> We don’t know who placed the trades. We don’t know what they knew.
Actually, “we”, collectively, do know, because the SEC maintains an “XKEYSCORE for equities” called CAT.
If there was interest, the government could know exactly who placed these trades. But the call (options) are coming from inside the house.
The consolidate audit trail regularly has millions of errors within a day... It's far from complete data; here's their latest report card:
https://catnmsplan.com/sites/default/files/2025-04/04.01.25-...
Also, CAT is run by CATNMS, LLC which was created in response to an SEC rule 613, however it is operated by the same consortium of SROs that it purports to provide oversight on...
All these layers of responsibility diffusion and a notable absence of penalties for failing to meet rule 613 guidelines mean that rule is little more than for show.
The prosecutors dont need any spy tool to check who did the trade (at least officially). They can simply ask to receive the records / logs.
What would determine whether the SEC will investigate for insider trading? I would expect them to be shielded from executive pressure.
Who would be doing the shielding? The current US government has been operating under the assumption of an incredibly expansive executive power, even over "independent" agencies.
I'm not a legal expert at all but so far the most useful mental model has been to assume absolutely no one is shielded from executive power (including organizations and people entirely outside the federal government) unless the courts have delivered a final ruling on it.
How would a final court ruling shield someone from executive power? The court relies on the executive to enforce its decisions. They can find a person in contempt, and order fines or jail time until that person complies, but I believe the orders are then enforced by U.S. Marshals, who are executive appointees.
This is a serious question. What have I missed?
If the Marshalls neglect their oath to the Constitution (whether ordered to by superiors or not) then the court can deputize others to carry out court orders. IIUC correctly that's usually the police.
I cannot overstate this enough: The police cannot be counted on to protect citizens against governmental overreach.
I think there's no hard power stopping them but in general they've been reluctant to openly defy courts (they have defied lower courts some while claiming they haven't). I think at least adhering to some pretense of American democracy has so far been important to this administration and if they abandon that pretense carelessly they run a real risk of losing necessary support (popular support, Congressional support, but also support of executive branch institutions).
Also, it's not that I think they won't defy courts but they'll be very careful in doing it (well, at least as careful as this administration can be) so it's still a reasonable base assumption that court orders protect you since while it's not the ironclad protection it was it still gives you some protection for now. Though that "for now" is obviously rather ominous.
Do you still think so, after seeing them stonewall the courts in the Kilmar Abrego García case? To me it appears they a brazenly flouting the law.
> I would expect them to be shielded from executive pressure.
In the past month the SEC has stopped most enforcement actions involving crypto.
The president nominates the SEC chair, and can fire him.
This explains how, written just before Trump assumed power:
While he can't force Gensler to step down as a commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, he can name a new interim SEC chair as soon as he's inaugurated on Jan. 20. He can also nominate a new commissioner to the Senate, which has to confirm the pick.
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/11/07/heres-how-quickly...
And Gensler resigned as Chair as soon as Jan 20th:
"I would expect them to be shielded from executive pressure."
Such an expectation was rational prior to 2025-01-20. Since then it's been completely counterfactual.
When the criminals get root access...
Questionable if there is anything to investigate, definitionally you can't inside trade an index fund.
If you’re POTUS or closely related to POTUS with access to sweeping information about erratic tariff policies that actual do shift entire markets index funds index against, why couldn’t you?
In general I think you’re correct because the “inside” information is typically not as broad or powerful. But I don’t think we live in general times. If POTUS gave me personally a heads up about such adjustments on tariffs, after watching indexes tumble after announcing them, and knowing the opposite direction, I would dump almost everything I had access to in such stocks largely effected by reevaluation from tariffs.
Knowing major policy shifts before they happen from one of the powerful governments in the world is useful information, especially when the policies are being set by a handful of people who can limit access to knowledge escaping even more than regularly so markets don’t adjust from larger sets of insider information.
Now is it really considered “insider” trading in this case? Probably not, and this administration can get away with anything it seems.
That's the whole point. It CANNOT have been someone inside all 500 companies. It wouldn't make much sense because those companies did not do anything at the time. It was president Trump's tweet that moved the market. So it can only have been someone that new of Trump's announcement hours before he made that announcement.
Why would you expect that?
In this administration they will be fired for cases Trump doesnt like. Who would protect their independence, Congress? The house members will not oppose any trump policy unless the US is in a depression due to his action
At this point, it's not clear that they would oppose him dropping a nuclear bomb on Ohio.
Well, if there was a hurricane headed to Toledo, it could be justified.[0]
All depends on if it's in the storm path drawn by the Presidential Sharpie.
[0] First Trump threatened to nuke hurricanes. Now he’s waging war on weather forecasters
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/04/trump-...
SEC is a federal agency so falls under the Executive which is controlled by Trump. Trump will fire any SEC employee who investigates the "wrong" people and install a loyalist in their place.
This is the truth, they have been recently divesting of anyone who wants to prosecute for white collar crime. The next four years will see at least one trillionaire because he/she will be able to game the system without any barriers because the sheriff is also the criminal.
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I agree, at this point. There is of course voter agency in 2 years.
Of course lots of voters (specifically the ones that voted for this) are pretty happy with the way things are going. So any kind of blowback is uncertain at best.
If the population were genuinely interested in removing Trump, they could elect 60 democrats to the senate and a house majority, then impeach. But again, a healthy chunk are happy, and a lot if the rest can't vote Democrat for social / tribal reasons.
But make no mistake, he operates above the law because the people think it's OK. They alone have the power to remove him.
You assume there will be free and fair elections in the future. I’m not convinced we can depend on that.
I'm thinking national emergency and canceling elections due to war with China.
We shouldn’t depend on anything. Holding elections is our responsibility.
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> There is of course voter agency in 2 years.
Not necessarily. First for soft reasons: media and tech companies spreading disinformation. Second for hard reasons: elections can be postponed for <reasons>.
Third: People continuing to spread FUD that discourages people from taking action or even caring.
Except the military.
Alas, the military answers to the president.
Article II Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, "the President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States."
Not that the constitution matters ...
The military repeatedly drills into trainees that they serve to defend and uphold the constitution, not the presidential orders. There are all kinds of lessons on when to disobey direct orders, when to speak up, how to speak up, what your protections are, etc. etc.
That's what they tell them, yes. Do their actions align with their words?
The military is not going to take action until it is absolutely necessary. Yes, the military is sworn to uphold the constitution, even over presidential rule but it's also well understood that a military coup should be avoided at all costs. Once initiated you cannot undo this. It has significant repercussions and has significant risk of starting a civil war. It is not a thing that starts one day and ends the next. It is a thing that at best last weeks, likely lasts months, but could last indefinitely.
It is also worth mentioning that the military is not a uniform and monolithic entity. If you're asking what arm is on the other side of that civil war, well it was originally part of the one the initiated the coup in the first place.
Trust me, no one wants a military coup. It should not be a tool used lightly. Do not ask for this until all other options have been exhausted
So far, their actions are compatible with both hypotheses.
It's when the orders come in to directly use military force to support unconstitutional acts that we find out, not simply when the military fails to intervene in legal disputes.
