Great to see the US is asserting its control over the Straight of Hormuz. Just like Iran "asserted control" by threats with missiles, we now assert control in the same fashion with our navy. Crazy! :)
The US is shooting down its citizens, blockading vital commerce routes, and accumulating a dangerous amount of nuclear weapons. It seems ripe for regime change.
Iran has murdered over 30,000 of its own citizens for peacefully protesting. The US has not done that, nor have we "shot down" our citizens.
> blockading vital commerce routes
Yes, this is in response to the Iranian regime's attempts to hold global trade hostage for their own benefit and enrichment - i.e. if you pay the regime ransom money you can purchase oil, but that is not acceptable so we will not allow it. Unfortunately, the United States yet again has to bail out the rest of the world.
> and accumulating a dangerous amount of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons are dangerous, for sure. That's why Iran can't be allowed to posses one.
> It seems ripe for regime change.
Usually every four years we select a new President. Every 2 years we hold elections and usually we select new Senators or members of the House of Representatives. Iranians, unfortunately, just live under a brutal military dictatorship without the possibility of regime change despite their ever-increasing desire and need.
> Iran has murdered over 30,000 of its own citizens for peacefully protesting. The US has not done that, nor have we "shot down" our citizens.
The US has incarcerated ~1.2 million people. Just the year, agents of the U.S. government executed two citizens in broad daylight caught by dozens of cameras, it was national news in both cases.
So what? We have a lot of crazy people that live here.
> Just the year, agents of the U.S. government executed two citizens in broad daylight caught by dozens of cameras, it was national news in both cases. You say Tomato I say Tomato.
Yea, 2 people killed in highly volatile situations and the entire country flipped out over it (as we should have) and caused the person in charge to be fired and Iran’s government literally ordered soldiers with machine guns to fire indiscriminately toward protestors and killed over 30,000 people and the government faced no repercussions.
And you actually believe those are equivalent? Sorry but that’s just good ole’ fashioned bull shit.
> Unfortunately, the United States yet again has to bail out the rest of the world.
You mean like the one last time where they fought the war on terrorism in Afghanistan for the rest of the world and where it took them 20 years to replace the Taliban with … ehm … the Taliban?
Yea, maybe the rest of the world should have pitched in to make sure little girls can get jobs and an education instead of mocking the United States from their irrelevant sidelines? Maybe another UN resolution will do the trick. Or perhaps Spain can send some soldiers? Maybe Germany will send them helmets. China and Russia certainly don’t care.
I have a conspiracy-adjacent question. Let’s say your goal was to reduce globalization, but tariffs were too unpopular a way to do so. They too directly put the blame on the president for what happens.
Would starting a war with Iran, shocking energy and transportation prices, raising the costs of exports from every other country be a more solid mechanism? Especially when the US is a net exporter from oil and could conceivably protect domestic industries from the same?
It also - if Trump loses the presidency, the Iran war impacts will continue for years, the impact of tariffs would end relatively quickly.
>> tariffs... too directly put the blame on the president. Would starting a war with Iran... be a more solid mechanism?
War puts the blame on the president even more directly.
>> Especially when the US is a net exporter from oil and could conceivably protect domestic industries from the same?
The US is a huge net importer of goods. The oil surplus is rather small, has been recorded only for the last 3 years and it can't meaningfully change the US balance of trade.
> shocking energy and transportation prices, raising the costs of exports from every other country... and the US could conceivably protect domestic industries from the same?
Nothing will be protected, quite the opposite, the US will be the country hardest hit by inflation because, given the huge net imports, we are the country that benefits the most from unimpeded trade and lower cost of production in other countries.
Trumps tariffs didn't decrease the trade deficit, in fact the deficit for 2025 was significantly higher than the pre-covid 2019. The deficits for Feb and Mar 2025 were the highest monthly deficits in history, beating the previous records by almost 100%.
>> Let’s say your goal was to reduce globalization
"reducing globalization" is a meaningless term, reducing the standard of living is what matters, choking international trade will cause higher reduction in the US than in other countries.
> I mean it’s high risk and maybe dumb, but I wouldn’t put it past the current thought leaders to turn against traditional free market ideology.
"Ideology" is a fig leaf, what matters is the money and power in the hands of the most special interest groups, it's a small club and you ain't in it.
Trump decided to bomb Iran because Netanyahu told him that it'd be cool if he did it. He didn't have a coherent plan beyond "bombs cool." This is why we got the rapidly changing and totally incoherent set of plans for the war and the strategic objectives.
Trump is incapable of understanding that he isn't winning at something. So we are getting a "no, fuck you" response. The most thought I could possibly imagine going into this is that Trump has seen that it is possible to extract wealth from shipping lanes and just decided that he deserves that now.
Thinking too small. Look at the opportunity cost incurred by over focusing the military on Iran. That's force and munitions not going to Ukraine, not usable to protect Taiwan, the extension of hostilities will be essentially the equivalent of an attack on our NATO and SEA allies, if they can't get their shipping through the Strait. Russian oil is no longer sanctioned by the U.S... This is Putin's wet dream. The unmaking of NATO played out in realtime. Our President could not be a more transparent Russian asset if he tried. With every day, those in the Kremlin are probably rejoicing at this ally they've found they don't even need to seemingly pressure to do their bidding. Even if this is all coincidence and it's really just his dementia driving this.
I hope everyone who voted for him is really happy with what they're getting.
This assumes the American system survives intact until then, which is likely, but no longer feels guaranteed. Let’s see how the midterms go, if Trump is able to get away with throwing out results in states that don’t like him, we are in serious trouble.
