Posted by tosh 4/12/2025
There is really a good chance that we will develop a deep understanding of how the French Revolution happened and why they went straight to guillotines.
I am genuinely at a loss at how his supporters don't understand this.
His supporters value blind loyalty and obedience, not logic. They don’t stand for themselves, they stand against others. They’ll gladly suffer if they think the other side is getting it worse. They’re the perfect target to be exploited.
Why would someone say they blindly follow someone when that's bad?
I am not American.
> but I never saw anyone explicitly saying "yes, I/we value blind loyalty".
Not only do they show it through actions, they talk about it constantly. All you need are the keywords “Trump loyalty” and you get more examples than you know what to do with.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/06/donald-tr...
> “I value loyalty above everything else—more than brains, more than drive and more than energy,” Trump once said. […]
> According to people who know him well, Trump’s definition of loyalty is blunt. “Support Donald Trump in anything he says and does,” […] “No matter what,” […] “Or else,” […] “I think he defines it as allegiance,” […] “And it’s not allegiance to the flag or allegiance to the country—it’s allegiance to Trump.”
Tariffs are sold to them as "hitting back" against countries "exploiting America". They don't know what they are or how they work, and they definitely do not think of it as a tax, which is the definition you'd see in any AP Macroeconomics textbook.
All that matters is maintaining the illusion that "he's fighting for people like me".
There is no illusion - if Trump was a profesional working in any trade, the plebs wouldn't hire him, yet they elected him president.
It's just that the plebs think Trumps is the aristocrat most like them, and by electing him they somehow screw the arisrocrats over.
Trump doesn't have the authority to set permanent tariffs. All this is being done as a temporary measure under the Emergency Economic Powers Act, which is for wars. These backdoor tariffs are being challenged in court, and there's a good chance of the plaintiffs winning.[1]
For tariffs to stick, Congress has to do it. The Constitution gives Congress sole power over tariffs. There's a long-term track on this, going through the US Trade Representative's office, with Federal Register notices and public comments. Last week Greer was up on Capitol Hill testifying before a congressional committee. That's the normal path by which tariff changes are made. Greer is so out of the loop that he hadn't been told about the big tariff on China. That change came out while he was in front of the committee. He was publicly humiliated. Which means he can't do his job of negotiating with other countries on behalf of the US. Greer may quit.
When you dig into this, you don't find "4D chess".
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/04/10/can-tru...
Oh, oh, also, electing a felon, you get a lot of grifring, including, but not limited to the trump crypto scam, the insider trading Trump boasted about on video (about his friends making billions in the stock market).
This guy is not playing 5d chess guys, he's just a clown surrounded by yes men.
Now, a lot of people on the left use "neoliberalism" in the same way people on the right use "woke", or (Eu) football fans use the word "offside" i.e. it means "it's anything the other side do that I don't like". But neoliberalism actually has a definition used by more serious people - generally free trade and the reduction of government interference.
Maybe Trump doesn't want globalisation, maybe Trump wants stuff to be made in the USA. Maybe he wants to roll trade back to before 1968, the Hakone Maru, and the TEU container, to when he was in his 20s (a lot of people think that their formative years were the best, since that's when they were made, and I doubt Trump is an exception). I'm not saying Trump isn't a hypocrite, but is it slightly possible that some of what he says is actually what he intends to do, e.g. "making America great again" meaning in part a disruption to the globalised world order that the online left always seems to think is evil?
He's dumb, sure. He's out of his depth. He's greedy. But he also has strong opinions (some of which are consistent, some ... less so) on how the US should be run. The idea that he doesn't have some political agenda when he spends hours ranting about it and seems to be implementing bits of it is just pure fantasy land.
Second-guessing the motivations of the Trump administration is tiresome. Let's just judge it by what it does and its effects, both speak for themselves.
As I said, what he is doing is not going to get stuff made in the US. Even if we had all of the raw materials needed (we don't), the US doesn't have the talent to spin up a manufacturing hub. That is the missing piece to all of these conversations. So we don't have the materials, we don't have the skills, and we seem to be attacking education so it doesn't look training people to do these things is in the cards? How is this plan meant to work?
The only lifeline I can throw your comment is that he wants to invade Canada and Greenland to steal their raw materials which at least lines up with the idea of getting raw materials to build up manufacturing.
What is this brand of defeatist bullpucky? There is no raw material which is not contained within the borders of the US. Only some which are less expensive to extract elsewhere.
