What does the future hold for Donald Trump? - threadbans in OP

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135158#Comment_122135158

Trump said it himself, 'When you're famous, they'll let you do anything.'

To be absolutely clear, the above sentence does not come close to describing every woman by any stretch, but that type of woman does exist (and that type of man, also), so I don't think that it would have been difficult at any point in Trump's life in the spotlight to simply find a partner. Whether that partner was just there for the money or status is another question, but because Trump seems to view every human relationship as transactional or a zero sum game, I don't think he'd even have a problem with gold diggers that ordinary people might.

FishOnABike

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135175#Comment_122135175

Maybe he thinks he might be able to argue for a mistrial because if he is so critical of the judge surely the judge couldn't remain impartial 🙄 It wouldn't be the craziest of Trumps 'ideas', after all he does seem to have a limited grasp on reality at times (lots of times).

tinytobe

I am often wondering what motivates US Americans to even vote for Trump? Given the history of Trump and his law suits, riots and storming the capitol, taking confidential documents not keeping them secure, legal issues with women, sleeping with porn stars and hush money, accusation of rape in a dressing room in a department store, etc….

In light of all this, it's hard for a man like me to take a man like Trump in any serious consideration.

Has the US really fallen this low in morale, attitude and expectations from politicians, to consider this man as their president?

Maybe somebody has a insight into this?

amandstu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135225#Comment_122135225

Ah,no.He might be trying to provoke a reaction from the judge,but I think he must know that if he loses the election one of the 4 cases will do for him.

Not sure what his game really is with attacking the judge .Maybe just feed the begrudgery of his base that got him where he is today?

Overheal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135356#Comment_122135356

Religious hysterics, 'demoncrats are the antichrist' etc. and that's just the start of the iceberg.

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135371#Comment_122135371

Interesting point. But I don't think that that's a majority regarding hysterics. I mean, from an economic perspective, I would understand the Republican party in the US very much.

But the rest of the Republicans is pretty much a mystery to me, and Donald Trump is the personification of this.

kowloon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135356#Comment_122135356

 …accusation of rape in a dressing room in a department store, etc…

More than accusations.

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135421#Comment_122135421

Sure.

But US Americans voting for Trump is as incomprehensible to me as the Germans voting for the Nazi party back then.

What causes a modern and sophisticated society to vote for an idiot?

kowloon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135461#Comment_122135461

Good question, and if you figure out the answer you'll have a book and a political analyst career ahead of you.

amandstu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135461#Comment_122135461

He's a crook but he's their crook?

Not so much an idiot as would-be entitled.

Their ticket to advancement by osmosis.

Oh ,and we get the politicians we deserve ,anyway.

everlast75

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1790165603850064195

And here we have Eric trying to be the Ratf*cker's protege... Maybe we should call him "fieldmouse f*cker"?

EltonJohn69

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135577#Comment_122135577

serious dodgy salesman vibes coming off of him….i wouldn’t buy a fish or cutlery or tarmac etc. off of Eric Trump

combat14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135509#Comment_122135509

according to latest polls trump is leading biden in 5 key states despite the stock market gaining 25% and trumps many trials but as we have seen before polls dont always have it right or do they?!

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/13/us/politics/biden-trump-battleground-poll.html

Brief_Lives

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135724#Comment_122135724

Americans really are fools for wanting this orange danger to society, rapist, to run their country.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135461#Comment_122135461

Same as Brexit. It's what they want and the superficial justification for it has almost nothing to do with their true motivations. I used to think support for Brexit would collapse once it became clear what a monumentally stupid idea it was. The opposite happened.

With Trump, it's the same. They know what they're voting for an all the Trump flags, stickers, hats and so on indicates that they actively want more of what he did in his first presidency. He's literally a fascist and the MAGA loons are waving swastikas.

