***Official H&F LC Thread***

I'm having fun imagining Trump's response to 9/11.

This could take a while. Let's start with some simple stuff. He ended the Iran nuclear deal. All the evidence I've seen suggests that Iran let inspectors in and they confirmed that Iran wasn't enriching uranium or whatever the **** they need to do to make nukes. When the deal ended, that ended and they started doing that stuff. Trump ended the deal based on nothing more than feels and that Obama did it and he must undo anything Obama did, because **** that guy.

I'm gonna go out on a huge limb here and just assume that Iran having nukes increases our chance of WWIII. But if you can't accept that, then I fear we're in for a real grind.

No, that makes sense. Thanks.

I guess I'm focused more on the Taiwan flashpoint for obvious reasons. But I suppose things popping off between Iran/Israel is actually a much bigger threat.

It's hard for me to tell what is most likely to actually cause WWIII, so arguments could be made all around. Trump doesn't really give a F about international anything afaict....so if you think doing nothing makes WWIII less likely, then I guess he's your man, if you think doing stuff makes WWIII less likely, then Kamala is your woman.

I don't really think I understand what would or would not make WWIII most likely - my hunch is doing some things (the right things) is optimal but from US track record, we don't get everything right obv. Ummm, but, in general I don't base my vote on this since I really don't think my opinion on what would or wouldn't cause WWIII is likely to be anywhere close to accurate. Also, Trump definitely just seems prone to spazzing out and making knee-jerk decisions. Those types of decisions seem like the type that could cause something like WWIII, but again, I know I'm not an expert

While this is an extremely important scenario to minimize, I'm pretty sure almost no voters have a significant grasp of what would intentionally or accidentally minimize such a scenario.

There are much simpler and better ways to dismiss Trump imo. If I list all skills that are involved with being a good leader, he possesses a very small amount of them so I'm not sure why I'd want to vote for someone I think would be (and is) a really bad decision maker and leader. That is even before getting into policy - where he is batshit crazy.

Usa 5000+ warheads
Russia 5000+ warheads

Then china has 500. Middle East has peanut warheads.

Trump like Putin. Trump would let Putin have a chunk of Ukraine. Trump equals much less probability of WW3.

He seemed to give a F about overthrowing Maduro:

https://www.wired.com/story/trump-cia-venezuela-maduro-regime-change-plot/

WIRED

The Untold Story of Trump's Failed Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela's President

Walking home from the gym today, a woman standing on a corner said "HI SIR ARE YOU PLANNING TO VOTE TODAY?!" I said "none of your business." She looked disappointed. I kept walking.

I didn't vote today. Mainly because I don't want to put my name and address in yet another database that's going to be sold to anyone with $50 who wants it, and eventually end up on the dark web for every black hat to download at their leisure. But also because neither one of these two turkeys will do anything to prevent WW3, or do anything to slow the decline of the US empire.

This is the blackpilled and basically correct take. It's a decision that will influence your life much less than most people want to believe.

I don't believe it's a decision that will impact my life a ton.

However, I do believe it is an important civic duty (arguably the only one in modern society). So I can't imagine not voting. I do think I may have missed some primaries but sometimes I don't have too much of an opinion on those.

Jury duty is the bigger one IMO, but weirdly people always want to get out print

The actual warmongers, like Liz & Dick Cheney, opposed Trump and actively joined Kamala's campaign. Biden also has us in two proxy wars.

Trump talks tough early and heads off conflict. There were no new wars in his last term.

Oh, I've never had a jury duty summons or mailing or anything yet, forgot about that one.

We're their conflicts he headed off during his term? I don't remember any. War seems to be somewhat random in terms of exact timing. Except for wars we directly start imo.

He'll now definitely have ample opportunity to demonstrate whether he can end wars though.

lol @ discussing politics with Rich Muny, Yugo. Talk about Trump-pilled.

Most voting decisions are just expressions of short term rational economic self interest within the person's perceptive capacity (which is often not accurate), not questions of morality.

Big terrorist attack in my city about 45 minutes north of me. 62 year old recently divorced guy was dissatisfied with how assets were split; drove a car (truck? idk) into a sport center killing 35 (possibly more, casualties are often understated in PRC) and injuring 43.

