You're completely dismissing all extraparliamentary means of opposition.
Protests. Riots. Strikes.
Y'know, the sort of thing that toppled Yanukovych in Ukraine, lotsa Middle Eastern dictators during the Arab Spring, British rule in India, Soviet control over the Baltics, etc etc etc.
Your politicians are use- and spineless. It's time for your people to step up.
The sad reality is Americans really don't care about foreign policy -- the only thing that could actually lead to major strikes or protests large enough to move the needle would be if large numbers of American soldiers were dying (i.e., Vietnam).
Plus, I just saw a little segment on Fox News where it was portraying this whole Greenland deal as a way to "help Greenlanders boost their economy, each person will get X cash, blah blah". So anyone only watching Fox is probably convinced we're doing Greenland a favor, liberating them from Danish oppression, just like we recently liberated Venezuela from oppression (in case you didn't know!).
Only 4% or so approve of going to war to conquer Greenland, so if it gets that bad you might expect sentiment to keep turning. but his approval floor has been pretty steady at no lower than ~30 percent through every controversy so far.
I hope I'm wrong but I don't see American citizens rioting over international affairs unfortunately. Hopefully he'll be unpopular enough to lose senate, and his successor won't be as insane. That would be the best outcome.
Americans have a history of rioting over economic and social conditions, however. An attack on Greenland may open a Pandora’s box of consequences that will devastate America by us becoming a pariah state, which will lead to economic pain.
For the sake of the country, I hope that this is finally the red line that will get enough Republicans representatives to finally have the courage to rein in Trump, at least on this issue.
To add, this 56% is not evenly distributed politically. Protests in California, Minnesota, and New York (all blue states) are not likely to get red state representatives and senators to threaten Trump with removal. Blue state congresspeople are already on board with removing Trump, but removal can’t happen without 2/3rds of the Senate getting on board, which means this can’t happen today without some Republican support.
I’m a Californian. It’s one thing for me to write Alex Padilla or Adam Schiff; they’d vote to convict if they have the chance. But they won’t get a chance unless people like Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham say “enough is enough,” but I don’t live in those states.
It is a virtue of Americans that they are unemotional and resolve disputes at the ballot box. [...] Nothing is so important that it can't wait until the next election.
MAGA does not fit that bill. January 6 was a direct attempt to overthrow an election outcome and by extension the government. The current executive is anything but emotionally well-regulated.
I'm curious what you think the AOC/Mamdani left is even like. MAGA is the culmination of decades of escalating extremism. I was in OKC when the right wing terrorist killed so many innocent people, and that was what, 35 years ago? Meanwhile, AOC/Mamdami are lunatics who want ... better healthcare? Less inequality? What is so objectionable about their ideology that it justifies that absolute craziness that has consumed the right wing?
> Meanwhile, AOC/Mamdami are lunatics who want ... better healthcare? Less inequality?
It's not about their goals, it's about first world versus third world approaches to achieving those goals. The first-world approach is about shared sacrifice and building systems with the correct tradeoffs, incentives, etc. That’s how you end up with a system like Sweden that has high middle class taxes to support a robust welfare state along with extremely competitive corporate taxes. It also fosters efficiency because middle class people have a lot of skin in the game.
The third-world approach instead is tribalistic. The bad tribe, rich people, have the money, and the job of government is to expropriate that money and give it to the good tribe. In that kind of politics, you see a strong emphasis on identity and class warfare, and very little talk about tradeoffs, system, and sacrifice. It’s a type of politics that works equally well in Bangladesh, where the population is barely literate, as it does in Queens. (Of course, MAGA is like that too. Trump is the third world version of Reagan or Romney. It’s not a coincidence that no Republican in history has done better in Queens’s “Little Bangladesh” than Trump in 2024.)
The devastation from AOC/Mamdani politics is far worse than right-wing terrorism. In 1960, South Korea had a GDP per capita around $150, while Bangladesh was at $100. But my parent’s generation Indians/Bangladeshis were AOC/Mamdani socialists. As a result, Bangladeshi grew to just $260 by 1989 when we left. By then, Korea was at $6,000. And of course today Korea is a first world country while Bangladesh is still a third world country.
Around 2010, Bangladesh adopted neoliberalism and tripled its GDP per capita in just 14 years. So there was nothing about Bangladesh structurally that prevented the same kind of growth you saw in South Korea. It was all cultural and political. If my parent’s generation hadn’t been AOC/Mamdani socialists, I’d still probably live in my homeland. More importantly, millions of children would be alive today who instead died in poverty because of delayed economic growth.
This is not a problem specific to very poor countries. Latin America is largely a lower middle income continent with slower growth than developed economies. From 1960 to 2018, Latin American GDP per capita grew just 1.8% annually: https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/latin-america-economic-gr.... Latin America actually fell further behind the U.S. since 1960.
That won't work... that will crash the price of [new] bonds, and more capitalized nations will buy the dip. You are operating under an assumption that the humans controlling a quantity of wealth enough to [quote] "crash the bonds market" make decisions based on principles. They don't - and if you compare history with a long term bond price chart then it will become apparent.
Now, pray tell, which other nations are more capitalized than the world's third largest economy? Who would buy the dip? China? I doubt it. And nobody else has the scale.
Qing suffered a century of unequal treaties before they fell, they were the bullied and not the bully. (They were also medieval and isolationist which further hurts the comparison IMO).