The US military is NOT going to support a Trump led coup. Most officers hate Trump.
Yes, but have you been paying attention to all the senior military leaders that have been fired in the past several weeks?
Haven’t we learnt anything? Just look at how some police work in the US.
Police are fundamentally different. Their only job is to oppress. They uphold the law, right or wrong.
Military answers to whomever it thinks it's best to get paid. If relationship between government and the people fails so hard that collection of taxes to fund the military is threatened then the military sides either with the people and deposes the government or with the government and suppresses the unrest.
Wise words!
This process was exactly what could be observed in Portugal in the beginning of the 2010 decade.
The opposition was not able to buy the military, and the government was returned to power by by promising raise in payment.
Do you have more links handy about the situation in Portugal? I'd love to read more about that.
"the military" isn't a single entity. If things really got bad I suspect there would breaks all over the place as various groups (across all ranks) decide to either follow or refuse orders coming down. It would be chaos, the fact that things could get so bad that we're even talking about it is already a very bad sign.
I'm sure there's always some back and forth inside the structure of the military but since it's insular singular top down organization it's usually not visible to civilians and they only get exposed to the consensus that military eventually reaches. Since everybody in the military is armed there's very little benefit to actively fighting with each other using sizable force because it brings no one closer to ensuring getting paid. So any staunch opponents of consensus are just getting deposed or at most assassinated. Everything usually happens quite peacefully.
Think about Crimson Tide? A movie I know but still an example of internal conflict to could occur over carrying out controversial orders.
~ Letters from an American (April 11, 2025) Heather Cox Richardson - https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-11-2025U.S. law requires the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to have served as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of staff of the Army, the chief of naval operations, the chief of staff of the Air Force, the commandant of the Marine Corps, or the commander of a unified or specified combatant command. Just after 2:00 a.m. eastern time this morning, the Senate confirmed Retired Air Force Lieutenant General John Dan Caine, who goes by the nickname “Razin,” for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by a vote of 60–25. Although Caine has 34 years of military experience, he did not serve in any of the required positions. The law provides that the president can waive the requirement if “the President determines such action is necessary in the national interest,” and he has apparently done so for Caine. The politicization of the U.S. military by filling it with Trump loyalists is now, as Kendall writes, “indisputable.”
If the military says something not in line with Trump they'll quickly be removed. Just look at what happend in Greenland.
There is a chain of command in the military, you have to follow orders even if you disagree with them (unless they are unconstitutional). You may express your disagreement to your superiors, but you may not publicly distance yourself. She would be courtmartialed for this in most militaries, and probably in the US as well in a more serious situation.
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No economic system is functional without a bunch of compromises, and capitalism needs strong regulations as a check to keep it from turning absolutely rotten.
We're witnessing the removal of all of the guardrails, traffic signals, road maintenance crews. The highway patrols have been replaced by organized teams of highwaymen.
It'll get a lot worse before it gets better.
I recently read someone's comment here stating that "trust is efficient."
What we are witnessing is the devolution of the USA from a high-trust to low-trust business environment. "Low-trust business environment" is the euphemism we have used to describe other countries, where corruption is rampant. This is so sad to watch.
Not just sad to watch. Would a country with a low-trust business environment be allowed to have such a huge mountain of government debt, and continue to have its currency be the world's reserve currency? A lot of sadness hinges on those considerations.
I'm pretty sure that the damage is done. It will take a few years, maybe even a decade, but the USD will no longer be the defacto reserve currency.
there's no reason for the USD to be the reserve currency, being the currency of a country that doesn't produce anything anymore
But does provide services the entire world depends on.
it's the other way round, the military maintains the world order, the currency is used as reserve, and they get to provide services that nobody else can provide while they're top dog. they are not on a trajectory to remain top dog for very long.
there's no reason that one government should control that currency.
Trust was its own reason. It's useful for the whole world to have a currency and business environment that operates by rules, even when the rules aren't perfect or fair.
That environment isn't being outcompeted by better, more fair rules - it's just getting vandalized for a few people's gain, and creating risk for everyone else .
there's what you think, and then there is reality.
I remember when everyone said the Euro was the new reserve currency - even a Bond film used it as a plot point.
Came to nothing.
But things can change no? Like the country whose currency we use becoming untrustworthy. Do you think the world watched the first trump presidency and thought to do nothing?
It was US policy to actively work against that and it was an acceptable deal for us given that we've been friends and allies forever. Now Trump has turned the US into our heroin-addict sibling we can no longer rely on them.
So they’re going to…. Be nicer now? Less crazy?
But at that point in time the USA wasn't run by a clown show of grifting circus performers.
Those particular aspects are only good for Americans though. That those two things are ending is good for basically everybody else, from Brazilians, Chinese and Canadians to Frenchmen.
The speed with which things are ending are most important I think. For decades there has been a slow decline in US power. Today we have the BRICS trade block representing more than half of the world's population. And countries hold a basket of reserve currencies, where the dollar is still a large percentage, but not nearly as large as it used to be. If all these pillars of American empire are carelessly self-destructed, crashing the world order, it will be hugely disruptive. It forces other powers to act and move to occupy the power vacuum, while lacking the economic weapons may force US'es hand to engage with military force, to reestablish itself.
>Today we have the BRICS trade block representing more than half of the world's population.
As far as I understand, the BRICS block does not actually exist. I mean, being member of it does not mean anything serious. There are no obligations, no agreements, no roadmaps. We might as well talk about a alliance of countries whose names begin with the letter "S"
I really don't agree. Rather, the 2015-2024 period has seen a huge increase in US GDP relative to the EU, which is probably largely driven by the US ability to spend, due to these particular things.
Of course, countries like China are catching up anyway-- they're more than a billion people and very able, and of course, people are working hard to get out of this arrangement. I agree that it will be disruptive, but I think the crash has been in the making for years.
When US interest rates went from 1% to 4.5-5% without a drop in stock prices or a corresponding increasing in dividends I could only interpret that as pure irrationality, and even now companies like Tesla still have P/E ratios of 133.54 whereas excellent firms in the same business-- Volkswagen and Toyota have P/E ratios 3.24 and 6.21 respectively. I'm surprised it still hasn't gone through the floor. The traders by trading at these prices are implicitly assuming interest rates will go back to <1% without any drop in earnings, and that won't happen.
> When US interest rates went from 1% to 4.5-5% without a drop in stock prices
The Dow crashed from ~36k to ~28k in less than a year, and that decrease in value doesn't account for inflation. Adjusting for inflation I don't think the markets have actually fully reached their late 2021 peak.
Agreed otherwise but
Starting wars is not something forced upon a country, and that's ungood doublespeak.s/forces other powers/makes other powers want to/ s/force US/make US want to/
Not sure that's true. America's military keeps peace for trade to happen in a lot of the world... Not always successfully but it's there. That works because they have the reserve currency and can therefore print money for free. Which benefits the US greatly in all sorts of ways. But everyone else also sees some good. If that goes away its going to have impacts on everyone else as well as America. Maybe not as much of an impact on the rest of the world but this is not good for anyone. I can get the anger at the way the US acts, particularly over the last couple of weeks, but that doesn't mean that them doing badly helps the rest of us
I really don't think we do.