Unusual to have such a geriatric involved in domestic terrorism! usually that's a young man's game. And every 60+ year old man I know who divorced was usually gleeful after the fact at the opportunity to transactionally bang young women with impunity. but hey, different strokes.

There is tremendous amounts of cultural bifurcation along socioeconomic lines in anglospheric society that you don't see even in other white countries like "france" where Soulman is from, Germany, Netherlands, etc.

Somebody like Soulman has likely never interacted with a lower class non-college educated American in person for an extended period of time. He has no idea of how much worse their circumstances are compared to their Norwegian (Sorry, French) counterpart. Deindustrialization prompted by globalization has been a disaster for the American lower class. "Just go to college bro, then you won't be lower class" is a naive solution for two main reasons. 1. There is finite demand for the good and service produced by "university skilled" labour and it is very possible to engage in elite overproduction where the value of a college degree depreciates as more people attend while simultaneously the cost increases, especially when people are given ample private and public sector loans at below equilibrium level interest rates. 2. IQ is real and some people genetically aren't meant for college. Making college easier, which has already been happening the past 30 years, does not magically change this.

When you then add in weaponized illegal immigration and low skilled illegal immigrants willing to work for much lower wages than low skilled Americans, you have a very unpleasant situation for these folks. Redistribution can only go so far in mitigating income inequality, which is arguably one of the most serious problems facing the anglosphere today and directly leading to the aforementioned cultural bifurcation. At some point, people without university degrees need more viable ways to make a living and not be so economically behind the university educated class.

But if you've probably never spoken face to face with a lower class American with a 101 IQ and no university education coming from a statistically most likely divorced family with annual income of 31,000 USD, this might not even occur to you and you might just be like "Yeah bro, racists thats why they hate immigrants bro. They just need to go to college bro". As far as I'm aware, Norway doesn't quite have the same problem with lower class people being that far behind the university educated class. China certainly does not.

A country like Germany is probably a very good model for Trump's proposed plans to reshore American manufacturing jobs and engage in re-industrialization. They are developed, yet have a very robust system of vocational training and implicitly acknowledge the existence of IQ and genetic limitations to cognitive ability within their K-12 education system. They don't just try to increase university attendance and fall victim to elite overproduction, but rather acknowledge that people in that middle IQ range probably shouldn't go to college and their national economy should create goods and services matched to the skillsets these can actually attain which lots of other countries are very pleased to import. Given that China has not exactly set a high standard for most of the consumer electronics, appliances, or vehicles they export, why not have the American economy try to produce some of these goods even if it's done at a higher cost? It's not unreasonable to speculate the American worker could do a better job, especially if we had an education system which similarly emphasized vocational training.

And none of this is to speak of how monetary policy has systematically disadvantaged lower class non-asset holders while enriching upper class asset holders and enormously amplified income inequality. But you can watch sum Robert Breedlove 3 hour long videos if you aren't already aware of this.

ughh... sorry for making a HC politics post here. I'm sure this would probably get me called a racist xenophobe if I posted it in the politics subforum to people who don't know my racial heritage or where i've lived the last 9.5 years but whatever...

Just wrote a long post but not gonna post it. I think Trump is very objectively unfit/unqualified/etc for president. Not just morally - he's mentally and emotionally unfit too. That doesn't mean his economic policies/ideas are bad - they are honestly irrelevant. Other people exist who support free ideas and economic reform similar to what people hope we're getting from him, and almost all of them would likely have a better grasp of it. Republican party should just run a half-decent human being who can do that stuff.

Democratic party has gotten much worse as a reaction to him - basically only engaging in identity politics when Trump has already demonstrated for 8 years that roughly half of the US doesn't care about that or is turned off by it.

Unfortuntely, the whole thing is a mess.

Oh the Dem party has failed utterly, no doubt about it. They're still about a million times better than MAGA, but that's mostly just because of the comparison.

Then again, actually trying to have a rational discussion with true Trump-pilled people like Muny is literally 100% a waste of time. If this isn't obvious I don't know what to tell you.

This is literally not true, as demonstrated by droves of MAGA voters quoting GIRLS IN BOYS' BATHROOM as one of the reasons they voted for Trump. Denying that sexism and hate for others isn't a driving factor (but not the only one) behind MAGA is also pretty fruitless imo.

