Donald Trump the Megathread part II - Mod Warning updated in OP 12/2/26

We do need them on the thread though. They provide a better understanding of the mindset.

On a lighter note

On a lighter note what I find amusing is all those ‘ attachments ‘ securedto the front and sides of their gear and hanging off same. I wonder what’s in them - a Swiss Army knife, pky cornflakes , satchel milk, sweets, spoon and fork set, chocolate bars, pit wipes, mobile phone , relevant tablets to see them through the day , scratch card for downtime, pkt sugar, , coffee, pen and paper, business cards, clean pair socks, face cloth , mini micro- filament towel, a pocket for rubbish , collapsible chair, one man tent and of course standard stuff such as bullets, pepper spray, cartridges, gun barrel cleaner

but if Congress ‘ rules against Trump’s re the Greenland issue can be then claim some ancient ‘wording’ to over-ride it and go ahead anyway. And if found later that he BROKE THE LAW the damage is already done. It would be like the illegal exporting suspected illegals to EL Salvador

Ok. That would suggest that they will be still be 'left behind' in 3 years time when the next election rolls around. Surely their status will not change much and they will abandon Trump & Co. Perhaps they will go even more extreme or splinter.

In the 2024 POTUS election, the only demographic that CFTrump won, was non-college educated white males. That's who put him in power. Women voted for Harris. Minorities voted for Harris. But, non-college educated white males, if they dominate an electoral district (state) voting, were key for Trump.

I read part of a book called "White Rural Rage" which somewhat explained why; yes, they're left behind, and yes, their areas are screwed by immigration no matter legal or not, plus their states lose population because they're economic backwaters. Basically, any state dependent on 'natural resource' things like farming or mining or oil drilling are doing poorly. Then there's the media machine that stirs the resentment 24x7 and dimwit comments like "basket of deplorables" feeding their narrative.

When HRC lost in 2016, at least 1 analyst I remember saying, "What did she have for the out of work steelworker in Ohio?"

Trump had lies, Hillary didn't even bother to out-lie him.

Oh, and time has shown they like their Obamacare, most have no other healthcare insurance. IMO the problem is the whole system is stil based on private insurance unless you're 65+. Even the current kerfuffle over extending subsidies won't fix that, just take it off the boiler for a few years. There's a pretty good chance the subsidies aren't extended, maybe that'll finally force the US to come to grips with the problem like they should have in 2008.

I don't think it's authoritarian to block x from Europe....it could be done as a mental health initiative

Watched a movie the other day with an interesting, in the current climate, concept behind it. Basis of the story was that someone high in the US government was trying to stir up conflict with Russia. His reasoning was that 50% of Americans hated the other 50%. While the cold war was going on, and subsequent conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan etc, they all had something bigger to hate, once they didn't, they started to turn on each other and were splitting the US apart.

It would most definitely not be authoritarian. If it was done in the right way. We are no longer at the precipice as a society, we have fallen over but are still clinging to the edge.

AI is gaining the ability to massively and irrefutably distort and disguise reality in a way we will not be even able to identify.

I listened to the News Agents this week and they were discussing the behaviour of Grok and Lewis Goodall pretty much intimated that we Musk is too powerful for countries such as the UK to react appropriately to hold him and his technology to account for what they are doing.

In the past, newspapers would have been held accountable for the content they published, now Grok is not only allowing the publishing of such content, but it's creation. It is horrific how bad this can get without appropriate legislation and how far we are from appropriate legislation.

Remember, Donald Trump signed an executive order banning states from legislating against AI. This is why he did that, because they know the monster they have created, and they don't want it controlled by anyone, except them.

Looks like one of those 'think tanks' - Chatham House - have actually provided some useful analysis for once:

Donald Trump has ended the western alliance, requiring the UK to adopt a bolder, more independent foreign policy towards the US and China, the director of Britain’s most prestigious foreign policy thinktank has said.

Delivering her analysis in her annual lecture, Bronwen Maddox, the director of Chatham House, said: “The risk of staying silent and not standing up for the principles that have underpinned the liberal international order is that those principles do indeed become an article of history and not the foundation of the world we want to live in.”

She added: “The UK has performed a balancing act of some agility but to the point where it is hard to discern the policy.”

Maddox described Trump’s impulsiveness, taste for military action and rejection of international law as amounting to a revolution. She said US allies “must now contemplate what was unthinkable: to defend themselves against the US, in both trade and security”.

“It is not grandiose to call this the end of the western alliance,” she said, in the sense of countries “sharing principles of individual liberty, intellectual and religious freedom, constitutional democracy and free trade at their heart”. Maddox said these principles “have been the engine of their prosperity as well as the rationale for their global influence”.

She said in recent months we had seen “the rejection of principles of international law that the US helped forge – even if it often declined to apply those to itself”.

“Venezuela is the latest example,” Maddox said. “Trump’s intention to acquire Greenland is an offence against the UN charter and the prohibition on taking territory by force. If he did so by using force, as his team has threatened, it would be the end of Nato.”

In an interview with the Guardian, Maddox said one of the tasks of Chatham House would be to champion the need for new alliances and pacts in which countries stood up for principles that the superpowers were shredding.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jan/13/end-of-western-alliance-trump-uk-chatham-house-director