You’re right that regard. I was simplyfing the matter by only using wages as the primary factor. Of course it is a combination of factors which drive production costs, many of which you just explained. However, the end result is the same: Building products on shore is expensive. Someone has to pay the price.

I remember last time Trump was in office. There were massive tariffs on european products as well. There are no communist countries in the European Union. Trump and his gang openly push the “America first” narrative and that very obviously means that every other country in the global market is under attack, even those who were traditionally viewed as allies. Communism is not the issue here.

We’ll see if the US manages to bully the world into submission but I have my doubts. A free global market is bound by capitalist mechanics. If the US is not an attractive trade partner the export profits will be made elsewhere.

I very much doubt that tariffs and pissing off basically everyone outside if the US will help a goal of a global free market.

You’ll be surprised how expensive everything is to build if you pay domestic wages instead of buying things dirt cheap from other countries where wages are low due to slave-like working conditions. This is probably what Trump wants to establish in the US, but when other factors like housing, food etc are already way more expensive than they are in those countries, this creates a poverty hellscape for y’all. The result will be that people can’t even afford to live at the standard of a chinese factory worker. Enjoy.

Chuck didn’t get the memo

There’s a lot one can do. This is a nice starter:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/17/how-to-survive-the-broligarchy-20-lessons-for-the-post-truth-world-donald-trump

I would have framed a few things differently, so here’s my take:

• The system thrives on fear and isolation of individuals. So, obviously, do not succumb to fear and apathy.

• Be kind to your fellow humans (that includes people who believe the bullshit! Most of them aren’t evil just very misguided).

• Offer help and look out for each other.

• Get organized, don’t isolate yourself hidden behind your phone. There are organizations in which you can help a good cause and gain a network of trusted people in return.

• Stay alert and aware of the situation.

• Don’t assume safety just because you think you’re not the target right now. They start with the weakest ones but that’s just the beginning.

• Plan ahead and have an escape plan ready just in case.

Absolutely. The tendencies are visible all over the world and there will be grave consequences for all of us. However, there are differences. In Germany for example after the horrors of WW2 the political system was specifically designed to prevent something like this from happening again (ironically the creation of the german constitution was heavily influenced by the US). Which sounds like a good thing at first, but what happened in the last decade was basically this: The right wing parties became stronger at every election and as a result there were coalitions forged between opposing parties to prevent right wing parties from taking over power. And this in term lead to years of standstill in political decision making, dragging down the country, because opposing parties tend to block each others ideas. Which in turn made the right wing even stronger, because they now had someone to blame for the resulting mess. Germany and by extension Europe as well have a lot of bureaucracy, which on one side gives a bit of a shield against hostile takeovers, but has a downside of inefficiency in acting to protect democracy too. It’s not looking too good, but Trump’s habit of pissing off his allies might have a net positive effect of uniting people against this bullying and encouraging them to get their shit together. But I think it’s to early to tell. Could as well sway in the other direction and produce Trump bootlicking countries like you said.

About surveillance technologies, indeed the possibilities set our current situation apart from when Nazis came to power in the past. It’s absolutely crazy to witness how a commercial surveillance industry disguised as ad services (Google/Meta/…) created a monster that makes Orwell’s 1984 look like a children’s book, and most people still don’t even understand the implications in order to realize what they’re up against. From a european perspective, there is an upside in that at least for now the EU is actively trying to limit the power of those mega corporations. These processes however are chugging along at snail pace due to the aforementioned bureaucracy. Slow, but steady. Which is at least something.

Sorry for the lengthy reply. It’s such a broad topic and there are no easy answers.

It’s never as bad as the pessimists think it’s going to be

That depends on the timescale you are considering. Most of the people who would tell you otherwise because they were suffering in WW2 are dead by now. If you have spent your entire life in a comparatively stable and safe environment (like I did), you might assume that things can’t get that bad.

I think an assumption like that is dangerous, because it gives you a false sense of security

Hello. I’m from Germany and I have bad news for you. If our own history taught me anything, it’s this: When there is a critical mass of citizens (including military personnel) who are willing to ignore common societal values and at the same time there is a corrupt justice system which can just bend the law to their will, there is very little in the way to full scale fascism. You guys have the groundwork for this right in front of your face. Your supreme court is only inches away from fulfilling that role and the last election showed that a majority of people are already blindsided enough to wholeheartedly believe the bullshit that they are being fed.