France and Britain alone used to be able to defend trade routes. I don't think it's a huge expense. It really is good for essentially everyone aside from the US itself, once the disruption is over. Obviously we'll have some kind of crash though, but I think that was inevitable with or without this.
>> France and Britain alone used to be able to defend trade routes. I don't think it's a huge expense.
That was a different world. France and Britain today have nowhere the kind of force projection the USA does, via its military bases and aircraft carriers.
Yes, but the US basically had to intervene and tell them to stop using it. If that hadn't happened they wouldn't have.
The US probably wasn't in preventing an invasion of Egypt, but if not restrained I'm sure that Britain and France could have realised their objectives, and if they had had a continuous need to realise different changing objectives they would have retained more capability.
> France and Britain alone used to be able to defend trade routes. I don't think it's a huge expense
France and Britain used to be two of the world's largest imperial powers, and at any time you could plausibly claim France and Britain alone could defend global trade routes, Britain, at least, still was.
You really aren't making a case for it being an easy, cheap job.
Yes, but I think they can basically still do it. If they hadn't been buying F-35s they'd presumably have pushed their stealth fighter projects to be finished by now, and what more is really required?
I think these trade routes etc. will stop mattering rather soon. Batteries are coming and once that's here the oil trade's gone, and then you have no need to export things to get something to trade for it, so in a decade or so none of this will matter.
International trade will go from being mandatory to optional, and thus become much less important.
I don't think that's completely true. Wasn't the US Navy founded (by a Scotsman of course) because the US at the time lacked the funds to pay off the pirates? European countries did pay them off, hence didn't need as large navies.
isn't this ancient history now? the formations in the last 50 years are large
I agree. I would argue that Pax Americana has been pretty great for even the USA's supposed "arch enemies." My gut feeling is that everyone loved that stability, whether friend or foe, and the fact that it's now gone will mess everyone up.
I am biased here, but I look forward to the next century of Pax Europa. This is the only way forward.
Europe isn't playing aggressively enough or really doing enough to innovate. China is in a position to reap a huge windfall from Trump putting the US in the dumpster. China will bring Europe into the fold with the promise of gradual reforms, and they'll win the global south with soft power and trade agreements.
My fear is that Trump sees America's position eroding quickly relative to China before his eyes and decides to do something an order of magnitude dumber than anything he's done before.
If you really think the US is going to just, what, retire all that military equipment you haven’t been paying attention.
Disclaimer: As it turns out, predicting the future is somewhat difficult.
However, in isolationist MAGA, the US military is just a jobs program. This is plain facts, is it not?
The other major power of the USA, post-WWII, was "soft power." That has now been cancelled. So, I am really not sure what is happening.
I once thought that "may you live in interesting times" was a blessing. I now believe that this saying is a curse.
So you’re saying Greenland and Canada have nothing to worry about?
It was always a curse.
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I know I’ll be downvoted but, since we’re going straight for scorched land, I prefer to voice it.
I think most voters think like me “I still prefer Trump to a leftist government”:
- Was there any need to be so extreme in terms of wokeness on the left? I am directly threatened by their program. Was there really any need to go for such a degree of revolution, ensuring everyone sensical would vote Trump? Could the left imagine being a little more democratic and making a few more concessions towards… omg, white males? Is it such a bane? It’s concessions for white males, or we vote for Trump, so did the left win anything with their scorched earth policy?
- It is true that savings needed to be done. The left refused to do any, and went to raise the public programs, reaching a few trillion debt per semester. At one point this has to stop, and the left ain’t gonna stop by itself, so the left provokes the people into voting for the only one who will stop public spending and, yes, he comes in, and has the bad role of taking the US to the cleaners. You will say “It doesn’t even save money” and whatsnot, but would the left have saved the money by themselves? No. Never. So someone else came in and saved for them.
This entire movement is a reactionary movement to the left. The left makes no concessions. So both sides go for a scorched earth policy.
What have we learned? What have we won, on either sides?
Do we agree that, staying closed-minded as they are, the left will resume public spendings by the trillions the moment they step into power? Do we agree that the left is a direct threat to meritocracy, stability of government, men in marriage, men at work, a direct threat to men’s financial stability, and that no-one on the left cares even a little what others-than-them feel?
> I am directly threatened by their program. […] Could the left imagine being a little more democratic and making a few more concessions towards… omg, white males?
I am not from the US, I am originally from Latin America. I am considered a “white male” there. I am now living in Europe as I am a dual citizen. This kind of position is interesting to me. What is so bad about being a white male in the USA at the moment?
I’d like to elaborate further, but I want to engage in an honest conversation so I would like to hear your opinion.
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- [deleted]
As a white male from northern europe, I learned during the most left recent years that I’m responsible for all the world’s injustices and ethnic/gender/sexual preference defines a human. I can see why so many gave a protest vote when the current system was trying to paint their existence as non-desirable. We went decades backward and this all just brought the focus back to our insignificant external factors like skin color.
I don’t support extreme right or their hate but it looked a lot like categorical hate against my “kind” that I didn’t have part in choosing.
What got me writing is that is debt actually so bad or is it like leveraged investment? If US would have chosen a bit more professional leader capable to at least maintain the position in world economy, the debt wouldn’t likely ever have to be paid off.
> I’m responsible for all the world’s injustices and ethnic/gender/sexual preference defines a human.
Rest assured you are not. But this could turn out to be true, maybe in a very minor way, the moment your resentment towards this straw man becomes the main driver of your political views.
This is what the US "left" got wrong though. Reality or not, there is a strong perception that what these guys are saying is true. I could not fault someone looking at any media whether social or traditional from coming to this conclusion. I think Andrew Tate is a direct symptom of this. He simply filled a void in confused young men's lives. You can point to data saying that there is still inequality all you like, but you need to deal with the current sentiment too. The left is as responsible for Trump as the ultra right.
Americans literally thought that this extremely easy to bribe, criminal, serial adulterer, whose is most likely trying to undermine your constitution (I expect all you 2nd amendment supporters to stop touting that) was a reasonable choice.
I know this is not an accurate portrayal of your point, but this sounds very much like the “the left needs its own Joe Rogan” argument to me.
The problem with it is that we delegate the duties towards our fellow citizens to the talking heads on TV or in our algorithmic feeds and wash our hands on it—I say “we” because it has been happening in basically every country at this point.
If democracy has failed, as some people love to say, it was not because it was supposed to fail, but because politicians have successfully managed to replace it by the current series of popularity contests we have in place.
I think that you came to the conclusion that there needs to be a counter to Joe Rogan says a lot.
I’m only suggesting that you deal with the feelings people are having. Which were ignored. They’re right about that.
BTW, I don’t think Joe Rogan is as bad as people think he is. All you democrats should have gone on his show.
No, sorry, I didn’t make myself clear. I said that I disagree with that take. Maybe you are not familiar with it, which is something that was raised by some people (maybe jokingly, I don’t know, but it made the rounds in left-wing social media).
I agree that the left should address young men’s struggles, namely the working class, but maybe not in the same sense you are implying. They are as responsible for their own political choices as anyone else.