Slideways

I’d be happy for the lunatics to get what they want and drag their country into the gutter, teach them some humility, however, the affects it would have on the world would not be worth the smugness I’d feel from afar.

gneel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135461#Comment_122135461

Anyone with an R beside their name will pick conservative judges for the supreme court. That overrides anything to do with Trump. So many flaws to their system.

fergiesfolly

There's nothing holding the US together except an historic notion that they're the bastion for the free world, a beacon of light for the downtrodden.

That light has been extinguished and the country is hurtling towards a fractured future. They don't trust those in authority. They don't trust big industry. They don't trust each other. Only an external threat to it's overall existence will pull the population together.

I could easily see states like California seeking to secede from the US. They have a bigger GDP than most of the US put together. A liberal, left leaning population. Nearly nothing in common with large swathes of the midwest and south. They must already be questioning if staying within the USA is right for them. And that's where it'll all start to unravel for the rest of the country. New blocs of states emerge and a disintegration of old allegiances.

It didn't start with Trump, but he'll be front and centre when they write about the beginning of the end.

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122136247#Comment_122136247

I've read that years ago, that if California was actually a sovereign country, they would economically be as strong as Germany or France or the UK, if not even more.

I've often noticed that California and the whole West Coast doesn't have much in common with the South.

But after all, it's a large country as well with a large population size.

I've also read once that one US state can't secede that easily as well. Apparently they'd have to get the OK from a large majority of the other states as well.

This all certainly didn't start with Trump.

But voting for Trump seems exceptionally stupid and dumb, for a dumb old man who only likes to argue. At least voter and candidate seem to have equal minds on this one.

Detritus70

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135461#Comment_122135461

Funny you should mention that, we have the AfD here in Germany, a party that has been classed as far-right wing extremists by internal security services, they have often made statements that their goal is to wreck the system from within, get out of the Euro, get out of the EU, deport anyone they don't deem German enough (this includes people who have gotten a passport) and they are very openly hostile to migrants, especially to Muslims and coming from the Middle East and Africa.

It may not surprise you to hear that, besides being anti-EU and democracy, they are supportive of Russia and Putin and often decry what a horrible dictatorship Germany and the EU is and they would like to embrace the same values as Putin's Russia.

This party is second strongest, and in some former Eastern German states, strongest force. People vote for sh1theads like that because they think that, as straight, white, Christians, they are being replaced by some evil plan by the EU to drown Europe in immigrants, to displace the native population. It's people who likely will complain about too much woke and gay people and wimmin getting ideas above their station.

It is political flat-eartherism, it could only appeal to hateful idiots. But we here in Germany are living proof that, as a demagogue, you can always be successful in politics, because a large enough percentage of the population is thick as pig sh1te, hateful and racist and they will believe any old crap you spout, as long as it vilifies the "right" people.

Stupid and hateful and I shall never accept all the "well, it's complicated and you can't throw them all into the same pot, these people are mostly decent, just misguided" bleeding heart hand-wringing.

NO! These people are sh1theads and we must stop making excuses for them.

The people going to Trump Rallies in the US are no different to the people who screamed "Heil Hitler" at the Nürnberg Rallies. They are fascists, end of. Hateful morons. I don't believe in trying to understand them or trying dialogue with them. They must be fought and made to understand that their ideas are not welcome or acceptable.

ohnonotgmail

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122136453#Comment_122136453

Their strong support for russia/putin and how strong they are in the east of the country always confuses me. Do they not remember before the wall fell?

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122136453#Comment_122136453

I would tend to agree with that one. I thought they outlawed the AfD by now?

However I also understand that Germany does have a real immigration or better said, lack of integration problem. I hear some immigrants in Germany are demanding a caliphate style system and are willing to protest and take to the streets for that.

Any western civilized culture would certainly be against that.

thomil

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122136579#Comment_122136579

I hope you don't mind me barging in here, but I elaborated on a very similar question over in the Russia thread back in December 2023, and I think that post might be somewhat useful here. So I'm just going to plagiarize myself, if you don't mind:

There are multiple threads at play here.