The Dems have ignored the huddled masses and failed to present solutions for them long while placating their donors enough to deservedly fail, so they're obviously not without fault.

This is most certainly true.

I haven't really interacted live with many Americans at all, only online. I agree entirely with your second paragraph and I'm a bit disappointed that you think so badly of me. Maybe it's deserved, I dunno. It's not like it takes personal interaction to acknowledge the plight of the average American citizen in most rural areas.

Weirdly I also agree with your not so hot take that not everyone should go to college, and that the gubmint should develop incentives and structure for people to take vocational training and non-college educations like plumbers, electricians etc. Luckily useless IT guys like me aren't laughably overpaid here compared to the US, so blue collar workers' lifetime earnings won't be far behind.

Becoming a plumber is an incredible career choice. At least here it’s the highest paid of the everyday trades, there’s a constant shortage of them and it isn’t something that AI is gonna rip the heart out of.

Imo, plumber, carpenter, builder, electrician etc is a way better way to go right now. Maybe if you’re top 10% of your class academically and can get a good degree at a top college, but taking 4 years to get into huge debt and get a meh degree at a second or third tier college is a very bad investment

These are viable individual solutions, but these industries don't quite have enough openings to absorb the glut of less skilled labour without depreciating both their wages and their already low social status. An American public education is not exactly doing a great job encouraging kids to get into these fields.

Anyway Soulman, I'm sorry I insulted you by calling you norwegian. I know you take great pride in your francophone heritage.

I don't think arguing with Rich Muny would be a fruitless waste of time.

I don't think that wanting to keep trans people in their birth gendered sporting events or bathrooms is an example of hatred.

However, some of the immigration/race stuff is definitely motivated more by hatred than economic interests. But the black pilled reality is that since racism is so strongly genetically encoded and involves a belief set rather than actively comitting a crime, it'll be really hard to simply educate it away. I mean, rape is gentically encoded by it involves something very active and detectable. Racism much less so, and our efforts to alleviate it thusfar have mostly hurt the people its designed to help (defund the police, affirmative action quotas). Strict immigration standards such that the proles and upper class liberal white women who are most likely to actually do racist things only ever interact with nothing but the best and brightest of foreigners and form positive impressions accordingly is probably a better strategy than HR DEI seminars.

I see very little wrong with Chinese immigration laws, but if anyone proposed these in a white country they'd be denounced as a Nazi racist who wants to exterminate all non-whites in the cruelest way possible. Police visit the houses of foreigners unannounced at random and ask to see your passport and make sure your visa is current. They're polite about it and it takes about 45 seconds. You apply for a visa to work, do business, or stay here b/c you are married to a Chinese. If you come illegally and are found out, you get ****ing deported. They could do a bit better with people who have been here a long ass time and are on multi-year employment contracts; its a bit silly to need to renew the visa every 12 months in this case. But there have been changes to that and its getting better. There is nothing racial about it... you obey the laws required to get into the country and stay in the country or you leave. I'm amazed its become politicized beyond that, given how utterly simple this is.

You are correct mon ami, if you insult our fromage, vin or baguettes you go in the Book of Grudges!

Fair enough, go ahead. From reading his tweets (yes, they were linked and mocked in another forum) he seems utterly Trump-pilled. I have no interest in arguing with someone like that. I have no problems arguing with you, even though we have some fundamental differences in world views - which is of course fine in and of itself.

At a surface level, no. It's the same as requiring ID to vote - at the surface, it seems totally fine - and is indeed fine in other countries (we have it here!). I think most people stop there and give it little further thought.

However, for many people I think fear of trans people is an example of barely concealed othering of an extremely marginalized group who face enough struggles as it is. And let's face it - trans issues and giant man-women raping girls in their bathrooms is such a tiiiiiiiiiny issue, it's hysterically and tragically funny that it was such a big deal in this election.

The immigration system in the US seems totally FUBAR and a complex issue to "fix" (whatever that means). I feel confident that Trump will try to in the most heinous ways possible, like when his previous administration separated kids from their parents seemingly at random through a combination of pure evil and willful ignorance.

PS: I hesitate to call this HC, but the LC thread is for all intents and purposes dead anyway, so who cares?