[P.S.: Am I not from the US. How could I be a Democrat?]
Apologies for misunderstanding you.
Damn, as another nordic male, why did nobody tell me?
I noticed that someone in America said so, but the US had been extreme, in all ways, for many years and no sane person takes the stuff coming from there as gospel.
I am not responsible for 'all the world’s injustices', and nobody had tried to make me. Maybe if I spend some time on YouTube I can find someone at an American college thinking so, or a right-wing podcast saying that people think so about me. But that is not the mainstream here.
There's no "leftist" party in the USA, there's a Conservative Party called the Democrats, and there's an Ultraconservative Party that's now hellbound to become a Fascist Party called the Republican Party.
Do you also post on the /r/conservative subreddit? Because you should if you do not, you will find many likeminded people who are completely down the rabbit hole.
They're not saving money so far, they have been spending more money than the government spent in 2024. And in those cases where they will spend less they also did enormous damage, e.g. cancelling clinical trials midway through. This is pure destruction, not efficiency.
And your woke argument is a pure strawman. What were those extreme positions by Kamala Harris?
The “Trump is doing the opposite of his program” yields no constructive argument. Because voting for the opposite movement wouldn’t have made the left suddenly implement meritocratic capitalism.
Why, exactly, isn't that a constructive argument?
eastbound> We need Trump because the economy is in the shitter
fabian2k> He's actually making it worse
eastbound> Well, the other side wouldn't have made it better
How do you get to have it both ways -- the economy is important enough that we need Trump, but Trump is more important despite ruining it?
> wokeness on the left… I am directly threatened by their program.
Could you please explain what that threat is exactly, and what kind of “concessions to white males” you would have in mind?
I’ll candidly assume that this is not a rhetorical question aimed at making me pass as a spoiled child, as is frequent with leftism:
- AOC, known as “the squad” (!), has claimed the Congress has too many white males. President Macron said the same about the US tech sector, and he’s not even part of the extremists, so this issue permeates society. Basically everyone says white men should be fewer of them. This is a direct threat.
- Feminism was supposed to give women more place at work and give family a better representation of both genders at home. What happened: Men can’t apply for some jobs anymore; while men are assumed to not merit to see the children by default at home. This has been going on since the 1980 in every developed country, moreso in France and US, a little less in Sweden. Judges and lawyer family courts are often 100%-women (80.2% in the profession).
- We helped women when they were 38% of the university students. But they crossed the 50% in 1990. Men now represent 39% of university students. Do we help them? No, we drop help programs. And Sweden also dropped equality programs the moment men were in need.
This is what various groups have been militanting for years, but they were harassed into submission by the left (from Facebook’s pro-left censorship at the time, to directly burning their cars or killing their dogs, and of course cancelling conference centers for men support groups which they presented as extremists - which is true, men are angry).
How is Trump helping?
- His program basis is based on a meritocratic econonic theory (that does not favour women, which is all the left complains about), but, granted, elected presidents generally implement another program, and Trump isn’t helping much,
- Men thrive in both meritocracies and in the wilderness/lawlessness, because they work more. To this, Trump has choosen the latter. The more economic crisis there is is, the weaker the government, and the more women will need men. Given the left’s program is “let’s take men’s/white’s people money”, the scorched earth is the best situation.
Granted, it would be nicer if leftists didn’t hate white men’s guts so much that they could listen to them when they make reasonable demands such as equity in family courts or meritocracy at the workplace. Barring being sensible…
If you are eating too many carbs and you go to the doctor and he says "you should be eating way less carbs", he is not necessarily telling you to quit all carbs from your diet cold turkey.
It is safe to say that men are ~50% of any country's demographics. If you find any position of power and prestige where they are over-represented, it is safe to assume that there is an imbalance. People will come up with excuses for such imbalance, but one cannot deny that there is such an imbalance there.
this is called Identity Politics.. basing your judgement of other adults by their demographic classifications.. Replacing skills-based and merit-based promotion with "balancing" is racist and sexist in a polar opposite way from the historical trajectory. This parent statement is part of the unrepentant position of many in the USA. This position lost at multiple levels in a massive open election in the USA.
It is actually the opposite. I assume there is no inherent reason why people from other demographics with the required skills and merit cannot be found. Otherwise, there must be a reason why they can’t, and people who think that the current imbalance is perfectly good must have a pretty reasonable explanation to that. Do you have any?
So will the government mandate that 50% of stay at home parents be men?
Because as the other poster pointed out, if you push men out of the workplace and out of family life (by favoring custody for women) you just end up with a bunch of unemployed idle men, which is a recipe for revolution.
And if 50/50 is the goal, where is the government push for more men in places where they're underrepresented, like university students, nurses, teachers?
I can’t reply to your other comment for some reason.
You got me, I did not express myself well. I should have said “working people”. I framed it as a women’s issue since you said that the solution to that would be forcing men to trade places with them.
Re: the fact that bringing up men’s issues is kind of taboo to the left, it seems more of a language problem. If you frame it as a “war on men”, that will turn people off. If you say: “look, there are many bright young guys who could be on college that are otherwise deciding to look for work because the economy is not so great”… Maybe people will listen.
Edit: maybe they will reply “EKSUSE MEE??? WHY NOT WOMEN???”. That is obnoxious, I get it. But do they have a point? If you think so, concede. If you do n’t think so, I would like to know more about it. That is what politics is about.
Let's look at a concrete example: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3175099/#S12title
About 40% of male domestic violence victims who seek help are accused of being the abuser.
Completely coincidentally I'm sure, the federal law on domestic violence is called the "Violence Against Women Act", which furthers the bias that men can't be victims.
How would you improve the situation for male victims without making people on the left hate you?
The same people who say that "firemen" is sexist, will hypocritically say that the naming of the law isn't sexist.
Well, certainly not by threatening to cut funding of humanities research grants. Otherwise they won't be able to conduct research such as this one... But I digress.
The "Violence Against Women Act" is from 1994. Most statistics of that time pointed to a disproportionate amount of women being victims of domestic violence in comparison to men. I tried to find more recent statistics, but this is a very serious topic, so it deserves to be treated with more caution. Also, this is one of the reasons why I think it should not be used as a "war on men" talking point. Do we want to solve the darn problem or use it as a weapon against political opponents?
Well most serious work injuries happen to men, but if we had a "Work Safety For Men" act I bet you'd call that sexist. A law that fails to protect male victims of violence is equally sexist.
The double standard is very visible. Maybe you should just admit that the left is blatantly the "party of women's interests" and give up on gaining men's votes.
- [deleted]
The OSH Act was passed in 1970. I wonder why it doesn't have "for men" in its name...
Pardon my laziness, but this is the best graph I could find on the reduction of workplace-related injuries: https://fitsmallbusiness.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Info...
This policy was very effective, in the first place. I could eyeball a 70% reduction in the period between 1972 and 2019.
Can it be reduced it even further? Probably.
Would I find it off-puting if any piece of legislation is eventually passed that addresses a hypothetical issue that is disproportionally faced by men and helps reduce it even further? Certainly not.
(I, for one, would approve of the "No More Balls Stuck in the Cogs Act".)