For starters, at least as Germany is concerned, a lot of the initial support for the AfD came from East Germany, the states that formerly made up the GDR, and there in particular in the parts of Thuringia, Saxony & Saxony-Anhalt that, due to their geographical make-up would have been shielded from western radio & TV broadcasts. As such, post-1945 Soviet indoctrination worked much better there than it would in the areas around Berlin or up in the North, which is generally flat as a board. East German propaganda & education was also a lot more nationalist than you'd expect from a country subscribed to a supposedly internationalist ideology which, coupled with a lack of any proper attempts to process the events & crimes of the nazi years, created a witches brew of anti-western sentiment and nationalist ideology in the southern parts of the GDR, primarily in the post-war generations.

As such, there was a real feeling of betrayal when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and this feeling of betrayal and alienation only increased when, in the years following reunification, Eastern German industrial plants, which had often been built in poorly-developed regions (Just look at places such as Eisenhüttenstadt or Leuna to see what I mean) and were often decades behind in terms of technology, were shut down or laid off vast numbers of their pre-unification work force. At the same time, the successor to the SED (East German Communist Party), the PDS, later Linkspartei or Linke, moved away from its previous martial & nationalist positions, moving more into a traditional far-left political party, alienating a lot of its former members in East Germany. This allowed more extreme parties, first the unabashedly neo-nazi NPD and later the AfD (NPD in suits) to take advantage of a readily-prepared support base, one that had generally good memories of the time when the big brother in Moscow was still on their side.

Then, there are the social aspects. For all the propaganda about freeing the working people, GDR society was surprisingly conservative/reactionary and sealed off. While women were far more common in the workplace in the GDR compared to West Germany, particularly in the first twenty years of the GDR regime, their place in society wasn't all that different than it was in Germany pre-war, with a very clear emphasis on men being the pillars of society. The LGBT scene was actively suppressed, and to a far more extreme degree than in the west, with once again the first twenty years being the worst. And finally, there was basically no immigration. While there was an exchange with fellow socialist countries such as Vietnam, this was highly regimented, almost always tied to major infrastructure projects and for the most part, these foreign nationals were restricted to their own compounds, with only limited cultural exchange events under strict supervision of the party and the Stasi. This stood in stark contrast to the far more liberal situation in West Germany, and the resulting clash of ideologies post-reunification only reinforced the feelings of alienation & betrayal I mentioned earlier.

So when Russia seemingly sorted its troubles out in the early 2000s, coupled with embarking on a decidedly conservative social policy under Putin, this became a welcome point of focus for a significant number of East Germans. Russia was seen as a welcome oasis of calm, a country where the proper order of things was being reestablished. It was also a welcome logistics base for some of the more radical elements of the far-right, with weapons readily available, loads of isolated areas for "training" and local authorities that could easily be bought off with hard currency.

Of course, Russia also expertly played on the collective societal guilt of German society for the crimes committed during WW2, reinforcing the need for reconciliation and positioning a deepening friendship with Russia as the best way to do so, with an accompanying cooling of relations with the US & NATO being positioned as the best way to break out of the circle of post-war guilt. And for a while, this actually worked. Russia was seen as a "natural ally", public service broadcasters ran massive documentary series about Russia, from Kaliningrad to the Urals, highlighting the people and the culture. Hell, they even let a camera team onto a Typhoon class submarine during a routine deterrence patrol. Even my dad, who was an old-school left-wing liberal, was taken in to a certain degree, believing that the "Atlantic Bridge" as it was called in Germany, the close partnership between Western European states and the US, needed to go.

So yeah, it's a complicated situation with no quick & easy answers, as you can see from this rambling reply.