I just wonder if all he wanted was another trinket gifting ceremony in his office with "the CEO of Iran", and he thought everything he's approved was strictly for show. That seem to explain a lot of his visible confusions and weird messaging, to me...
So the problem of skyrocketing oil prices because of the Iranian control of Hormuz will be solved by a blockade, which will prevent even more oil from reaching the market. Nobody is
1) this stupid to do it
2) this stupid to bite on this threat
What an utterly pathetic man. He gave away the Strait of Hormuz to Iran with an ill-conceived plan. Even the US military-intelligence community had long thought attacking Iran a poor idea, and that's really saying something! And now instead of taking his licks and finding some way to downplay a swift loss to an elective way, his new genius response is to commit an act of war against the same countries Iran is attacking?
The interesting bit to me is that everybody just plays along. Rather than that he gets thrown off his perch and replaced by someone sane. Trump is an idiot, no doubt about it. But all those that voted for him and that continue to enable him are the bigger idiots, and if they're not idiots they are probably hoping to profit from the chaos he's creating.
That's because chaos is a good time to do some grabbing. You could see this during the downfall of the former Soviet Union, which in spite of being dirt poor still made a handful of families obscenely wealthy. Now imagine being able to do a similar resource grab on the scale of the modern United States.
Trump 1, COVID, Trump 2, the Russian war on Ukraine, AI and a couple of more wars... It's a miracle things haven't gone further down - yet. But I'm really wondering how long our social constructs will be able to withstand this kind of concerted assault.
> Trump is an idiot, no doubt about it. But all those that voted for him and that continue to enable him are the bigger idiots, and if they're not idiots they are probably hoping to profit from the chaos he's creating.
For all the assurances that the US military is an army with the ultimate task to protect the Constitution and bound to democratic principles, they sure seem to view the Commander in Chief as the sole authority, even if his orders are evidently illegal or undermine the democratic system (because Congress was bypassed).
As the war is currently going, I'd have expected at least some generals or officers to refuse orders, not because they suddenly switched sides, but simply because the orders are not democratically legitimized anymore. But nothing like this seems to have happened so far.
Oh, I think that has definitely happened. A lot of very high placed career military have been fired recently and even if they're not saying much the fact that it happened speaks volumes. These were people with decades of service. I think at least some fraction of those firings was because of refusal to carry out certain orders.
What they should do is speak out, but possibly their future income depends on not speaking out.
Start with ICE please. If you are in the country illegally, ICE is according to constitution-backed laws, the enforcement agency tasked with removing you. Do you disagree? Or is the problem their methods in some cases. I ask because the latter issue is often used as a motte and bailey for the prior.
Their methods are not a motte and bailey, but rather a fundamental demonstration about how they've been put above straightforward Constitutional law. When I see the thugs who murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti behind bars, then I will start entertaining the idea any of this is about immigration enforcement.
Sorry if this sounds ghoulish that's not my intent but that's two out of tens of thousands of immigration enforcement actions. Police brutality occurs during the apprehension of rapists, thieves etc. but we don't question the validity of rape, theft policing do we? Well there was the ACAB crowd but judging by my last local election (all Democrats fyi) they are backpedaling furiously now.
I'm not questioning the validity of what they're claiming to police, I'm questioning why the overt capital criminality we do know about has gone unprosecuted and unpunished. If a city only had one murder in a whole year, and they knew who the perp was but refused to arrest and prosecute, would you call that sensible policy?
European here, so I can only judge this from afar, but "Autopen" wasn't even an option anymore. And by now, honestly, Harris looks like she'd have been the WAY saner option.
(And, the US being the US, the choice of the President has direct consequences for the rest of the world - so from the PoV of European interests, Harris would definitely have been the better choice)
But yeah, the underlying problem seems to be the electoral system and the general undermining of democratic structures that already started way before Trump. An election in which there are only two (practical) choices, one of them openly insane, is not a useful election anymore.
Isn’t expecting American voters to worry about the consequences to Europe also an erosion of democracy? MAGA is just the latest incarnation of a deep isolationist trend in American politics that goes back to the WW1 era at least. The Western project was an elite one and now the elite is discredited by both the Right and Left.
As I mentioned before, I live in a blue state and most people I know voted for Harris. But I would say 9 out of 10 did because they felt they had to not because they wanted to. The governing structure of the Democratic party has not changed and still favors identity over mundane factors like competence or electability. And Europes needs are not high in the priorities of American identity politics sorry.
"Once America denounces it's superpower status and 'leader of the free world' image..."
That's exactly what a large part of MAGA want! America First and the rest of the world be damned. I don't think that's realistic and Trump himself doesn't I don't think.
> Democratic party ... still favors identity over mundane factors like competence
You really need to actually read what you write to realize how drunk on the Trump distortion field you are. Trump's entire schtick is identity politics - being a popular low-intelligence trashy white guy who poor trashy white guys will think "he's one of us". You really cannot hang your hat on a critique of "competence" here after the jamoke just gave away the Strait of Hormuz to Iran. Harris, which really means the bureaucratic group project that Harris would have continued, would most certainly not have done something so abjectly incompetent.
As a libertarian I'll criticize the Democratic party, their policies, and their groupthink all day long. But thinking that any of that criticism implies an alternative of burning our society down is rooted in pure nihilism.
