General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumsonethatcares
(16,168 posts)the man makes sense. our feckless leader, no sense at all.
bigtree
(85,996 posts)...
Vinca
(50,273 posts)We're more unhappy about this than the Berlin mayor. We are not a part of it. We need their help - especially help from their spy agencies - to uncover the Russia connection so we can oust Trump.
brer cat
(24,567 posts)But will any foreign agencies trust trump with their intelligence information knowing there is a pipeline to Putin?
DFW
(54,396 posts)Just like during the Second World War, Germans were all Nazis, the French were all in the Resistance, and Japanese were nationalistic militarists. None of that was true, but at the time, you would have been hard put to find someone in the USA willing to say they thought so.
In times of antagonistic rhetoric and provocation on a governmental level, the government of a country seen to be antagonistic or a downright threat is taken to represent its people as a whole. It is up to that people, though marches, interviews, demonstrations and a barrage of writing, to convince the world otherwise. Passivity is acquiescence.
DFW
(54,396 posts)But I am at an international conference in Switzerland at the moment, and there is not ONE person here--of ANY nationality, and speaking ANY language--that has had one positive word to say about the USA in general and our new regime in particular.
Home, home of the Strange
Where the beer and the canteloupe lay
Where seldom is heard
An encouraging word
And the skies getting greyer each day
vanlassie
(5,675 posts)smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)choice of a leader? Do they know that we are hurting too? Please let them know that we are not a monolith. There are those of us who are outraged and determined to resist this presidency with everything we have.
DFW
(54,396 posts)Their reaction is one of frustration. They ask, "how could you let this happen, when you KNEW the awful consequences?" They realize full well that no one single person "let" this happen. The march the day after the inauguration was not ignored.
All the same, they are confronted with what looks to them like what happened in Germany in 1933. A regime, getting a minority of the votes, was allowed to seize power with hardly a whimper, turned out immediately to be worse than even its staunchest ideological foes predicted, and no legal mechanisms seem to exist to correct the error. Since what happened in Berlin on March 1, 1933 had rather serious consequences for the world, and Trump now has access to (if not complete liberty to deploy on his own) nuclear weapons, yes, the world is looking at us with a feeling of disbelief and abject terror. Well, all except the current government of Hungary.
They are, in general, not aware of the concept of Gerrymandering, or how it distorts the make-up of the House of Representatives to cement minority rule that aids the extremist right when a Republican is in the White House and stifles progress when a Democrat is in the White House. In Germany, for example, with a parliamentary democracy, their House of Representatives, the Bundestag, is awarded their number of seats on a basis of how many votes their party got nationally. Their State governments are awarded seats on the basis of how many votes the parties got Statewide. Statewide votes are held separately from the national votes. Their equivalent of counties, or "Bezirke" are not subject to Gerrymandering at whim by State governments.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)and it's terrifying us. Because we have already seen what it can lead to and now we feel powerless to stop it. I wish there was some way that our European allies could intervene and stop this monster in his tracks. He is a danger to the entire planet - economically, physically and in a humanitarian sense. He has to go.
DFW
(54,396 posts)Getting rid of Hitler in 1933 would have left Himmler, Göbbels, Göring and the rest of them to pick up the pieces and carry on.
Similarly, tossing Trump out on his ear will only leave Pence and Ryan, who are the ones the Republicans would be most happy with in the first place. There is no way Pence or Ryan have the populist appeal and novelty Trump and Hitler did. Göbbels or Himmler wouldn't even have gotten enough votes to get the NSDAP in a position to take over the government. As with Nixon and Reagan, the Republicans love their figureheads to rally around.
Without getting rid of the whole illegitimate cabal, we would only be putting a band-aid over a deep, infected, festering wound.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)However, the rest of them do not have the cult following that Trump has. A mass revolution against them would not be met with nearly the same resistance that would be met if we were trying to just get rid of Trump.
spanone
(135,838 posts)bdamomma
(63,860 posts)the oath of office???
I am an ex pat what the hell is going on with our Congress isn't this an emergency????