EDIT: There's one more thing that needs to be pointed out, despite the length of my post already: Yes, there was already an active far-right scene in West Germany at the time of reunification. The NPD, which I mentioned before, was a west German party. However, the far-right & neo-nazi scene in the West were generally disorganised, chaotic and impulsive, preferring direct action and violence over working their way through the system. They were also generally cash-strapped, so when the AfD started its rise in the late 2000s, with a well-established party structure and ample financial resources, it was able to not only absorb far-right movements in West Germany, but also weed-out the "undesirable" elements of these movements, while adopting their political positions & outlook. An AfD-internal strategy paper actually stated this in 2016: "We differentiate ourselves from the NPD through our conservative supporters, not through our policies"

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122136247#Comment_122136247

It seems to me that what mainly holds the US together is a combination of a closed shop for ideas, the outdated and unfit for purpose constitution, and the apathy of most people in the face of the difficulty of seceding from the Union.

Two parties have locked down what they call democracy such that this year, your average American living in the richest, most dynamic and most diverse country in history must choose which of two 75+ white man are to become the most powerful person in the world. There's no large socialist party, no large green party, no large liberal (UK liberal) party, no Christian democratic party, etc… This is of course in relation to the big two. I know there are other parties but they're probably smaller than the fanbase of many TV programmes. The result is stunted debate and stagnant politics.

I think most Americans, deep down, know that meaningful change just isn't on the table most of the time and when it is, it's for the worse as we saw with Bush's Iraq war or the GOP's Project 2025 plan. This breeds a reluctant attachment to the status quo. In today's world, Americans can look at Britain's free at the point of use NHS, Scandinavian welfare states, and Mediterranean lifestyles knowing full well that they're not number one and have not been for some time. To be clear, the NHS is a mess and welfare states are becoming increasingly expensive, particularly if they're fit for purpose.

This clip explains it quite nicely:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2HKbygLjJs

I've always found it weird how a country has to keeping telling itself it's the best. Fair enough if that's true but I don't think that that's been the case for some time.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122136453#Comment_122136453

I've seen jobs in the west but I just see the projected population issues Germany is in for, the AfD somehow existing in a world where we know what fascism is and where it leads, and the renting for life thing and it puts me off.

Excellent post btw.

everlast75

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135461#Comment_122135461

There are multiple reasons.

Poor education leads to a lack of critical thinking, ripe for misinformation.

Poor healthcare leads to poverty, and poverty breeds fascist leaders.

Latent racism undertones are motivated by a racist.

Misogynists feel emboldened by his contempt for women.

Anyone with a prejudice against gay people contorts him into an alpha, red-blooded male.

Deeply religious types are happy to gloss over his transparent lack of morals so they can push for anti-abortion laws.

And then you have those that always voted republican, regardless of who was on the ticket.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122136632#Comment_122136632

A.K.A FREEDOM! And if you don't agree you're a commie socialist!

everlast75

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122136669#Comment_122136669

"A.K.A FREEDOM! And if you don't agree you're a commie socialist!"..

Although, if Trump says so..

Quin_Dub

There's also the constant promotion of "Individualism" almost to the point of Religious zealotry.

This leads to a complete lack of genuine community and "society" as they are told from birth that no one is coming to help them and that anything they want they have to get themselves and that they need to fight everybody else to get it.

On some levels that's not necessarily a bad thing in that fostering personal responsibility and drive isn't a bad thing but when taken to extremes as it has been in the US it's toxic.

That's why dirt poor Americans vote Republican because they have been indoctrinated that only they can fix themselves or "pull themselves up by their boot straps" and that anyone offering to help them (or others) is a demonic socialist who wants to destroy America.

"Society" is fundamentally broken in the US and that feeling that most voters in Europe and elsewhere would have of some degree of collective responsibility simply doesn't exist.

That leads to the kind of policies and politicians they have.

duploelabs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122136669#Comment_122136669

or if you're not a straight white christian male

For Forks Sake

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122135461#Comment_122135461

Theres very little modern or sophistcated about large swathes of the US