So please don’t take this lightly. Democracy is not for granted and it can be taken away. It’s a slow process up to a point where things fall in place and then it happens very quickly. In Germany the rise of the Nazis didn’t happen over night. Warning signs were there from the first world war on, and the slow erosion of society along with economic factors was a key element. Hitler himself was widely regarded as a loud mouthed clown with little chance to actually accomplish anything.

The erosion part has been going on in the US for decades now. This time, most of the puzzle pieces needed are already in place.

And about the “they are incompetent, it won’t be that bad” argument. They don’t need competence to break things when they are in power. Breaking things is precisely what these people are looking for. Destruction of democratic values, economic instability, fear, poverty, chaos and social unrest are the key to more power. You just need to look at the designated cabinet positions. Those candidates were specifically chosen to fuck things up in the worst way imaginable. This is not a coincidence. This is a recipe taken right from the fascist’s handbook.

Thank you kind stranger

As a non-native english speaker, I don’t know what “pegging” means and now I’m too afraid to look it up.

“legal at the time“ - I guess native indians who were displaced from their land would see things differently

Elsewhere on lemmy someone joked that around 10% of the americans will still vote for him when he’s dead because his so called death is just a fake media conspiracy.

Trump Insiders Like, literally, physically inside him?

Are you sure your Facebook friends have posted anything at all lately? Most of my contacts have left Facebook long ago (so have I) but a lot of them never deleted their accounts.

I can almost taste the deafening sound of silence from the receiving end.

Hey, thanks for the long and thorough reply. I’m a bit overwhelmed :)

I think the reason this sounds reasonable is because a lot of the folks on the GOP campaign are longtime GOP folks, who know - or at least have certain long-held beliefs about - how this conventionally works.

This is exactly where my doubts come from. The whole piece has the air of “conventional politics“ but at the same time, from an outside perspective, it looks like the whole party has been thoroughly streamlined towards their leader in the past 8 years. And a cult of MAGA would probably not resemble much of traditional politics. It will be interesting to see if they can put a lid on it and return to politics that at the very least appears less crazy and unhinged in case Trump loses the election.

But this is not really how one wins. You need a broad coalition backing you to win - playing to a smaller base may make them feel good, but it’s not going to bring enough folks backing you to the polls on election day.

True, but who is Trump going to convince to switch sides a week before the election? You might as well turn up the rhetoric to 11 and say the quiet part out loud, in order to convince your own base to vote for you.
This is a slippery slope of course, and the outcome could either be losing people with this radicalisation or making sure even more radical people who did not plan to vote show up at the booth. And to deter people from voting for someone else, out of fear. Also, even if it was possible for Trump to extend a hand and suddenly appear reasonable who would believe him after all that happened? I guess he doesn’t have a choice but take the route of last-minute radicalisation. We’ll see how this turns out. Personally I am so sick of seeing the orange conman dominate public discourse worldwide for eight years in a row. It is time to move on and I can only hope the majority of Americans has had enough too.

As a non-american, somehow this article rubs me the wrong way. I have a suspicion that all the talk about public relation disasters and staffers worried about their candidate‘s reputation does not accurately portrait what is really going on there. To me it looks like everything that happened including the MSG shitshow was absolutely the way they wanted it to go. It’s a page out of the fascist playbook and it uses the same tactics that have been proven successful since Germany 1933. The explicit goal is to strengthen the collective bonds with voters who already made their decision and to kick it up a notch at the same time. They don’t give a shit about angering Puerto Rican voters or even maintaining a modicum of decency in general. They are trying to provoke a mania in their own base that spirals out of control and so far it works pretty well for them. This is an endgame strategy. The only thing that is not going according to plan is that their candidate is falling apart mentally and it’s a race against time to get him back into office. Or is it, Mr. Vance?

I could of course be completely wrong on this and I would be more than happy to be proven wrong.

Just call it Ecmascript and be done with it. The name JavaScript was misleading from the beginning. Well, Ecma sounds like a skin disease but who cares.

I’m not the original commenter. And I didn’t want to offend you, just wanted give some friendly advice, because it irks me how many people seem to use chatGPT for fact finding. Chill

Edit: If you look for “Paul Wellstone” and “Vietnam War Memorial” you’ll find what the OC was on about.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-oct-26-na-wellstone26-story.html “Wellstone also staged a news conference in front of the Vietnam War Memorial on the National Mall, drawing the ire of many veteran groups. Wellstone later said the event was a mistake.”

Just an example of many