It never was, it was just a trial run to see whether Trump's private army is going to be obeying orders or not. So far the results are nothing to be happy about. What is fascinating is how the media still whitewashes it all. ICE detention centers -> concentration camps. They're not 'vernichtungslager' yet but who knows, we might still get there, there are enough people that have dehumanized immigrants (illegal or otherwise) to the point that I would not be surprised at all if at some point more drastic attempts for a final solution will be tabled. I don't trust that slimy asshole Miller at all. It always starts with registries, then there is detention, then deportation and finally murder. And they've already shown they are very capable of the latter, the only word still missing is 'mass'.
> CECOT does not engage in rehabilitation. Few inmates have been released from the facility and authorities have said in media statements that there are no plans to release any other prisoners.
I was talking about the Democratic party. The appropriate comparison would be to the Republican party. I 100% agree Trump himself practices identity politics. That was the innovation that helped him beat establishment rivals in 2016. But I would argue even then there is a distinction. The Trump vision is an American civic identity as opposed to Democrat demographic identities. Complicating things is that American civic identity historically overlaps quite strongly with white identity which is convenient but they are still two separate things (even though some of his supporters might wish otherwise.) that's why he has done better with non-white voters than any Republican candidate for a long time.
> To another point (I’m a three time Trump voter in a solidly blue state fyi) the point of electing him in the first place was to assault “our” (i.e. your) social constructs. The MAGA critique of Trump is he is not being concerted enough.
I don't think that's true at all. That's just the button he pushes to get elected but he doesn't care even a tiny little bit about that. All he cares about is for you to vote for him and to give him what he wants: access to the levers of power, so he and his cronies get to enrich themselves at your expense.
The idea that Trump cares about voters is so hilarious that I'm not sure where exactly you got that, he doesn't care about the voters at all, just about their votes. That's a huge difference.
That you fall for this - and three times to boot - is on you, not on Trump.
Note how now that he is in power that 'civic identity' doesn't matter at all.
It's going to be a rude awakening when the bill is presented, but you are going to have to own it.
I'm somewhat with you on that one. I think a lot of the problems that mainstream Democrats are trying to address are real (climate change is real, as is racial and sexual discrimination, etc). However, they seem to try and solve all the discrimination problems using a sort of unified framework - intersectionality - that essentially seems to cast everything into "oppressed" and "oppressor" groups and make a point of applying different standards to them. This seems almost like the canonical recipe of how to escalate conflicts between groups instead of solving them. I've always found that a glaring open flank on the left, which the right of course wastes no time in exploiting.
But it's only that - exploitation. It's what Trump based his campaign on, but if you see what he is actually doing and who was supporting his campaign - like the Heritage foundation and the Project 2025 plan, lots of pro-Israel evangelicals, etc - you see that his actual plans went MUCH further.
(Ironically, he exploited the pro-Palestine voter base with the same trick, by courting pro-palestinian voters from Michigan and pretending to be the "lesser evil" vs Biden/Harris in the Gaza war. We saw how that went...)
> I was talking about the Democratic party. The appropriate comparison would be to the Republican party
The issue isn't that you're making a comparison, but rather the fallacy that indicting the Democratic party implies one should support the Republican party.
> The Trump vision is an American civic identity
It's nonsensical to talk about a civic identity based around a movement that is in fact destroying all of our institutions. Where is the pride of US universities and scientific research? Where is the pride of welcoming visitors to our country to share in what we have, our natural wonders and cities? Where is the pride in our self-declared natural rights, like protesting and carrying firearms? Where is the pride in the concept of the rule of law and a government subservient to its citizens? Where is the pride in a justice system that applies to government agents itself, from law enforcement officers on up to the President? Where is the pride of having a leader who is articulate and intelligent? Where is the pride at being the leader of the Western World that at least tries to live up to ideals like liberty and democracy?
All of these things have been othered as "woke/liberal/etc" and subsequently smashed to bits by the Trumpist movement! You yourself are trashing that last one in this very thread! So we're supposed to imagine some restored civic identity ultimately rooted in ... nothing?
At best this is a case of a movement running on fumes of what used to be, wanting to be proud for simply existing - the boomers' participation trophy applied to the decades of self-defeating politics pumped out by reactionary talk radio. But in reality, anybody who is not mesmerized by this intrinsically self-contradictory movement is extremely worried about where this demand for empty (ie false) pride goes as the things to actually be proud of continue to dwindle - because we've most certainly seen this pattern throughout history.
"Harris, which really means the bureaucratic group project that Harris would have continued"
Is that what we're voting for now? A completely interchangeable figurehead that just covers for a bureaucratic group project?
"Deep state" type conspiracy theories which would have been relegated to frothing Qanon types 20 years ago are prevalent amongst even progressive now. Perhaps this explains it. If so, nihilism is a rational response.
> Is that what we're voting for now? A completely interchangeable figurehead that just covers for a bureaucratic group project?
I mean, yes? Technically, you're not even electing a group, let alone a person, but a party.
I know politicians themselves love to turn this into a question of "personality" (with the press amply helping), but it seems more rational to look at which administration is elected and which groups/orgs/donors/etc are backing it, than debate which candidate can simulate the best smalltalk or do the most spectacular campaign rally.
I tuned into the deep state concept reading Moldbug (Yarvin) in his salad days. My take away was much different way than most people's, apparently.
As I said, I'm a libertarian. I've been criticizing bureaucratic authoritarianism for decades now. But I'll be damned if idly stand by while what we take for granted is replaced with autocratic authoritarianism.
So yes when you put those two options in front of me, I am going to vote for the system that at least tries to keep the authoritarian power constrained.