Men are still the vast majority of workplace fatalities: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/work/industry-incidence-rates/wo...
But the left will never prioritize men.
The left believes that any metric where women are worse off needs urgent attention, and any intervention must prioritize women.
But any metric where men are worse off can either be ignored, or fixed with an intervention that is either gender neutral, or preferably, prioritizes women again.
The left is the Party of Women.
Yes, that sounds like the perfect conversation starter.
If that doesn't work, which I believe is highly unlikely, maybe try incorporating elements of speech as those found in this right-wing publication, the World Socialist Web Site: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/02/27/hefl-f27.html
Your link just proves my point: 0 mention anywhere that the majority of work fatalities are men.
If the majority of work fatalities were women, we'd be screaming from the rooftops that "workplaces are unsafe for women"
Oh, my bad. I thought that the names and pictures of the deceased 66-year-old man and 16-year-old boy would be enough.
I guess we can brush this one under the carpet, right? Nothing to see here. Workplace fatalities are a serious issue, but not so serious to you that it is worth bridging that gap. Maybe I’m wrong. Feel free to correct me if that is the case.
On the other hand, I acknowledge that men are disproportionately affected by this issue and that it deserves serious attention from both left and right. I would wholeheartedly support their demand of better working conditions from their employers and representatives, and advise them to contact the media so that the general public can be informed of that and, who knows, maybe support unionization if their demands are not met. Do you think this is a reasonable stance, or do you see any problems with that?
Also, are you available to organize so that we could bring some consciousness to the public about how men are disproportionately affected by workplace fatalities in developed countries? The condition being that we first agree on the causes leading to it.
We could start with the resources we have already found on the Internet. I can pay for the domain if you are interested.
> So will the government mandate that 50% of stay at home parents be men?
Well, obviously not. But there is always the caveat that suggesting government providing adequate child care to working women is communism of whatever. Is it feasible to have some compromise here?
> And if 50/50 is the goal, where is the government push for more men in places where they're underrepresented, like university students, nurses, teachers?
This sounds like a perfectly legitimate ask if young men do really care about it. Why not contact your local representative and explain the issue in an articulate manner?
> government providing adequate child care to working women
You see this is the bias on the left, that everything must be framed as "for women". If the childcare is only for "working women", will a single dad not be able to access it?
Why not government providing adequate child care to working people?
> Why not contact your local representative and explain the issue in an articulate manner?
I do, but your have to admit there is a chilling effect in left wing spaces where openly supporting men's issues makes you very unpopular.
> The more economic crisis there is is, the weaker the government, and the more women will need men
So, to put a finer point on it - you decided that aiming to destroy the United States, and the Pax Americana underlying western civilization, was an appropriate response because AOC and Macron (who represent "everyone", in your apparent media diet) hurt your feelings. As a fellow man, this is just pathetic and entitled.
There have always been groups in society you cannot criticize. There has always been groupthink bullshit that you just smile and nod, and then later share your real thoughts with your trusted close friends. The growing prevalence of talking about men's rights issues was the painstaking path to them getting better - there are some pretty harsh biological reasons why custody courts are slanted towards women, right? If you really wanted to phrase this in terms of "men", then maybe you needed to listen to your fellow wiser men telling you to hold your nose and vote conservative/democrat instead of lashing out with histrionic destruction. Alas.
You’re forgetting that the previous government was losing at least 2 wars (in Ukraine and against Houties) and destroying the United States - trying to jail political opponents, subverting elections, destroying the country’s borders, erasing meritocracy, instituting censorship and ignoring Supreme Court rulings.
Those topics weren't in the scope of the original discussion and I'm not really interested in litigating partisan entertainment propaganda based around taking shreds of truth (at best) and blowing them out of proportion.
The large scale facts are that under the previous administration we had working relationships with our allies, mostly functional executive agencies (aka law enforcement), and the US (ie USD) was seen as a source of stability. Meanwhile the current administration's actions are indistinguishable from a foreign power doing its best to destroy our country - we are now isolated from our allies (and even seen as hostile!), the ideal of rule of law has been replaced by brazenly corrupt rule by law, and we're staring down dedollarization.
Smarten up, quick.
“My side is the truth, your side is partisan propaganda.”
Bottom line is, people see goals / intentions differently, especially in politics!
ah, postmodern relativism. Is there anything it won't destroy?
It wasn't rethorical and I appreciate your extensive answer. Being male myself, I can relate to some of the points you made. But I don't feel threatened. I guess there is a wide range of the meaning of this word, but I would describe it as perceiving a danger to ones life, livelihood, happiness or something. I did not experience any more disadvantages from being male than being young or old, short, brown-eyed, not too smart, overweight etc.
And your reasonable demands...are you seriously at a workplace where meritocracy is lived? Ever? Out of the many different non-meritocratic factors that come into play in a workplace, being male certainly was never in the top 10 for me. If anything it was an advantage. I'm sorry if you had different experiences. It's not true, where I live, that men can't apply for certain jobs, and I doubt that is the reality for you. The usual term is "everything else equal, a female candidate will be preferred", which is just an encouragement to women to apply. If you want the male candidate, you always find a reason that he is not equal to the female applicant. So if you have the feeling that you didn't get a job because you are male - perhaps it was because the female candidate was better.
And those recurring "leftist", "leftism" references make your statements a bit biased. The time to put everything in left and right categories is somewhat last century. It's all more complicated than that. Nobody hates you because your male and white. But it sure sounds a bit whiny what you are complaining about - imagine you'd be black and female, you really think you would be in a better position, you would have an advantage then? Come on.
> AOC, known as “the squad”
Well, when you get that basic of a fact wrong,...
*known as part of “the squad”. Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squad_(U.S._Congress)
The left’s arguments are unfortunately a collection of your argument: Refuting entirely-developed speeches because of a single sentence missing one word.
Trump and meritocracy? You are insane. Oh, Hegseth the wife-(and alcohol-)abusing TV-presenter should be in charge the world's most powerful military? Brett Kavanaugh, who in the balance of probability did assault that woman, should be forced into the supreme court (even blocking the FBI investigation)? You're just going to excuse these flaws away, aren't you?
To be honest, this thread has shown what weak fragile egos some white men have. So your kind has had it easy for centuries. Yeah, probably the rhetoric that's made you "the enemy" is really dumb (hey it poisoned the mind of the richest man in the world, for one), but what do you expect, mollycoddling?
Hah, maybe the whole (white) world should have a truth-and-reconciliation committee, where men are invited to discuss their privilege, and what can be changed to make an equal world. (Actually not just white, men all over the world have had this tyranny. Then again maybe it's just the animal/biological nature that we shouldn't just suppress). But even with "committee", there'll be weak egos screaming about the tyranny against them. A bit like states wanting to hide away the civil war from their education, or not even allowing discussion about systemic racism or "critical race theory" (uh oh sorry if that triggers you, if I were mocking you I'd call you a snowflake now).
My wife likes to tell me that she'll know when feminism has succeeded when the US Supreme Court is all women. I tell her that I'll know when feminism has succeeded when the military is all women.
> feminism has succeeded when the military is all women.
