The US has a long history of wartime elections.

The US has a long time history of a lot of things that this administration is just ignoring or overstepping so I’m not sure that matters during this time. This is not a normal time in the U.S.

Zelensky was able to legitimately do what he did because a large portion of his country is occupied by foreign forces and he has a positive rating in the unoccupied area.

Absolutely not arguing that. What Zelensky did / is doing is legitimate, I’m not here to argue against that but what I believe Trump see’s as an opportunity based on his meetings with Zelensky.

I don’t think that matters for what I perceive Trump’s goal to be, just based on his past history. I’m thinking back to Covid when he saw that Chlorox info before a briefing and mentioned maybe injecting (or ingesting?) bleach. I believe that he sees Zelenski extend his power due to wartime and I believe he thinks he will be able to do the same. Now he’s just looking for an enemy to point the U.S. at.

Imagine another 9/11 happening mixed with a media blitz under the DJT administration. While I don’t believe they would be able to pull this off, the thought of the rallying against a specific enemy due to an attack on American soil has a history of rallying the people.

The first step is to remove international dependence on things that we would need for a wartime industry. This is why he’s cutting ties with NAFTA allies. We can’t have them limiting resources we would need for wartime because they certainly won’t agree with what we end up doing. I believe this is why he rallied so hard for Steel workers during his first term too (but failed) to progress this same industry. In the next year or 2 when the factories and industry catches up is when we’re going to start to see the visible sparks of war.

To add onto this one more time - I also think that his interactions with Putin plays a role as well. The people of Russia were not able to stop Putin in his war with Ukraine and I believe that DJT thinks he can pull something similar off. This may as well be possible - he has a cult fanbase and the American people aren’t rallying against a Billionaire buying politicians and running vote lotteries - I’m not sure anything will rally the American people like we’ve seen in the past.

It’s a slow slippery ride into complacency where things progressively get more illegal and illicit and the headlines come and go too quick for the American people to register. It really is going to be a slow, bloodless revolution from The Right. When the time comes and American is at war with a Foreign power (maybe the Mexican Cartel, which would track with Trumps war on drugs and immigration) the American people will mostly accept it, as they have everything else illicit DJT has done so far in his short term in office.

I agree, Ukraine didn’t start the war, but that doesn’t change what happened and what I believe Trump’s view of it regarding extending his power.

Struggling is a bit much… Sure, it’s going to get there, but current levels are not a struggle.

Hard disagree. It’s the 3rd biggest line item in the Budget after Social Security and Medicaid. Even if the Democrats were in office, the debt payments would have been a struggle to get under control - hard choices did need to be made in this regard.

I think people are giving Republicans too much credit. The 3rd term he’s talking about is if the U.S. is in the midst of a war - he’s literally thinking about what Zelenski did in Ukraine to extend his power / term. I don’t see that as a far-fetched idea either. Let’s be real, war is money(YouTube Link), and the U.S. is struggling with debt. They pull back trade agreements with allies to reignite national industries for the coming years. They’re looking to make somebody an enemy to reignite the economy and retain power. I’d like to think that there’s no way to make this work, I’d like to think DJT won’t make it past the first few years, but we won’t know til’ we know.

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I don’t think he cares if it backfires.

Right, him and his won’t be affected.

Tell that to pretty much every rights movement in the history of our species. Apes strong together.

I personally believe he’s doing so to try and get better USMCA trade agreements, but I believe it’s just going to backfire, which could also just as well be the goal.

Many of those same people simply weren’t equipped for the media blitz of the 21st century. Commerical Social Media has most of them on a string.

I think the nice thing about a protest is that it’s a show of power, strength, and unity. It sends a message to those on the outside that there is a number of people who believe in a common goal. And really, the message is one all Americans can pretty much agree on and that’s trickle down isn’t trickling and corporate profits are soaring.

The longer the protests, the worse taxes become from tariffs, the more cuts they make to social services, the more people could snowball this into a movement.

The power of protests are People.

I hear you - I see plenty of outrage about Republican action though. What can Democrats really do but try to rely on Judges to do their jobs and campaign until midterms. Maybe they can rally enough people to march on Washington, but that may just speed up authoritarian gains.

Right now, the National Debt is ~125% of the GDP and is estimated to climb - we’ll know more March 27th when the quarterly report is published.

I had to do some research on this one because I wasn’t too familiar with how much weight the ratio factors in. For example, Japan is over 200%, but they’re well off due to societal/governmental factors such as low interest rates, high sovereign savings, and keeping a portion of the debt local to the nation itself. On the other hand, Greece is ~160% due to their last recession. They had worker strikes in 2024 due to stagnating wages, but they’re a come back with economic growth projected to hit ~2% and debt ratio to be at ~145% by the end of the year so it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

That being said, the U.S. is in quite a different situation economically. From what I can tell, it’s not great, but not catastrophic either. If our economic growth continues it’s upward trend, maybe we can balance it out. But, if our National Debt continues to grow, or if our GDP starts to taper off, the % gap may widen and we may see a slow and steady downturn in QoL. The economists I ran across seemed to agree that it could be a growing issue and something to keep an eye on how it’s handled. I thought this blogpost was a good read - it doesn’t get into all the nuance but is a decent summary / overlook. For an official overlook you can read the House Summary.