Oh no! She laughed funny! Better elect the guy who unironically believed that immigrants were eating pets, is an abject failure economically, started yet another war solely so his buddies could benefit on insider trades, set tariffs on penguins because he’s too stupid to pay attention to anything that isn’t about him, is trying to create millions of stateless people because his idiot, weaponized base thinks brown people are bad, is clearly and obviously mentally incapacitated and has been since his first term, and after ~10 years still only has “concepts” of a healthcare plan!
But hey, at least you made some imaginary libs cry because you’re mad that people think you’re a jerk when you don’t use their preferred name and you have Big Opinions about women’s sports in spite of never watching them. I’m sure you pretend to be a Christian at Christmas and Easter, too.
I don't know man... this isn't my site but if it would be the banhammer would be applied fairly liberally to those that are still hopelessly addicted to the kool-aid and that use HN exclusively for political debate and pushing their talking points, which is not what it is for. If by now you are still on the Trump bandwagon I'm really not sure what drives you but you can at least try to make an effort to understand why some people might be a tad frustrated with your glorious leader and his hangers on. Even a blind person (with apologies to the blind) could see that this is not going well.
In a way the hangers on and enablers are worse: I suspect Trump is not 100% in control of his faculties anymore (which is a pity, because that sets the stage for an insanity plea). But I am assuming that you are so you don't get that excuse.
And 'cackles and autopen' does not set the stage for having a discussion that is had at a higher level than schoolyard insults so I think you lost the high ground right there. You seem to think this is some kind of game where there is winning and losing and you think that 'your team' is winning, what you fail to notice is that everybody including you is losing, and that only a handful - of which you are not one - are making out like bandits.
Ok Harris and Walz then. I'm not offended by "orange man" etc. which you frequently see here but keeping things at a grown up level is good too. I was specifically responding to you wondering aloud why he hasn't been replaced and why people who (in your opinion) should know better go along with him. I gave some reasons why. To recap:
1. Internationally there is currently no alternative to the US as a superpower and Trump is the leader of the US.
2. Domestically he continues to have a substantial constituency. Some of his polices actually poll better than he does.
3. The potential replacement cannot merely "resist"; they have to actually get elected and that requires having a vision that the electorate endorses.
And I would add:
4. Most (or let's say enough) Americans don't feel they are losing as you put it.
I believe you when you say you would like to apply the banhammer liberally (haha!) but so you know I come to HN for tech news. Looking at my comment history I do have a lot of political ones but it is in the hopes that I have contributed something to the conversation. Of course whether I succeeded is for the readers to decide.
> Internationally there is currently no alternative to the US as a superpower and Trump is the leader of the US.
You may not have noticed, but that is changing very rapidly.
> Domestically he continues to have a substantial constituency. Some of his polices actually poll better than he does.
Indeed. Mind boggling, but then again, in many ways not surprising, after all, if Trump 1 wasn't enough to making you think twice about voting for him again probably nothing will.
> The potential replacement cannot merely "resist"; they have to actually get elected and that requires having a vision that the electorate endorses.
Yes, here's my proposed vision for the electorate: normal. All this megalomaniacal nonsense is just causing more and more problems, both inside the USA and outside of it and unfortunately we don't get to vote in US elections but we do end up living with the consequences.
> Most (or let's say enough) Americans don't feel they are losing as you put it.
Give it more time. Clearly, there is some degree of insulation from the consequences, but I'd love to have an actual seance with one of the Founding Fathers that the USA so reveres to get their $0.02 on whether or not this is what they were aiming for. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think the answer might surprise the MAGA's.
Nice you caught the pun and thank you for making a move in the right direction with respect to the level of conversation, it's appreciated.
If the worst thing you can say about Harris is that she laughed funny, then she was certainly better and more qualified than Trump, who is known to be a paedophile and a rapist, among other things, though importantly also clearly mentally retarded at this point judging by his inability to speak and form coherent sentences. And I personally doubt Harris would have started this retarded war with Iran.
Then whose ships are left? The US doesn’t have any. If you think Iran will just sell oil to China and India (gentle reminder Iran is with Russia against Ukraine) and somehow the Gulf States and Europe won’t get theirs, the US will just blow up Iran’s oil exporting capacity and then nobody gets oil.
The rest of the world better start figuring out how to pressure Iran or take military action against Iran, or the whole Gulf is going to shut down and America isn’t hurt that bad besides MAGA not being able to fill up their giant trucks.
Interesting times intensifies.
USA is racing with Iran who can get to 200USD per barrel faster.
Asia is already in trouble on account of this, that won't go much further without something breaking.
https://www.osac.gov/Content/Report/910d11da-595a-40a4-836c-...
It’s a great opening for Chinese EV and green energy tech producers.
Great to see the US is asserting its control over the Straight of Hormuz. Just like Iran "asserted control" by threats with missiles, we now assert control in the same fashion with our navy. Crazy! :)
The US is shooting down its citizens, blockading vital commerce routes, and accumulating a dangerous amount of nuclear weapons. It seems ripe for regime change.
> The US is shooting down its citizens
Iran has murdered over 30,000 of its own citizens for peacefully protesting. The US has not done that, nor have we "shot down" our citizens.
> blockading vital commerce routes
Yes, this is in response to the Iranian regime's attempts to hold global trade hostage for their own benefit and enrichment - i.e. if you pay the regime ransom money you can purchase oil, but that is not acceptable so we will not allow it. Unfortunately, the United States yet again has to bail out the rest of the world.
> and accumulating a dangerous amount of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons are dangerous, for sure. That's why Iran can't be allowed to posses one.