*when the draft is all women, but men are allowed to serve voluntarily
I do admit the existence of insanely moronic arguments that are sometimes made. "As a woman you have to vote for Hillary because she's a woman.". What a dumb argument, that's still identity politics. If the choice was between someone like female Sarah Palin that wants government control of women's bodies, because she thinks the Bible should trump the constitution vs. a man who would respect the separation of church and state (e.g. the catholic Biden who nevertheless supported Roe v. Wade), would a woman have to still be obliged to vote for Palin?
The power is right there, ready to be taken. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to wait for the “white man” to grant you more power. But, to do so, you will need to risk more than your online reputation.
Huh, let's just forget that women had to e.g. fight for the right to vote, or the whole civil rights movement... OK, fine, it's 2025, and let's see, is the discrimination that's in people's heads about "what's normal" totally gone? I can admit that if you ask me to imagine a CEO, I'd imagine a middle-aged white man, am I the only one? And what does this image of normality do to the idea of who will be picked for a particular job, by a group of people?
Yeah if I'm looking for a caretaker for my child, a male candidate would also make me go "Huh, interesting". Women have the advantage for this job, and men have it for the CEO job, I wonder which job is more powerful in the world (if we don't pull out a philosophical idea of "powerful"...).
The reason that military forces tend to be composed mostly of men is for two very practical reasons:
1. Men are on average physically stronger than women, and at their peak are physically stronger than is possible for any woman. This is more useful in a combat situation.
2. Women's bodies are specialized for pregnancy and childbirth. Without women providing this essential function, the next generation of humanity would not exist. By contrast, men are more disposable because all they do is provide the sperm.
A society where almost all women have been killed in battle cannot effectively repopulate, as there is a bottleneck of pregnancy: it is a long process that - excluding relatively rare cases of multiple births - requires one woman per newborn to conduct. A society where almost all men have been killed can repopulate much more rapidly, as it only takes a small number of men to fulfil the male reproductive role of providing sperm.
In fact the existence of sperm banks makes the widespread obliteration of males even less of a risk to the survival of humanity. Plus there is a promising subfield of stem cell research on growing viable sperm from female cells, which would remove the reliance upon males entirely.
Whatever Trump is doing is the opposite of a meritocracy. He's hired a lot of entirely unqualified people, the only thing he values is loyalty.
What left are you talking about? The Democratic Party in the USA would be seen as neo-liberals too from outside the US. Calling it "the left" just shows how delusional the society in the USA seems to have become...
The whole left/right thing has been weaponised to distract from the up/down, top/bottom real issue.
I agree, but I would also like to add that the Republican Party is not a conservative party, either. Trump brags about raising taxes on so many imports. And the current administration never saw a Chesterton’s fence they didn’t want to tear down. The party as a whole seems to be pretty happy with it.
So that’s America, no options if you want to vote for a liberal party or a conservative party.
> The Democratic Party in the USA would be seen as neo-liberals too from outside the US
Incorrect: This is an old argument from the left to pretend that US leftism isn’t very left.
Truth: The US government is in debt of 6 trillion per year, which makes it the most powerful government of the world. The right’s “Atlas Shrugged” vision is to have a very lean government, as in, weak and powerless as possible.
Conclusion: The American left wing proposes to build a government bigger than any socialist country in the world.
Correlation: Ironically, the leftists are often anti-war and they’d be much better defended if they supported defunding the US government to the point they couldn’t wage war outside their borders. The left should support Elon Musk ;) </s>
OP should have said that "The Democratic Party in the USA IS seen as neo-liberals too from outside the US".
There is obviously multiple axises you can place the left/right on. If you want to define anyone who accepts debt as 'left', and thus the USA is leftish then... ok whatever floats your boat. Just be aware that the rest of the world sees concepts like universal healtcare and education as more important than how much debt you accept. Using debt to pay for a huge military and unsustainable low taxes is not a typical leftish view.
> The right’s “Atlas Shrugged” vision is to have a very lean government, as in, weak and powerless as possible.
This is objectively not true of the right's actions. If you read Project 2025 or just look at the legislation/EOs passed, the right is currently trying to expand the power of the president to unprecedented levels. In addition, they're trying to undermine the checks and balances of the courts such that the government can make greater decisions faster.
This isn't a small government, it's teetering on fascism. The fascism analogs only grow greater when you here Trump speak of an enemy within, who must be eliminated. When he speaks as if he is the One True answer to every problem facing the US. Trump-ism is become more akin to a cult than a political platform, many people just following Trump because they view him a God. It's a bit spooky. It's very difficult to not draw parallels to fascist leaders of the past.
> Conclusion: The American left wing proposes to build a government bigger than any socialist country in the world.
Delusional, sorry. If you think the democrats, the ultra-capitalist right-leaning party, want to create a socialist country you are just delusional. I don't know how to help you there because it's just not in touch with reality.
There's, like, 2 representatives in all of the Democratic party who could maybe kind of be consider democratic-socialists. And there's a better chance of hell freezing over than those 2 convincing the other hundreds to go their way.
After a certain point, we have to come back down to Earth and acknowledge what is actually going on, instead of whatever we have allowed our minds to concoct.
> making a few more concessions towards… omg, white males?
I'm a white man. We already HAVE all the concessions. There's nothing left to give us. I mean, we're not gonna implement anti-racist stuff against white men because there does not exist any racism against white men. Ergo, that policy is defacto implemented.
White men also don't need DEI because we actually already have DEI. Studies show upwards of 50% increase in likelihood of being hired if you're white.
I mean, look at Trump's cabinet and admin. Full of white men... because they are white men. A lot of them are very unqualified.
> It is true that savings needed to be done.
This administration will only raise the deficit.
Also, the left at least admitted that taxes on the ultra-wealthy need to be raised. The Trump administration is continuing to raise YOUR taxes while cutting theirs. So, to recap: higher taxes for you, a greater deficit, and the programs will be cut. Wow, it's a lose-lose-lose! Almost impressive how shit conservative policy is.
> This entire movement is a reactionary movement to the left.
I applaud your honesty in admitting the reactionary nature of American conservatives.
However, you're incorrect in saying they're reacting to the left. They're not. They're reacting to a made-up version of the left. One formed and imagined through decades of conservative propaganda. One where the left are communists, baby eaters, and reptilians - not the reality, where the democratic party is a right-leaning ultra-capitalist party.
> Do we agree that, staying closed-minded as they are, the left will resume public spendings by the trillions the moment they step into power? Do we agree that the left is a direct threat to meritocracy, stability of government, men in marriage, men at work, a direct threat to men’s financial stability, and that no-one on the left cares even a little what others-than-them feel?
Uh, no.
Roots of which started way back earlier than 2001 even..
Personally, I would argue that the corruption afterburner kicked in with Citizens United v. FEC.
This was like giving a crack addict a feedback loop which gives them more crack. Of course it was going to end badly.
We could discuss many possible points of inflection, but I don't want to dilute the undeniable power of the phrase "trust is efficient."
However we got here, whatever one's politics, you cannot argue against that simple phrase, and the tragedy of the loss.
___
just to give credit, it was https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=the_snooze who turned me on to these three words that have stuck in my head
Yet Kamala and her supporting PACs had two or three times the funding that Trump had.
