Some quotes from this HN thread, before it’s all get censored by @dang.
Think a lot of people here are missing the forest for the trees. We are witnessing the collapse of the unipolar world order that has brought relative freedom and prosperity to most of the world for the last three and a half decades.
I don’t know what comes next. No one does. But Europe needs a deep-rethink of a lot more than just defense if it wants to have any say in what the next world order is going to look like. Otherwise, we’re looking at four decades of less peace and less prosperity.
I normally avoid commenting on politics entirely but I feel compelled to comment here. I’m sure anyone who’s ever been bullied in their life will feel exactly what’s happening in that video clip. Two big kids, confident in their position and backing each other up, gang up on the outsider. Did they ever really want to make a deal at all? Absolutely infuriating and saddening to watch.
Trump and Vance were saying things like “you’re being disrespectful”, and “you haven’t said ‘thank you’” — this level of argument is completely unproductive; it’s what you would expect to hear from parents of dysfunctional families, not from world leaders.
And it betrays a total lack of care for substance. Zelensky has delivered public speeches in the US, while wearing a suit if that matters saying thanks to the US for their support. He just said it to the whole country, and while Biden was president. Trump doesn’t care if the US gets credit, he wants to steal that credit personally, despite literally having been impeached for trying to extort Zelensky.
It’s amazing levels of personal pettiness and ego. That’s before you get to them inviting a Russian state news person to watch and then claiming they ”snuck in” as if someone can just bumble into a meeting of world leaders.
I got this weird dissonance — like this was a science from a TV show about the White House, because no-one, I mean no-one would ever do that inpublic. Apart from common courtesy, even basic management training says praise in public, criticise in private.
Just doing this in front of the world’s media … it’s hard to understand
It makes more sense when you interpret it as an attempt at humiliation, not diplomacy.
They literally said: “This makes great TV” — and both right-wing Fox and the Russian media are cheering.
It worries me that no-one in the Republican Party looks at it and says: Russia is our enemy right, why are we doing exactly what they want and benefits them?
It worries me that no-one in the Republican Party looks at it and says: Russia is our enemy right, why are we doing exactly what they want and benefits them?
Why would they? GOP senators literally spent Independence Day in Russia a few years back. Multiple GOP congressmembers voted against various resolutions to support the people of Ukraine [0], condemn russia for its kidnapping of Ukrainian children [1], or direct the administration to collect evidence of Russian war crimes [2].
The GOP has had a strongly pro-putin wing for a decade, and Trump has been in russia’s pocket for longer than that: ignoring claims that he’s a hard KGB asset, the trump family has been reliant on russian money (investments and loans) for at least two decades. With trump being the uncontested leader of the GOP, the party is very much pro russia.
— Source
Trump called Zelensky a dictator in public, did he not? Zelensky, democratically elected, president of a democratic country, invaded by a tyran, a non-democratic and extreme anti-western attitude, was called a dictator. That is hard to understand, until you realise Trump tries to man-handle an extortion deal out of Ukraine… and now because the man doesn’t bend over backwards he’s disrespectful? That man showed a lot of courage in my book.
Trump could have just told Ukraine they weren’t going to support them anymore. He didn’t need to have a public press conference and publicly act like a petulant child demonstrating how truly pathetic and weak his leadership really is.
For all we know, Trump actually told Zelensky the US would provide security guarantees to set up this spectacle. Or maybe in fact the deal was never in place and Zelensky was just repeating for the hundredth time what it would take for Ukraine to sign a deal and then Trump and Vance flipped out when hearing something they already knew was a cornerstone to his terms?
Presumably we’ll never know what actually went down. But we do know that Trump and Vance act like weak little children and are totally incapable of actually mediating between the parties in this war. In the future, they should have the decency to stay out of this discussion and let adults do the talking.
You’re witnessing the collapse of American soft power, economic power, and our transition to an authoritarian isolationist state. Some of us accept it while others still have to grasp the situation.
The death of the post cold war neoliberal world order and the death of the American century. to be replaced by… ?
The thing that I find strange about it is that it’s being pursued actively, from the inside, as opposed to it being forced on them by an stringer outside force (ie. China). The US has chosen to retract from its global power and influence.
Mind-blowing, except, kinda-sorta, for the fact that the effort is helmed by a (short-term thinking) businessman rather than a seasoned politician with familiarity with, or even the ability to consider, long term consequences of actions and decisions and the interplay of other countries and their leaders.
He did one mistake though, when he asked ‘Can I speak/say something?’ to Trump, and Trump said no. This is lesson learnt for the future (for myself too in terms of public speaking).
But overall, he did rather well, considering the shit-show it was.
I still can’t believe Trump publicly tries to humiliate an ally like this, and at the same time calls Biden ‘the stupid President.’
Stupid or not, perhaps he is, but not to stay in public like that. It shows Trump doesn’t respect the function of the US President and shits on the vote of the citizens.
I don’t think I’d consider that a mistake. Not that it matters to everyone but it’s one more asshole thing to know Trump did, which was only publicized because Zelenskyy respectfully asked for his turn to speak. Other leaders are likely to have taken note of that: Trump isn’t even pretending that you’re equals.
To some common folk, it will make Zelenskyy look weak but also consider this exact thread in which people say his calm demeanor makes him look strong. I’d wager Zelenskyy is interested in impressing the latter folk and not interested in impressing the former.
I’ve been turning my attention to cold war and post-cold war Russia, their espionage, writing and interviews from various defectors, and generally trying to understand if talk of Russian influence is overblown.
It seemed very conspiratorial on its surface. I’m now fairly convinced that the Russians have been refining their espionage for generations, the USA is likely full of agents in all places of society.
Somewhat frighteningly, they anticipated the need to subvert any notions of this occurring, and very explicitly set out on a campaign to destroy trust and truth in US society such that when people began claiming Russia was infiltrating the country, it would just sound like conspiratorial nonsense. You can find plenty of references to this type of initiative going back 50 years at least.
The idea, ultimately, is to get the USA to destroy itself, as you mentioned. The dismantling of democracy in particular is a major accomplishment. Once that trust is eroded, every American’s most immediate enemy is another American. Who cares about Russians when you’ve got neighbours like these, right?
It’s hard not to see what’s happening as a major victory for Russia. Did they actually orchestrate it? How much? I have no idea. Maybe only slightly, maybe a lot. Regardless, they’re celebrating today.