> It seems ripe for regime change.
Usually every four years we select a new President. Every 2 years we hold elections and usually we select new Senators or members of the House of Representatives. Iranians, unfortunately, just live under a brutal military dictatorship without the possibility of regime change despite their ever-increasing desire and need.
> Iran has murdered over 30,000 of its own citizens for peacefully protesting. The US has not done that, nor have we "shot down" our citizens.
The US has incarcerated ~1.2 million people. Just the year, agents of the U.S. government executed two citizens in broad daylight caught by dozens of cameras, it was national news in both cases.
You say Tomato I say Tomato.
> The US has incarcerated ~1.2 million people.
So what? We have a lot of crazy people that live here.
> Just the year, agents of the U.S. government executed two citizens in broad daylight caught by dozens of cameras, it was national news in both cases. You say Tomato I say Tomato.
Yea, 2 people killed in highly volatile situations and the entire country flipped out over it (as we should have) and caused the person in charge to be fired and Iran’s government literally ordered soldiers with machine guns to fire indiscriminately toward protestors and killed over 30,000 people and the government faced no repercussions.
And you actually believe those are equivalent? Sorry but that’s just good ole’ fashioned bull shit.
> Unfortunately, the United States yet again has to bail out the rest of the world.
You mean like the one last time where they fought the war on terrorism in Afghanistan for the rest of the world and where it took them 20 years to replace the Taliban with … ehm … the Taliban?
Yea, maybe the rest of the world should have pitched in to make sure little girls can get jobs and an education instead of mocking the United States from their irrelevant sidelines? Maybe another UN resolution will do the trick. Or perhaps Spain can send some soldiers? Maybe Germany will send them helmets. China and Russia certainly don’t care.
I have a conspiracy-adjacent question. Let’s say your goal was to reduce globalization, but tariffs were too unpopular a way to do so. They too directly put the blame on the president for what happens.
Would starting a war with Iran, shocking energy and transportation prices, raising the costs of exports from every other country be a more solid mechanism? Especially when the US is a net exporter from oil and could conceivably protect domestic industries from the same?
It also - if Trump loses the presidency, the Iran war impacts will continue for years, the impact of tariffs would end relatively quickly.
> Especially when the US is a net exporter from oil and could conceivably protect domestic industries from the same?
The oil companies would likely be extremely unhappy if they were not permitted to export their products.
True I mean it’s high risk and maybe dumb, but I wouldn’t put it past the current thought leaders to turn against traditional free market ideology.
>> tariffs... too directly put the blame on the president. Would starting a war with Iran... be a more solid mechanism?
War puts the blame on the president even more directly.
>> Especially when the US is a net exporter from oil and could conceivably protect domestic industries from the same?
The US is a huge net importer of goods. The oil surplus is rather small, has been recorded only for the last 3 years and it can't meaningfully change the US balance of trade.
> shocking energy and transportation prices, raising the costs of exports from every other country... and the US could conceivably protect domestic industries from the same?
Nothing will be protected, quite the opposite, the US will be the country hardest hit by inflation because, given the huge net imports, we are the country that benefits the most from unimpeded trade and lower cost of production in other countries.
Trumps tariffs didn't decrease the trade deficit, in fact the deficit for 2025 was significantly higher than the pre-covid 2019. The deficits for Feb and Mar 2025 were the highest monthly deficits in history, beating the previous records by almost 100%.
>> Let’s say your goal was to reduce globalization
"reducing globalization" is a meaningless term, reducing the standard of living is what matters, choking international trade will cause higher reduction in the US than in other countries.
> I mean it’s high risk and maybe dumb, but I wouldn’t put it past the current thought leaders to turn against traditional free market ideology.
"Ideology" is a fig leaf, what matters is the money and power in the hands of the most special interest groups, it's a small club and you ain't in it.
Trump doesn't think like this.
Trump decided to bomb Iran because Netanyahu told him that it'd be cool if he did it. He didn't have a coherent plan beyond "bombs cool." This is why we got the rapidly changing and totally incoherent set of plans for the war and the strategic objectives.
Trump is incapable of understanding that he isn't winning at something. So we are getting a "no, fuck you" response. The most thought I could possibly imagine going into this is that Trump has seen that it is possible to extract wealth from shipping lanes and just decided that he deserves that now.
Thinking too small. Look at the opportunity cost incurred by over focusing the military on Iran. That's force and munitions not going to Ukraine, not usable to protect Taiwan, the extension of hostilities will be essentially the equivalent of an attack on our NATO and SEA allies, if they can't get their shipping through the Strait. Russian oil is no longer sanctioned by the U.S... This is Putin's wet dream. The unmaking of NATO played out in realtime. Our President could not be a more transparent Russian asset if he tried. With every day, those in the Kremlin are probably rejoicing at this ally they've found they don't even need to seemingly pressure to do their bidding. Even if this is all coincidence and it's really just his dementia driving this.
I hope everyone who voted for him is really happy with what they're getting.
Trump's a lame duck. He's out January 2029 with the next inauguration.
This assumes the American system survives intact until then, which is likely, but no longer feels guaranteed. Let’s see how the midterms go, if Trump is able to get away with throwing out results in states that don’t like him, we are in serious trouble.
I just wonder if all he wanted was another trinket gifting ceremony in his office with "the CEO of Iran", and he thought everything he's approved was strictly for show. That seem to explain a lot of his visible confusions and weird messaging, to me...
Are we allied with Iran now?
No. Trump is only allied with himself and associates who keep placing "insightful" bets on Polymarket.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/08/newly-created-polym...