There is no need to get left/right political here. There are two political parties in the USA, and they both hit the feedback loop of $crack. One might have led to low-trust faster than the other, but they are both $crack addicts in the end.
Just to be clear as to what this means in politics on the ground... left or right, if you have a political position which disagrees with the biggest money, they will primary you. So, left or right, generally speaking, you only see politicians finally standing up for their morals when they are no longer up for election. The most obvious recent example of this is Mitch McConnell.
at some point you hit saturation on most anything, doesn't stop the fact that hundreds of millions were spent on both sides. Kamala lost because she was a female of color, not because of policies, no one will ever convince me otherwise. There are just too many misogynists and racists in the USA currently to have both of those working against you unless you're bordering on messianic in charisma
You mean a single day fundraiser beat Trump’s single day fundraising by 2-3x, that would be correct. If you think her 90 day campaign fundraising managed to beat Trump’s 8 year fundraising campaign that would be wildly incorrect.
It depends on what you mean by 'strong regulations'. Regulations that are on the books should be enforced as written. In that sense I agree. But it doesn't mean that we actually necessarily need all the regulations that are on the books to stay on the books.
Eg, it would be perfectly fine to make insider trading legal by law. (And in fact, the definition of insider trading in the US differs a lot from the one used in France. So there are lots of things that have long been legal in the US that would have been illegal in France, without the economy collapsing.)
I agree that random enforcement of some regulations but not others depending on the whim of the executive is less than ideal.
You could make insider trading legal by law, but that would destroy a lot of the stock market because all non-insiders would basically set themselves up to be ripped off.
No, it wouldn't destroy the stock market. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43661926 for an explanation.
Summary: people are already allowed to trade on inside information (in the US), if the person who officially owns the information is ok with that. The prohibition on insider trading in the US is about fiduciary duty to the owner of the information, not about protecting the general public.
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> So there are lots of things that have long been legal in the US that would have been illegal in France, without the economy collapsing.
Who knows, maybe we are in the middle of the resulting collapse now ;-)
Well, that collapse is because of tariffs, not the intricacies of differences in insider trading law.
I was thinking more that these kind of lax laws allowed the rich to get richer, and influence politics in ways which enabled or accelerated the fall. But it it a complicated picture of course, and the further back in the chain of causality we go the harder it it to say anything for real.
> [...] allowed the rich to get richer, and influence politics [...]
That would have been a better world than the one we live in.
I'd rather have Romney and Bloomberg etc than the populists we got.
> It'll get a lot worse before it gets better.
Importantly, there's no guarantee it's actually going to get better. We like to pretend that human existence has some trajectory towards "justice" or "prosperity". I don't think that impulse does us justice.
Stalin/Lenin could have won. Hitler could have won, Napoleon could have conquered and held. It could just get worse.
Oppression and corruption is expensive. Systems based on them are not going to be competitive in the long run.
That may be the very long run. Taking it strictly, Russia never had real democracy. And they are trying hard to export that model.
Define "real democracy"
Like the American one where unelected billionaires control the government and the populace.
I always find it so surprising how people really do believe individuals have any real power despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
It's a capitalist society so capital is power. Doesn't get simpler than that. Voting is the circus to distract us so we don't realize how much we're being exploited, while giving a sense of agency that simply does not exist.
We can choose but they pick the choices we have.
> It's a capitalist society so capital is power.
Precisely.
I look at apartheid and how long it managed to hang on. And I can only determine it was surprisingly lucrative and competitive as well. It took a long, series of activists and a long time to finally delegitimize and finally break it.
And now, apparently, everyone involved with it had always been against it.
Systems based on oppression and corruption can still be extremely resilient. Countries like Russia, North Korea, China, Belarus, Cambodia, Eritrea, and Venezuela have all lasted many decades.
That's a very optimistic belief, not any kind of axiom, but even if we accept it, the long run could easily extend past the lifetimes of every loving person today. It could last generations or much longer.
Maybe oppression is where AI finally shines, making oppressive systems competitive. Technology is certainly helping China, and I can only imagine how much Stasi would love to automatically transcribe and store everything all their microphones caught.
Lenin did win.
> It'll get a lot worse before it gets better.
If they're getting away with it, they'll do it again. The tariffs were paused for 90 days. The plan is to run the same playbook in 90 days.
Why do you trust that they will actually wait 90 days to run the same playbook? There’s nothing stopping Trump from reneging on his 90 day tariff pause.
Capitalism actually thrives where there is only 1 regulation: total transparency. After all, if we go by the classic definition of free market competition we have customers who have perfect knowledge of every product and the products are very similar and etc. etc.
Who cares if someone at the WH does insider trading? In a transparent system people would be able to trace back every transaction and realize something is brewing and they could act accordingly.
> could act accordingly
Concretely, what are you thinking of here?
Simply copy their positions. But if everyone's position were available, insider trading wouldn't even exist because it would give the game away
why do you think you would know their positions in time to do anything about it?
I will leave it to big investors with supercomputers connected directly to the exchanges to eat away at the potential profits of even the slightest insider trading activity automatically
By the time you copy their positions, they've made their money.
In theory of course, them being blatantly and obviously corrupt would hurt them at the ballot box. In practice, this is not really something at moves the needle in American politics.
This is poor bait, even for 2025 HN standards.
who cares? I care, I want insider traders to go to prison for multiple years. That's not a free market, that's a market of those who know things to manipulated the rest of the market into never ending pump and dump schemes.
Is this really SEC's bailiwick? Aren't options commodities (and so regulated by CFTC)?
No, options are derivatives and are, in the US, generally regulated by the body regulating the underlying asset; stock/index options are regulated by the SEC, commodities options by the CFTC.
Options are not commodities
They're a derivative, so options of equities are equities and I guess options of commodities are commodities
Neither! Options are derivatives, which are also regulated by the CFTC
Are you suggesting that the SEC won’t investigate this obvious insider trading because it came from someone in his inner circle? Big if true.
You keep the receipts for about 4 years and you speak up one minute after the government changes. You get it done long before the following election.
With a bit of luck, you only have to wait for 2 years, when Congress changes hands.
Bold to assume there are going to be elections.
All it needs is some kind of emergency, genuine, imaginary or self-inflicted, and ‘Oh no, we can’t possibly hold elections until our time of national crisis is over.’
> Bold to assume there are going to be elections.
I'm happy to bet. What odds to do you offer?
Probably much easier to rig the elections, just like dozens of "we're democratic!" dictators have done. Erdogan, Putin, Mugabe, Suharto...
You mean like requiring ppl to have a proof of citizenship disenfranchising 21 million
https://apnews.com/article/congress-save-act-citizenship-vot...
I thought you're agreeing with me about disenfranchisement and how it's evil, but I can see you can also infer that "Did you know 21 million undocumenteds voted?"...
As your article discusses, requiring that proof means paperwork, paperwork some people might not have (e.g. wives who changed their names).
For example in the UK, the Windrush scandal 1) deported British subjects because the government made irrational demands for documents to prove that they're citizens.
they're already trying to jail the guy who kept 2020 election safe. It's a bad sign lol.