Finally, this is from the approved House 2025 Budget Document (or bill? idk), if you trust that, but it says:

In fiscal year 2024, interest on the debt became the government’s third largest budget line item, following only Social Security and Medicare.

On a sidenote, mmw kinda thing, I don’t think DJT is going to be a good fit for this situation. I don’t think the mixing of corporate interests, deregulation, and shaking of trees is going to pull us out of this mess but entrench the Nation. The only way out is to explain to regular people that our only solution is to tax the Billionaire class, and get our local politicians to enact change.

Maybe I have bought into the propaganda, but am willing to learn more. If we’re pouring Trillions from our National Budget into paying down the ever-growing Federal Debt, where’s the tipping point for the dollars value?

This debt has been ever-growing, by the +5 trillion pretty much every administration, and American prosperity has been on a decline (maybe not for you, but the city I’m sitting in feels it). If we’re not going to tax Billionaires (which we fucking should, by a lot) then what’s the next best thing to bring better prosperity to the American Working Class?

Finally, what do you feel is America’s primary economic concern?

You keep trying to make this a party issue, when it’s not. Biden also increased the National Debt by a similar amount. You’re right, 1 Billion dollars in a pool of Trillions really is a drop in the bucket. I don’t think we need to get anything from Ukraine in return of our support. They’re fighting a foreign offender, they deserved much more than throwing money at the problem, but here we are. Everything we send out of the U.S. that’s not accounted for in the U.S. budget goes into debt; as the National Debt climbed, the U.S. needs to find ways to pay that down, and they’re trying to do that without offending the Billionaire Class buying politicians. So, from Trumps perspective, Ukraine is an easy cut, regardless if we think he’s Putins Puppet, it’s clear Trump doesn’t care for what’s happening in Ukraine.

I support funds for Ukraine over funds for Isreal any day of the week, but that’s just not going to happen under this administration.

I don’t even understand the point you’re trying to make with this one. I guess if you’re referring to me as a trumpoloid you could dumb this response down a bit so I can maybe process it and reply. On a side note, I don’t understand why we (as a Nation) support Israels genocide, but I personally don’t support it so there’s that I guess.

Every president has. It’s been a growing problem through multiple different administrations now. This isn’t a party issue, it’s a “Eat the Rich” issue. The Billionaire class has taking but not putting back in, and they’re expecting regular working people to foot the bill. That’s why the 22 Billion dollar cut on Social Services through HHS instead of taxing the 400+ Billionaires in America.

So do Democrats, it’s been on a hot run for the last decade or so. Through Obama, through Trump, through Biden, and now back to Trump. This is a multi-party issue and the solution is to tax Billionaires.

The National Debt has been on a steady growth since Obama, through Trump, through Biden. Like, it’s an issue that spans multiple presidencies and parties. The U.S. dollars is a global reserve note. So, not only do we need to account for paying it down in our National Budget, but we also can’t just print more money at the problem either. I fully support Ukraine. Russia should not have invaded them, and either we or the EU should have had a stronger opposition than just throwing money at the problem. If we want to continue to support Ukraine, if we want to pay down our National Debt, if we want to continue supporting our Nations social services we need to fucking tax Billionaires and their Trillion dollar companies. Like, corporations buying politicians is a problem.

That National Debt isn’t some invisible barrier, it affects our every day lives, our future, what programs we can support, and the global economy. I don’t know, unless you can explain to me me why the National Debt doesn’t matter, and how we can continue to support Ukraine. I’m here for a discussion.

It’s a bit more complicated than that. We’re not just sending missiles, some of it is logistical, funding, training - some of it doesn’t just come back into our economy, and not in full. For example, there is a fund in the billions for Ukraine and allies to buy weapons from us on a need by basis - but like not immediately. It has been years, it could be years.

More importantly though a good portion of these funds were out of bounds of the National Budget causing National Debt to grow. Now, I’m not saying Ukraine is the sole reason the National Debt is out of control, it’s been a long time coming, but we’re peaking. We print more money, the value of the dollar drops, things get more expensive not just national but worldwide since the dollar is an international currency reserve.

You right, I think there’s always going to be a need for industrial and mechanics. Like, we’re for sure always going to need transport, lumber, steel, infrastructure, logistics, more. When I wrote that I was mostly thinking Steel as we really just don’t have as much a need for it as we used to. Like, sure we need to keep up with infrastructure and national security, etc. but we’re not at war, we’re not expanding as a nation (like big cities) anymore so it’ll never recover to times before NAFTA.

That being said, I really do think we should be making automobiles in house which could bring more Steel back, but on the other hand, do we really want more automobiles? Like, drive by any dealership and there always seem to just be an abundance.