> the US doesn't have the talent to spin up a manufacturing hub.
I humbly invite you to visit https://www.imts.com/ this year in Chicago. If, after that, you believe that there's something that can't be manufactured in the US, I'll eat my hat.
Let me rephrase this. We don't have the raw materials unless we destroy national parks and pollute our waterways. We also don't have the facilities to process these materials.
> I humbly invite you to visit https://www.imts.com/ this year in Chicago. If, after that, you believe that there's something that can't be manufactured in the US, I'll eat my hat.
This link says 2026 not 2025.
I've got news for you, that ship sailed a hundred, two hundred years ago. Most of the eastern seaboard of the US was clearcut of old growth forest. What we have now on the east coast is new growth. Still, the number of acres of old growth remaining is staggering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_old-growth_forests#Uni... And I see no problem with forestry when practiced sustainably.
If you're asking for no resource extraction, then you're asking either for negative economic growth or exploitation of someone else somewhere else. Far more responsible to regulate the industry here, where we have jurisdiction to ensure it is done sustainably, safely, and equitably. And far better for economic integrity in cases of pandemic or war.
I don't have a problem with most things when done sustainably. What in the history of the US makes you believe it will be done sustainably? Gas companies still publicly deny or downplay climate change.
Unions, labor law, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_sit-down_strike in which the national guard and police used automatic weapons against striking workers, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Hall_disaster immortalized in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz7oguguIZE the winning of the work week, overtime pay, healthcare of any kind, holidays, payment in legal tender, existence of the country in the first place... so much more. I won't sugar coat it, no human endeavor is ever perfect, but I find the attitude that we can't do it, or we don't want to do it here as backwards and regressive. Worthy of rebuke. If our society depends on something, we should have no shame in doing it here. And if we can't figure out how to do it here safely, then we definitely shouldn't be doing it elsewhere.
You asked me about what inspired me. I told you. If you need environmental wins, there's:
- Erin Brockovich vs. Pacific Gas & Electric (1993 Settlement)
- Dewayne Johnson vs. Monsanto (2018)
- Robert Bilott vs. DuPont (PFOA Contamination Cases, 1990s–2017)
- Roundup Litigation Beyond Johnson (2019–2020s)
- Founding of the EPA
- Passage of the clean water act
Just for a start.
Feel free to snatch defeat from the jaws of success before ever trying, though. Much easier that way. And probably someone else's fault.
... That's how it's used on the left
Strange of him to renegotiate NAFTA in his first term then
if you took the average supporter of both sides neither seem smart. the clips they have of both sides is shameful. but those aren't the people implementing the policy, but they both support their tribes.
if you really are interested in understanding how they think you couldn't do worse than this:
https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/rese...
The grassroots development of class consciousness and a united working class is our only way out of this.
but history learns (this is also why we cannot ever have another revolutionary hero, nor another french revolution) so no.
class consciousness and a united "working class" will not help us anymore. a lot has changed since those ideas made sense
These are the people who score in the bottom 20% and make up conspiracy theories on how they were right and it's the establishment who's wrong.
Any random person waiting at a bus stop would likely have managed things better.
It's that they manage it in a way to maximize their personal profits, with an absolute disregard of the ordinary folks.
Tariffs are one example - none of it makes sense, but companies still pay millions for a 'dinner at Mar-a-Lago' to get a favorable treatment.
What's hapening with law firms is even more disgusting.
I get the feeling that a lot of Democrats and 'real' Republicans thinks that he will get what he wants and then they just wait out 4 years. It's an almost 80 years narcissist, who doesn't care about people nor law, and who dreams about becoming a King. It only gets worse from here, not better.
So not even cynicism is supported by the evidence.
I mean they're also pillaging of course. Incompetent And malice. Both are possible
You could argue that perhaps a selective application of tariffs might help the formation of such domestic industry, but tariffs are not something to wield lightly.
- Donald Trump (actual quote)I wouldn’t argue Trump represents the establishment.
People that didn't care about his moral failings, the lying, how he treats women may care about him just being incompetent to the degree that the things he operates would fare better if he did nothing, especially if they have to pay the bill.
For Trump behaving erratic is a feature, as it favours people who have sworn loyalty and who Trump has deemed worthy as they at least might get a little head ups (enough for the stock market).
Sadly this turns the US not only into an absolute laughing stock, it also makes any business with it a risky one.