having to name capitalism itself as the problem.
This follows a long historical trend in America where people don’t want the government to do anything ever but also need the government to do things to address crises and allow society to function so we have to come up with convoluted approaches that “don’t count” as government interference, for whatever reason. For example, the New Deal was too restrained to actually end the Depression, but once WWII happened we could take the gloves off with government spending (on the military) which was economically necessary, and since then, military bases have served as an inefficient and corrupt way for the government to infuse cash into local communities by paying people to just walk around with guns in like Nebraska. This goes all the way back to people like Jefferson, who absolutely hated the idea of big government but also casually doubled the size of the country with the Louisiana Purchase. There’s also the classic psychology of, “Keep your damn, government hands off my social security!” A big reason American politics are insane is because there is a battle in everyone’s mind between ideology and material interests, and the way in which material interests are persued is roundabout, convoluted, and ineffective, because everyone’s trying to avoid being/sounding like a communist.
When I meet magas one of the questions I like to ask is something along the lines of describe your ideal healthcare system. 90% basically describe Medicare for all. I clarify, get more detail (basically make them really think about it as much as possible), and then ask which candidates or party they believe is in line with them. Obvs I want to avoid backing them in a corner so don’t say ‘Aha you’re a socialist!’. Rather, I work though it with them, google candidates and see what their policy is. Bonus points when half the R websites don’t even have policy so they can see that. Anyway we generally get to the point that they think they might be left of both parties on that issue. And then I try to plant a seed that this is a totally normal process for figuring out who to support and get out of there while they feel some mutual respect between us. It’s harder these days when the fascism is so blatant but I don’t know what else to do when I find myself living in a democracy with a bunch of insane people
deleted by creator
And dont forget, we are on Lemmy. Everything that’s somewhat conservative gets bullied out quite fast. C/conservative started as a legit community and got turned into a meme community. I think this speaks for itself.
deleted by creator
There’s absolutely diversity of opinion, I see trans and Tankie arguments pretty frequently.
What is generally true is the majority of Lemmy users seem to lean left and are generally more techy, makes sense given the main reasons why you’d seek out the fediverse vs a centralized social media.
There’s a lot of diversity of opinion between leftists and liberals. Generally speaking, conservatives don’t contribute anything and drag down the quality of debate because they are openly anti-intellectual, and their presence also drives away people who are actually worth having. The only thing that would happen if there were more conservatives on here would be more cable news tier screaming matches and more verbal attacks on minorities. Liberals still only want to talk and think at a cable news level, but at least they aren’t openly hateful and anti-intellectual.
People are more likely to change their minds or have productive conversations when they approach a topic from the same basic values and beliefs about the world, like if two people agree on the goal of uplifting the global proletariat, they can discuss how best to go about it, but if one person’s goal is to uplift the global proletariat and the other’s is, idk, to drop minorities out of helicopters, then both are just going to be screaming at each other. Not only that, but if two people are discussing how to uplift the poor while the other guy’s in the room, it’s going to have a negative effect on their ability to do so, because they’ll constantly have to worry about everything they say getting attacked by dumb, right-wing arguments. Imagine two doctors trying to discuss the nuances of their profession in the same room as an antivax nutjob.
Yeah now try being absolutely unknowledgeable when it comes to tech and very much into makeup, skincare, 90 day fiance and parenting content. Lemmy, it’s been nice, but after one and a half years I started lurking to Reddit every once in a while again.
It sucks that niche things like that haven’t picked up yet, however be the change you want to see, create a community and invite like minded people to post there.
I think the biggest barrier of entry is that people don’t understand it, and they’re not going to until they try in all honesty.
deleted by creator
I disagree with a ton of stuff, but Ive already been banned from one community so for the most part I keep it civil. I haven’t had much issue arguing against the common opinion here besides the down votes, but I see downvoted comment chains all the time so I’m not as concerned they will be hidden.
Isolating the US and breaking US hegemony. Trump is a Putin puppet, and what’s best for Russia is crippling the US economically and diplomatically. Alienating the EU cuts off the EU from the US who would otherwise help the Europeans against the Russians as they try to reclaim their former territories.
This also helps China who is trying to replace the US as the world superpower. BRICS is doing a good job of creating a competing economic alliance, and the US falling apart helps make it more attractive.
Not a conservative, by the way. Just someone who follows the news.
