Especially online - detection becomes possible over sustained interactions for only the most critical (at best), but you don’t get that online, and especially not on drive-by commenting, which is the norm for media/social media.

Phony consensus and bad rhetoric are one system prompt away, and the only thing I’d argue is there probably is no escaping it, even for the most civic minded and informed people. Your best bet in the coming months is an awareness it’s happening largely undetected, that we’ve all fallen for it, and explaining it to as many people as possible.

The big problem will be the vast majority thinks they can tell, that they’re uninfluenced, and that they have the inside line.

Two things can be true at the same time, and it can all run cover for each other.

You’ve probably nailed it, unfortunately. Which will beget more of this behaviour the next time he wants international theater and conflict of interest moneys to distract from national theater and conflict of interest moneys.

Definitely. But there’s learnings to be had here too.

Even if/when stability returns after that (on a 4/8 year basis), we know their governance is now openly bipolar, more than it has ever been; it doesn’t care what the facts are, it’s base doesn’t care what the realities are, just the pretense and if their populist icon is winning.

You can’t go back to trusting them as a center stage participant anymore, because in 4-8 years, you just get caught with your pants down again. Seeking out reliable, long term partners who are more resilient to full pendulum swings that gut everything is paramount, especially those that put international stability over momentary opportunistic grabs at public coffers.

Trump’s wiping out trillions of America’s power and credibility for coming decades for a couple billion in personal wealth consolidation. Worst case scenario for him; he’ll just fuck off somewhere else. Or maybe he becomes god king of earth through incremental annexation. Either way he doesn’t give a shit, and the next opportunist won’t either.

Sure, it’s absolutely valid that Trump has massively helped Liberals in the polls.

It’s also true that the Conservatives attempt to emulate Trump’s populist rhetoric also blew up in a post Trump victory, as they themselves drew the comparisons.

Since he subcontracts all his thinking and none of his talking out of both sides of his mouth, I would assume someone somewhere must hire some at least half-competent analytics guy before it all becomes distorted through their cronyist chain of command.

I really wish we had done more - when we realized they were bipolar during the first presidency, we had ~8 years to do more.

At the onset they were still 70% trade partner, with a target end of this year to drop it to 50%.

We should diversify more, and even when we all collectively get 4-8 years of increased stability back from the Americans, we should never fully revert back; it’s not a problem they’re going to be able to fix, especially when they take the Department of Education and eliminate it as waste.

Except the can of pop is every can of pop that has ever existed.

Confirmed already; $1-5M lunch buy-ins with corporate execs per head - the topic? Tariff exemptions.

Who cares about billions and trillions of wealth destruction of the public coffers when he can make millions per day personally?

PC versus CP - at least one is demonstrably less malicious, but I’m inclined to agree this isn’t bullish for the future.

God speed. Hopefully if/when you can wrest control back your country can do something to bring sanity back to American politics, since it’s just bad for everyone.

Short of 2 decades and doubling the education budget, not sure what your options are though; going to be hard to undo all the international and reputational harm that’ll come out of it, even with the promise of 4-8 years of at least not outright malicious policy.