Congress already ruled that time isn't passing, allowing a temporary state of national emergency to become permanent. There's no reason to think they won't find some asinine excuse to deny elections or defer them indefinitely.
They might not even need an excuse. They could just not hold elections and say "what are you going to do about it?"
You mean like Ukraine?
They’re literally fighting for their lives. Nobody wants elections in wartime, not least because polling stations become targets.
You need to lay off the MAGA talking points.
> Nobody wants elections in wartime, not least because polling stations become targets.
Nobody is a strong word. Lots of people want elections, especially in wartime. And lots of other people don't want elections.
But it doesn't matter: the constitution of Ukraine doesn't allow elections during wartime.
I think by default constitutional rules should be followed, unless there are very good reasons not to.
Also if the Ukrainians hated it so much they would just side with Russia and form rebel militias all over and apparently that is not happening, I think they know which side has their best interests at heart and which is trying to genocide them.
Well, from 2014 onward there were supposedly rebel militia groups in the south and east. (Most people think they were Russian puppets however.)
> [...] I think they know which side has their best interests at heart and which is trying to genocide them.
Doesn't even need to be their best interest, really. The Ukrainian government had and has its fair share of flaws. (They exist in the real world after all.) But it's enough that they are a lot better than Russia.
The conscripted might disagree and desire a leader who will pursue a peaceful solution, this conclusion is supported by the high number of deserters.
Public opinion shows there’s nobody more supportive than the continued military defense of Ukraine than the Ukrainians. Even the conscripted would prefer more modern weapons to permanently ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia.
Peaceful solution to an invasion? How does that work, exactly?
Well, the invader is the last party to want a war: they'd be happy to just take over.
Russia's takeover of Crimea in 2014 was almost as 'peaceful' as the German takeover of the Sudetenland in the 1930s.
All in all, my comment is just a convoluted way that sometimes the price to pay for peace is too high.
In addition, there's also pre-commitments that make everything more complicated: as a potential victim of invasion, you might want to pre-commit to defending long beyond any reasonable threshold, in the hopes that this will deter invasion. Sometimes your bluff gets called, and then you need to actually fight to maintain your credibility.
Compare mutual assured destruction in nuclear war: nuking Moscow in retaliation for the Soviets nuking New York isn't going to bring anyone back from the dead. But it's what you pre-commit to in order to deter the bombing of New York in the first place.
Zelensky was elected in part on a platform of trying to negotiate with Russia but it fell apart because Russia wasn't interested in negotiating and instead decided it wanted to massively expand the war. If Russia shown the smallest sign that they had given up on conquering Ukraine and were willing to seek peace Zelensky would be interested. Zelensky is also more popular then most potential political opponents and they would rather the election would be held after the war when they'd have more of a chance(wartime popularity doesn't always transfer over to peacetime, Winston Churchill lost his post war election). And any credible challenges would likely be more hawkish on Russia not less
Very possible, but you should provide data. The data we have suggests that Zelensky's approval is extremely high among the public and the consensus not to violate the constitution to hold elections during wartime is unanimous within the government.
I guess unanimous is too high a bar amongst any larger group of people.
But I can very well believe that the consensus is virtually unanimous.
The parliament held a vote and it was unanimous. You’re right that parliament isn’t “the government” writ large though.
Thanks for that detail!
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>Nobody wants elections in wartime
THE GOVERNMENT doesn't want elections in wartime. Most people want.
>not least because polling stations become targets.
I think this is pure gaslighting. If we are talking about Ukraine, Putin is one of the main supporters of holding elections there. And almost certainly not because he wants to bomb some polling stations, but because he is confident that people will vote for a candidate who will de-facto offer to surrender, and not for Zelensky with his busifications.
>Putin is one of the main supporters of holding elections there
Because he will interfere, like he has across Europe. He is a tyrant and has only his own interests at heart.
The only likely candidate close to Zelenskyy in popularity is Zaluzhnyi, the former commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. That's not a person who sees surrender as an option.
All major political factions oppose holding elections now, because they expect Zelenskyy's popularity to fade after the war ends and believe their candidates will have better chances then.
> All major political factions oppose holding elections now, because they expect Zelenskyy's popularity to fade after the war ends and believe their candidates will have better chances then.
Well, that, and also the constitution doesn't allow election during wartime.
Ah yes and Putin is sooo above bombing locations that are likely to vote more heavily Zelensky.
Totally outrageous concern.
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It is unconstitutional to hold elections during wartime in Ukraine.
> Asked whether he’d trade his office for peace, Zelensky told a journalist, “I can trade it for NATO.”
https://thehill.com/policy/international/5159951-ukraine-pre...
Zelensky is not seizing power. Elections suspended during active, home-turf wartime is normal.
Especially when Russia is currently occupying huge swaths of territory that would make holding elections there impossible.
And with a lot more luck, the election results will be recognized as legitimate.
Assuming the President doesn't pardon you for all crimes committed from 2008 until 2030...
Could a president pardon everyone for all time?
Or maybe just all future times: the Court has indicated that the power may be exercised at any time after [an offense’s] commission,8 reflecting that the President may not preemptively immunize future criminal conduct.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C1-3...
the president can't pardon you for crimes in the future. Any lawyer would get laughed out of court and possibly charged with murder of the judge who first heard it because he laughed so hard his heart stopped.
That same day after market close Trump directly told us it was insider trading AND who dun it.
He literally bragged that his friend made 2.5 billion and the other 900 million that day.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1jvyryz/tru...
You are inferring too much from that comment. I think those people just had large stock holdings in general and were he market went up a lot that day.
The market briefly went up 7% that day.
To make 2.5 billion just from holdings they must have had stock holdings of 35 billion. Then the next day they lost a lot more than that. I doubt it very, very much.
There is a difference between making 2.5 billion because you owned stocks and the market went up and making 2.5 billion because you bought just before the market went up and then you sold.
It's unlikely you can make 2.5 billion with a single unleveraged trade. The market went up by what, 6-7% that day? Nobody bets his whole net worth on this to make a profit like that. So I think leverage was definitely involved, which just shows that insider info was definitely there.
from the house of representatives or the white house? and how do you know?
Maybe it's a friend of Trump. Maybe it's a friend of Pelosi. Might even be a member of Congress!
"Rules for thee not for me."
Is congress actually apprised of the tariff developments, or do they learn about them from twitter like the rest of us?
The horrid congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene happened to disclose many trades that were clearly front running the tarrif announcements. There is definitely an insiders club communicating these things in advance.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/marjorie-taylor-greene-stocks-t...
I don't think you can say "definitely" but you can definitely say "high possibility of", the president has signaled that the DOJ is okay with white collar crime by his friends and family by firing lots of long term bureaucrats and lawyers known for fighting said white collar crime. He wants to clean house of honest people and put in only sycophants and fellow grifters.
How would a "friend of Pelosi" know when Trump would post his "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!" and "90 days pause" posts?
That's arguably the opposite of insider trading though? I'm now sure how doing insider trading but in secret is somehow better.
The implication is they're all in the same club. And if you know any family members of members of Congress, you know this to be true!
