“Let’s just not have political parties anymore, that’ll solve everything!” - Mature person on the internet

Who would’ve thought that when you massacre villages it would result in a war?

Yeah, China’s not in even though it’s the second largest economy in the world. In the 90s it almost became G-8 to include Russia, but then Putin screwed that up.

It’s not all that different of a situation from Russia being kicked out because of Putin’s shenanigans, really.

Should try to get Brazil to leave BRICS and join the G-7 club. The US could go be in BRICS bullshit (or maybe then it’d be called the USRICS?) with the other authoritarian assholes of the world.

It’s a problem with polls, they don’t give enough options and many times and the few options they give mean different to different people. If the US were an enemy I’d be too busy trying to figure out how to blow shit up in the US to have this conversation. That’s what I consider the word enemy to mean. We’re not there yet.

I’d classify the US as an adversary though. A country I’m opposing by non-violent means.

There are air defenses that could potentially shoot down a missile before it hits its target. So one means there’s merely a probability of destroying Moscow. A psychopath like Putin may be willing to take that risk, and even if Moscow got nuked, Russia would still exist (though obviously it would be significantly diminished), and he’d have justification for using nukes on Ukraine.

For MAD to apply you need enough nukes to be an existential threat to another country when you’re dealing with psychopaths that would be fine with potentially millions of people dying if it means they come out on top in a war.

The funny thing is he whines about the trade deficit being $200B (which is a lie, because that’s all he ever does) he may actually cause the trade deficit to actually be $200B.

Bin Laden would say anything to get recruits. Fact is, Al Qaeda had a lot of operations going on against Saddam Hussein.

But okay, believe everything a mass murderer says. That makes you a very enlightened person LOL

Apathy is the big reason for this. About 1/3 of the eligible voters didn’t bother to vote. And Trump gained support among black and hispanic voters. Ignorance and apathy were the big drivers of this. And ignorance stems from people too apathetic to learn anything.

And no, democracy is never guaranteed. Some pretty words written by slave owners over a hundred years ago was never going to guarantee democracy. It’s just paper. What makes democracy survive is people making an effort to keep it going generation after generation. American exceptionalism created a false belief that the US couldn’t be anything other than a democracy. But despite all the chest thumping about freedom and democracy from Americans, it turns out not enough people were willing to make an effort to learn who they were voting for or in many cases even to bother voting at all. That was all that was needed, but it was too much for Americans to bother doing.

There are things Americans can be doing right now, but this Canadian thinks the USA has become a nation that’s centered greed and apathy rather than a country of freedom and democracy. I’d be happy if Americans could prove me wrong by fighting back in any way they could, but it looks to me the US lacks the will to save itself.

In a democracy you should strive for having strong people and weak politicians that do as the people want.

If you’re striving for having strongmen so you don’t have to do anything yourself, then you are being weak. And that’s why the US has gotten to be what it’s become: weak and lazy people looking for someone else to solve all of your problems. This is why Trump’s message of “vote fore me and you won’t need to vote ever again” resonates. You want someone to rule over you and figure out everything for you. This made the US ripe for a fascist takeover.

Even now you’re whining about someone else not solving your problems for you. Didn’t vote? That’s the democrats fault. To cowardly to discuss politics with your family? That’s the democrats fault.

In the end, you’re aligned with the fascists in your hatred of the opposition. It’s easier for you to sit back and complain about the opposition than to grow a spine and support the opposition regardless of what your family, peer group, or anyone else will think about for doing so.

The Iraq embargo, for instance, gave rise to Al Qaeda and the eventual destruction of the World Trade Towers.

This is a racist narrative that relies on the assumption that Arabs have no control over themselves and “they’re all the same”. Also relies on the false narrative that Saddam Hussein supported Al Qaeda that was promoted during the build up to the Iraq War.

The reality is that Al Qaeda were enemies of Saddam Hussein, because not all Arabs are the same person. And a psychopath like Saddam Hussein doesn’t want other psychopaths around as competition.

Try to see past American exceptionalism and understand that not everything in the world is defined by it’s relation to the US.

The Democrats were too weak while they had power

Don’t you think this attitude is the reason why you’re in this mess? Wanting a strong ruler rather than having politicians that follow the law and try to provide good government. If the Democrats were “strong” then you’d have a Democrat strongman and you’d still be in the same mess.

After JD Vance’s little trip to Europe, a lot of European countries are beginning to consider the US to be an adversary.

Nah it was a CRJ. Actually kinda impressive that they somehow flipped the plane upside done and there were no fatalities.

If you’re being reductive to the point where you’re ignoring the importance of sovereignty and democracy, then it’s fair game to reduce communism to being just about some college kids that think Che Guevara T-Shirts look cool.

Of course it’s always difficult counting the dead, and Russia doesn’t allow any monitoring of this kind of thing in the territory it controls. But it’s likely the number of civilian deaths is around double that of Gaza. The numbers for the military is likely more than double that.

Ukraine does it’s best to protect it’s civilian population and their soldiers wear uniforms. Hamas does not wear uniforms, and actively prevents civilians from evacuating from areas where there’s combat operations. In fact having combat operations happening in populated areas was basically the point of massacring villages while taking hostages, both of which are war crimes. If you want to negotiate a prisoner release you don’t massacre villages, if you want a war that minimizes civilian casualties, you don’t take hostages to densely populated areas.

Hamas created a scenario to maximize civilian deaths, and it will probably never be known the true number of civilian deaths since they didn’t wear uniforms so the number of Hamas dead and number of civilian deaths can’t be distinguished. Israel claims half the number you see reported are Hamas, while Hamas claims it’s much less.

Note the difference between a military that protects it’s civilians and wears uniforms and what Hamas is doing. Larger numbers of soldiers than civilians die in Ukraine because they prioritize protecting civilians, while larger numbers of civilians than soldiers die in Gaza as fodder for their propaganda machine.

Note that Hamas is suddenly wearing uniforms as soon as a ceasefire is in effect. How often do you remember seeing them wear uniforms in combat when doing so would prevent civilian casualties? They have uniforms, they just don’t wear them in combat in order to maximize confusion which results in civilian casualties.

I think you may have internalized some of the “male-supremacist” rhetoric yourself.

In your wall of text you’re showing a tendency to blame everything on Harris, while you seemingly consider Trump the default choice. Why is that? Why did Harris have to earn your vote while Trump didn’t?

Apparently it’s super easy to change the maps. If the Gulf of Mexico can be renamed, we can rename the top half of North America to West Europe.

That already happened four years ago. Since then there has been an insurrection, women has lost rights and a former President was convicted of fraud and was indicted for many more crimes. The American people voted that criminal into power despite knowing all of that. The US got a taste of sanity and decided they didn’t like that and chose batshit insanity.

A conservative US owned newspaper may have some bias.

Yup. Which is why this only makes me want to Canada to be an EU member even more.