There's a comedy sketch in there somewhere. I expect it'll be called the Straits of Trump soon.
So the problem of skyrocketing oil prices because of the Iranian control of Hormuz will be solved by a blockade, which will prevent even more oil from reaching the market. Nobody is 1) this stupid to do it 2) this stupid to bite on this threat
At this point I'm skeptical enough to believe this is yet another attempt at market manipulation.
Trump pulling an Uno Reverse and feeling very smart about it?
The whole thing has "You are not divorcing with me, I am divorcing with you" vibes.
Indeed, it is pathetic.
Random US soldier: "Are we the baddies?"
Iran is far from being the good guys, but I cannot see the US as the good guys here either.
There doesn’t have to be a good guy
so now iran’s allies need to get their oil elsewhere. could only mean one thing for prices.
What an utterly pathetic man. He gave away the Strait of Hormuz to Iran with an ill-conceived plan. Even the US military-intelligence community had long thought attacking Iran a poor idea, and that's really saying something! And now instead of taking his licks and finding some way to downplay a swift loss to an elective way, his new genius response is to commit an act of war against the same countries Iran is attacking?
The interesting bit to me is that everybody just plays along. Rather than that he gets thrown off his perch and replaced by someone sane. Trump is an idiot, no doubt about it. But all those that voted for him and that continue to enable him are the bigger idiots, and if they're not idiots they are probably hoping to profit from the chaos he's creating.
That's because chaos is a good time to do some grabbing. You could see this during the downfall of the former Soviet Union, which in spite of being dirt poor still made a handful of families obscenely wealthy. Now imagine being able to do a similar resource grab on the scale of the modern United States.
Trump 1, COVID, Trump 2, the Russian war on Ukraine, AI and a couple of more wars... It's a miracle things haven't gone further down - yet. But I'm really wondering how long our social constructs will be able to withstand this kind of concerted assault.
> Trump is an idiot, no doubt about it. But all those that voted for him and that continue to enable him are the bigger idiots, and if they're not idiots they are probably hoping to profit from the chaos he's creating.
For all the assurances that the US military is an army with the ultimate task to protect the Constitution and bound to democratic principles, they sure seem to view the Commander in Chief as the sole authority, even if his orders are evidently illegal or undermine the democratic system (because Congress was bypassed).
As the war is currently going, I'd have expected at least some generals or officers to refuse orders, not because they suddenly switched sides, but simply because the orders are not democratically legitimized anymore. But nothing like this seems to have happened so far.
(Not even starting with ICE...)
Oh, I think that has definitely happened. A lot of very high placed career military have been fired recently and even if they're not saying much the fact that it happened speaks volumes. These were people with decades of service. I think at least some fraction of those firings was because of refusal to carry out certain orders.
What they should do is speak out, but possibly their future income depends on not speaking out.
Start with ICE please. If you are in the country illegally, ICE is according to constitution-backed laws, the enforcement agency tasked with removing you. Do you disagree? Or is the problem their methods in some cases. I ask because the latter issue is often used as a motte and bailey for the prior.
Their methods are not a motte and bailey, but rather a fundamental demonstration about how they've been put above straightforward Constitutional law. When I see the thugs who murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti behind bars, then I will start entertaining the idea any of this is about immigration enforcement.
Sorry if this sounds ghoulish that's not my intent but that's two out of tens of thousands of immigration enforcement actions. Police brutality occurs during the apprehension of rapists, thieves etc. but we don't question the validity of rape, theft policing do we? Well there was the ACAB crowd but judging by my last local election (all Democrats fyi) they are backpedaling furiously now.
I'm not questioning the validity of what they're claiming to police, I'm questioning why the overt capital criminality we do know about has gone unprosecuted and unpunished. If a city only had one murder in a whole year, and they knew who the perp was but refused to arrest and prosecute, would you call that sensible policy?
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European here, so I can only judge this from afar, but "Autopen" wasn't even an option anymore. And by now, honestly, Harris looks like she'd have been the WAY saner option.
(And, the US being the US, the choice of the President has direct consequences for the rest of the world - so from the PoV of European interests, Harris would definitely have been the better choice)
But yeah, the underlying problem seems to be the electoral system and the general undermining of democratic structures that already started way before Trump. An election in which there are only two (practical) choices, one of them openly insane, is not a useful election anymore.
Isn’t expecting American voters to worry about the consequences to Europe also an erosion of democracy? MAGA is just the latest incarnation of a deep isolationist trend in American politics that goes back to the WW1 era at least. The Western project was an elite one and now the elite is discredited by both the Right and Left.
As I mentioned before, I live in a blue state and most people I know voted for Harris. But I would say 9 out of 10 did because they felt they had to not because they wanted to. The governing structure of the Democratic party has not changed and still favors identity over mundane factors like competence or electability. And Europes needs are not high in the priorities of American identity politics sorry.
> Isn’t expecting American voters to worry about the consequences to Europe also an erosion of democracy.
Once America denounces its superpower status and "leader of the free world" image, you will be right.
Until then, it's "with great power comes great responsibility" (or, well, should at least. Evidently in reality, it doesn't)
"Once America denounces it's superpower status and 'leader of the free world' image..."
That's exactly what a large part of MAGA want! America First and the rest of the world be damned. I don't think that's realistic and Trump himself doesn't I don't think.
