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There was a rider attached to one of the latest appropriations bills (which is now law) that restricts how future Presidents can pull the US out of NATO. It can't happen now unless Congress passes an act authorizing the President to do so, or with a 2/3 vote of the Senate (the same mechanism as ratifying a treaty).

So at least on this issue, we've put in some safeguards in case we elect an idiot again.

Yeah but a bunch of white college kids who don't even know what Mer7aba means have decided that the way to serve the Palestinian cause is to let the guy who handed Jerusalem and the Golan Heights to Netenyahu back into office to teach the establishment a lesson so we're fucked.

I'm starting to think they're actually just right wingers who know that saying what they ACTUALLY want will get them dumped by all their cool allies club friends. Probably why they keep insisting on dumb fuck takes like "bErNiE wOuLd Be A cEnTrIsT iN pOlAnD!" and "AmErIcA hAs No LeFt!!!!!"

The people who want to spite Biden's genocidal support by not voting for him don't realize that the alternative is a fascist dictator who actively relishes in the prospect of killing brown people. If you think Biden's treatment of the Gazan war is bad, wait til you see Trump.

Same with the Ukrainian war. If Biden is milquetoast, Trump will guarantee your toast is forever burnt and inedible.

Hi, American here.

American domestic politics is absolutely fucked right now.

The Republican Party does not really even have any policy proposals for serious issues at the Federal level.

They spent years saying 'Obamacare bad', saying they could do healthcare better. Basically it is a decade later and they have no plan, not even a proposal.

Taxes? We still have morons like DeSantis basically saying 'I dunno, maybe a flat tax?' to applause during stump speeches and debates. The flat tax proposal is absolutely insane for a large number of reasons, but the Republican base eats it up.

Look, there are something like 50 million + Americans that believe in all or most of the QAnon conspiracy theories, that believe God himself appointed Trump as President.

Trump stacked the Supreme Court.

The Republicans have functionally made abortion illegal in about half the country.

Meanwhile the economy is /apparently/ recovering, though the prices of basically everything you need to routinely pay for have risen fairly dramatically while wages have remained basically stagnant. Wealth inequality has spiralled to obscene levels, rent has basically doubled in about half a decade.

As I write this, I believe that polls of Biden v Trump are still showing Trump ahead.

Even if Trump does not win, and even if the MAGA QAnon types do not do a bunch of terrorism (again), they still exist, and are hopelessly living in basically an alternate reality where anything that goes against their worldview is fake, a conspiracy, of the Devil.

It was about 3 years ago now that I told my friend group that the QAnon problem was so serious that we would need some kind of analogous concept to the de-Nazification program as was implemented after WW2 in West Germany to deal with it. They either laughed at or ignored me. None of those people are my friends any more.

We are fucked.

The only thing that motivates most Republican voters is hatred. Any politician who says Trans people bad, Critical Race Theory bad, Immigrants bad, Homeless People bad, anything like that receives applause from the audience.

And I write this /as a homeless person/ who will almost certainly not be able to vote in the upcoming election. I will be /lucky/ if I can even find and qualify for an actual apartment after basically a bunch of crimes that happened to me in the course of last year caused me serious physical injury and the loss of all of my possessions, ruined my credit score, placed my in incredible debt, lost me my job and my ability to do any other job until my physical injuries are healed, which I simply have to handle myself, while homeless, because the cost of engaging with American healthcare system to handle my problems now would be sufficient to outright purchase a modest home (outright) less than a decade ago.

Meanwhile, Trump has outright stated he would like to implement basically concentration camps for the homeless. He has stated he wants to eliminate the vermin leftists. He is very concerned with the purity of the blood of the nation, and has outright stated he will be a dictator.

And he is currently leading in the polls.

Again, this country is fucked. So, sorry Europeans, I would love to be able to assuage your fears, and become an activist or something.

Maybe send me some of your healthcare and I'll get right on it.

Or maybe I am extremely tired, have no hope for this broken country, and could use the services of someone who can smuggle me into Canada or something.

Even if Trump dies tomorrow, the problem still exists. Trump is the worm in the apple, but half the apple is rotten.

I live in Japan and I'm sure Kim literally considered nuking my country during that dick measurement contest Trump held.

It’s difficult not to sound overly dramatic or hyperbolic about the situation but it really does feel like the US is uncomfortably close right now to a christofascist state.

To add to this: while it may sound hyperbolic to some folks, for plenty of us we've seen this brewing for decades. White evangelicals and right-wing politics unified in the 1980s in a way that was a clear danger to democracy, and they've only solidified their power since, given how mainstream their views are now.

IMHO Frank Zappa said it best in 1986: he got called out as being hyperbolic, but he clearly saw the writing on the wall. He's of course not the most scholarly source, but damn it Jim I'm a biologist, not a historian. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlePLLlfH4Q

If they acknowledge the depth of his depravity then they go too far in tarnishing the office. They desperately want to maintain prestige so they'll never go as far as they ought to.

It’s never going to be that easy. I’m sure each of us can find a candidate we like better but a successful run is more than that:

• fund raising - to some extent whoever raises the most money wins, and I’m pretty sure President Biden has
• name recognition - is everyone familiar with your favorite candidate? You really can’t beat the familiarity of someone who is already President
• middle of the road enough to attract many different voters, especially those independents sitting in the middle
• has beaten Trump before

While I think the President is doing a great job, I’d prefer someone more progressive. However that might alienate more voters than it would attract. I will not risk another trumptastrophe by insisting on more Progressiveness over electable, “progressive enough” and not insane

The age thing does bother me, but I can only dream of doing that well at that age.

We should focus on VP. We want someone in the wings and we want them to build name recognition, and that hasn’t worked for the current VP

He was popular enough to beat Trump the 1st go round, why would people not vote for him now when the alternative is 4 more years of god knows what fresh hell?

Anyone who votes like that really doesn’t understand the difference between the two at all.