> Democratic party ... still favors identity over mundane factors like competence
You really need to actually read what you write to realize how drunk on the Trump distortion field you are. Trump's entire schtick is identity politics - being a popular low-intelligence trashy white guy who poor trashy white guys will think "he's one of us". You really cannot hang your hat on a critique of "competence" here after the jamoke just gave away the Strait of Hormuz to Iran. Harris, which really means the bureaucratic group project that Harris would have continued, would most certainly not have done something so abjectly incompetent.
As a libertarian I'll criticize the Democratic party, their policies, and their groupthink all day long. But thinking that any of that criticism implies an alternative of burning our society down is rooted in pure nihilism.
It never was, it was just a trial run to see whether Trump's private army is going to be obeying orders or not. So far the results are nothing to be happy about. What is fascinating is how the media still whitewashes it all. ICE detention centers -> concentration camps. They're not 'vernichtungslager' yet but who knows, we might still get there, there are enough people that have dehumanized immigrants (illegal or otherwise) to the point that I would not be surprised at all if at some point more drastic attempts for a final solution will be tabled. I don't trust that slimy asshole Miller at all. It always starts with registries, then there is detention, then deportation and finally murder. And they've already shown they are very capable of the latter, the only word still missing is 'mass'.
Or he just outsources them to some buddies of his: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_Confinement_Center
> CECOT does not engage in rehabilitation. Few inmates have been released from the facility and authorities have said in media statements that there are no plans to release any other prisoners.
I was talking about the Democratic party. The appropriate comparison would be to the Republican party. I 100% agree Trump himself practices identity politics. That was the innovation that helped him beat establishment rivals in 2016. But I would argue even then there is a distinction. The Trump vision is an American civic identity as opposed to Democrat demographic identities. Complicating things is that American civic identity historically overlaps quite strongly with white identity which is convenient but they are still two separate things (even though some of his supporters might wish otherwise.) that's why he has done better with non-white voters than any Republican candidate for a long time.
> To another point (I’m a three time Trump voter in a solidly blue state fyi) the point of electing him in the first place was to assault “our” (i.e. your) social constructs. The MAGA critique of Trump is he is not being concerted enough.
I don't think that's true at all. That's just the button he pushes to get elected but he doesn't care even a tiny little bit about that. All he cares about is for you to vote for him and to give him what he wants: access to the levers of power, so he and his cronies get to enrich themselves at your expense.
The idea that Trump cares about voters is so hilarious that I'm not sure where exactly you got that, he doesn't care about the voters at all, just about their votes. That's a huge difference.
That you fall for this - and three times to boot - is on you, not on Trump.
Note how now that he is in power that 'civic identity' doesn't matter at all.
It's going to be a rude awakening when the bill is presented, but you are going to have to own it.
I'm somewhat with you on that one. I think a lot of the problems that mainstream Democrats are trying to address are real (climate change is real, as is racial and sexual discrimination, etc). However, they seem to try and solve all the discrimination problems using a sort of unified framework - intersectionality - that essentially seems to cast everything into "oppressed" and "oppressor" groups and make a point of applying different standards to them. This seems almost like the canonical recipe of how to escalate conflicts between groups instead of solving them. I've always found that a glaring open flank on the left, which the right of course wastes no time in exploiting.
But it's only that - exploitation. It's what Trump based his campaign on, but if you see what he is actually doing and who was supporting his campaign - like the Heritage foundation and the Project 2025 plan, lots of pro-Israel evangelicals, etc - you see that his actual plans went MUCH further.
(Ironically, he exploited the pro-Palestine voter base with the same trick, by courting pro-palestinian voters from Michigan and pretending to be the "lesser evil" vs Biden/Harris in the Gaza war. We saw how that went...)
> I was talking about the Democratic party. The appropriate comparison would be to the Republican party
The issue isn't that you're making a comparison, but rather the fallacy that indicting the Democratic party implies one should support the Republican party.
> The Trump vision is an American civic identity
It's nonsensical to talk about a civic identity based around a movement that is in fact destroying all of our institutions. Where is the pride of US universities and scientific research? Where is the pride of welcoming visitors to our country to share in what we have, our natural wonders and cities? Where is the pride in our self-declared natural rights, like protesting and carrying firearms? Where is the pride in the concept of the rule of law and a government subservient to its citizens? Where is the pride in a justice system that applies to government agents itself, from law enforcement officers on up to the President? Where is the pride of having a leader who is articulate and intelligent? Where is the pride at being the leader of the Western World that at least tries to live up to ideals like liberty and democracy?
All of these things have been othered as "woke/liberal/etc" and subsequently smashed to bits by the Trumpist movement! You yourself are trashing that last one in this very thread! So we're supposed to imagine some restored civic identity ultimately rooted in ... nothing?
At best this is a case of a movement running on fumes of what used to be, wanting to be proud for simply existing - the boomers' participation trophy applied to the decades of self-defeating politics pumped out by reactionary talk radio. But in reality, anybody who is not mesmerized by this intrinsically self-contradictory movement is extremely worried about where this demand for empty (ie false) pride goes as the things to actually be proud of continue to dwindle - because we've most certainly seen this pattern throughout history.
I want to touch on one more thing here. You said:
"Harris, which really means the bureaucratic group project that Harris would have continued"
Is that what we're voting for now? A completely interchangeable figurehead that just covers for a bureaucratic group project?
"Deep state" type conspiracy theories which would have been relegated to frothing Qanon types 20 years ago are prevalent amongst even progressive now. Perhaps this explains it. If so, nihilism is a rational response.
> Is that what we're voting for now? A completely interchangeable figurehead that just covers for a bureaucratic group project?
I mean, yes? Technically, you're not even electing a group, let alone a person, but a party.
I know politicians themselves love to turn this into a question of "personality" (with the press amply helping), but it seems more rational to look at which administration is elected and which groups/orgs/donors/etc are backing it, than debate which candidate can simulate the best smalltalk or do the most spectacular campaign rally.
I tuned into the deep state concept reading Moldbug (Yarvin) in his salad days. My take away was much different way than most people's, apparently.
As I said, I'm a libertarian. I've been criticizing bureaucratic authoritarianism for decades now. But I'll be damned if idly stand by while what we take for granted is replaced with autocratic authoritarianism.
So yes when you put those two options in front of me, I am going to vote for the system that at least tries to keep the authoritarian power constrained.
> Cackles and Autopen?
Oh no! She laughed funny! Better elect the guy who unironically believed that immigrants were eating pets, is an abject failure economically, started yet another war solely so his buddies could benefit on insider trades, set tariffs on penguins because he’s too stupid to pay attention to anything that isn’t about him, is trying to create millions of stateless people because his idiot, weaponized base thinks brown people are bad, is clearly and obviously mentally incapacitated and has been since his first term, and after ~10 years still only has “concepts” of a healthcare plan!
But hey, at least you made some imaginary libs cry because you’re mad that people think you’re a jerk when you don’t use their preferred name and you have Big Opinions about women’s sports in spite of never watching them. I’m sure you pretend to be a Christian at Christmas and Easter, too.
While I’m recovering from your devastating critique would you care to share who you think should be president in 2028 and why.
The next US election is 2½ years away. This about what is happening now.
I don't know man... this isn't my site but if it would be the banhammer would be applied fairly liberally to those that are still hopelessly addicted to the kool-aid and that use HN exclusively for political debate and pushing their talking points, which is not what it is for. If by now you are still on the Trump bandwagon I'm really not sure what drives you but you can at least try to make an effort to understand why some people might be a tad frustrated with your glorious leader and his hangers on. Even a blind person (with apologies to the blind) could see that this is not going well.
In a way the hangers on and enablers are worse: I suspect Trump is not 100% in control of his faculties anymore (which is a pity, because that sets the stage for an insanity plea). But I am assuming that you are so you don't get that excuse.
And 'cackles and autopen' does not set the stage for having a discussion that is had at a higher level than schoolyard insults so I think you lost the high ground right there. You seem to think this is some kind of game where there is winning and losing and you think that 'your team' is winning, what you fail to notice is that everybody including you is losing, and that only a handful - of which you are not one - are making out like bandits.
Ok Harris and Walz then. I'm not offended by "orange man" etc. which you frequently see here but keeping things at a grown up level is good too. I was specifically responding to you wondering aloud why he hasn't been replaced and why people who (in your opinion) should know better go along with him. I gave some reasons why. To recap:
1. Internationally there is currently no alternative to the US as a superpower and Trump is the leader of the US.
2. Domestically he continues to have a substantial constituency. Some of his polices actually poll better than he does.
3. The potential replacement cannot merely "resist"; they have to actually get elected and that requires having a vision that the electorate endorses.
And I would add:
4. Most (or let's say enough) Americans don't feel they are losing as you put it.
I believe you when you say you would like to apply the banhammer liberally (haha!) but so you know I come to HN for tech news. Looking at my comment history I do have a lot of political ones but it is in the hopes that I have contributed something to the conversation. Of course whether I succeeded is for the readers to decide.
> Internationally there is currently no alternative to the US as a superpower and Trump is the leader of the US.
You may not have noticed, but that is changing very rapidly.
> Domestically he continues to have a substantial constituency. Some of his polices actually poll better than he does.
Indeed. Mind boggling, but then again, in many ways not surprising, after all, if Trump 1 wasn't enough to making you think twice about voting for him again probably nothing will.
> The potential replacement cannot merely "resist"; they have to actually get elected and that requires having a vision that the electorate endorses.
Yes, here's my proposed vision for the electorate: normal. All this megalomaniacal nonsense is just causing more and more problems, both inside the USA and outside of it and unfortunately we don't get to vote in US elections but we do end up living with the consequences.
> Most (or let's say enough) Americans don't feel they are losing as you put it.
Give it more time. Clearly, there is some degree of insulation from the consequences, but I'd love to have an actual seance with one of the Founding Fathers that the USA so reveres to get their $0.02 on whether or not this is what they were aiming for. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I think the answer might surprise the MAGA's.
Nice you caught the pun and thank you for making a move in the right direction with respect to the level of conversation, it's appreciated.
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If the worst thing you can say about Harris is that she laughed funny, then she was certainly better and more qualified than Trump, who is known to be a paedophile and a rapist, among other things, though importantly also clearly mentally retarded at this point judging by his inability to speak and form coherent sentences. And I personally doubt Harris would have started this retarded war with Iran.
I wonder if Donald Trump is aware that he is asking for a repeat of Pearl Harbor.
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Then whose ships are left? The US doesn’t have any. If you think Iran will just sell oil to China and India (gentle reminder Iran is with Russia against Ukraine) and somehow the Gulf States and Europe won’t get theirs, the US will just blow up Iran’s oil exporting capacity and then nobody gets oil.
The rest of the world better start figuring out how to pressure Iran or take military action against Iran, or the whole Gulf is going to shut down and America isn’t hurt that bad besides MAGA not being able to fill up their giant trucks.
Yeah, it feels like "ha-HA! I bet you didn't think I'd do that!" - "No... we actually didn't..."
Or is he attempting something similar like the British during Mossadegh? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abadan_Crisis
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