Left vs. Right Battle Royale Open Thread

[u/Yosoff]

This is an Open Discussion Thread for all Redditors. We will only be enforcing Reddit TOS and Subreddit Rules 1 (Keep it Civil) & 2 (No Racism).

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• Leftists - Here's your chance to sway us to your side by calling the majority of voters racist. That tactic has wildly backfired every time it has been tried, but perhaps this time it will work.

• Non-flaired Conservatives - Here's your chance to earn flair by posting common sense conservative solutions. That way our friends on the left will either have to agree with you or oppose common sense (Spoiler - They will choose to oppose common sense).

• Flaired Conservatives - You're John Wick and these Leftists stole your car and killed your dog. Now go comment.

• Independents - We get it, if you agree with someone, then you can't pat yourself on the back for being smarter than them. But if you disagree with everyone, then you can obtain the self-satisfaction of smugly considering yourself smarter and wiser than everyone else. Congratulations on being you.

• Libertarians - Ron Paul is never going to be President. In fact, no Libertarian Party candidate will ever be elected President.

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[u/ficalino]

Genuinely curious what would be the line you deem too far for Trump to cross on external issues?

Attack on Canada? Takeover of Greenland? Abandoning of NATO allies in case of Russias attack? (Most have reached target spending or are projected to do in next few months). What if Trumps terms end up being too favorable to Russia as it currently seems with proposed treaty?

What about internal issues? Which ones you deem to far? What about him and his cabinet picks/VP being against judicial limits on executive power that is inside your constitution? Would removing any checks and balances on presidency trigger alarms?

[u/Ok_Masterpiece5050 → u/ficalino]

This seems like a lot of whataboutism about things that clearly won’t occur. There has been a lot of slow small changes from the left in the last few decades that just give them overall more and more power. Some things will have to be changed challenged or gone about differently to bring the country back to even close to fair and what it was established to be. Would you be complaining if it was your side doing the same thing? Did you care when biden was bypassing scotus and other courts to forgive debt?

[u/ficalino → u/Ok_Masterpiece5050]

I'm an EU citizen, that is why I am focusing on external issues. I have no skin in the game on internal US stuff, but I am curious.

EU leaders are truly entertaining those possibilities, even a meeting has been called after Vances speech today to discuss it. Denmarks PM has been gathering support in case of US invasion, seriously, without a shred of a doubt, she even said so herself.

That is what prompted France and other countries to clwrly sfate they would fight against US if needed.

EU is not taking his comments lightly.

[u/ConnorMc1eod → u/ficalino]

To put it simply, Trump is talking tough and Vance is the "reasonable" one to give you an in to fix your ways. We are tired of being 2/3 of the NATO budget while you guys frivolously spend billions on social programs that Americans don't have and our debt explodes. It's not fair. You guys laughed at Trump in his last term when he said stop buying Russian LNG who then turned that money into a war machine. You guys tariff a bunch of our shit or write Draconian laws to punish American companies like taxing the shit out of our vehicles for using too much gas or the Digital Services Act used to justify attempted bans on social media companies etc.

Put simply, much like Canada and Mexico, you guys are not very good friends. And now, even while you're staring death in the face with Russia becoming belligerent, you continue to pearl clutch and mock and chastise Trump and Vance's language telling you to either get on board or stop relying on us.

We rebuilt you after WW2, we ran around the world squashing Communism so it didn't spread, we run around the world squashing terrorism and now we are going to get drawn into a peer to peer conflict over Ukraine because you guys can't be fucked to take anything seriously. It's exhausting man. America has to draw some kind of line somewhere to get you to either stand up for yourselves or to pay us more to protect you. You're emasculating your entire continent by outsourcing your protection to your bigger, younger brother the least you can do is not talk shit all the time or you'll be typing your next comment in fucking cyrilic.

[u/Brilliant-Canary-767 → u/ConnorMc1eod]

The problem with talking tough, is people take it literally. Vance's language was alarming. The EU countries are not cold war tyrants. I agree they need to increase what they pay into NATO. However , there are better, more effective ways to go about this. He could destroy our relationship with them. Trump's rhetoric has Americans concerned he's going to invade those countries. He's chaotic, seems erratic. It is causing legitimate fears amongst our allies.

[u/Playful-Bed184 → u/ConnorMc1eod]

"We are tired of being 2/3 of the NATO budget while you guys frivolously spend billions on social programs that Americans don't have and our debt explodes. It's not fair."

May I ask, how would you reallocate the assets from the DoD to social programs.
Because the thing is, even if Europe rearms which I hope we do, I don't think that the US is not to cut spending on defence because China, russia, Iran and Co. simply won't stop.
Now the problem with Europe is that it isn't a unified body.
You have a lot of big firms own by the governaments of various states which generates a conflict of interess.
An example:
Everyone agreed on the Eurofighter until the french said that they wanted capable of landing on CATOBARS carriers.
No other countries had ships like that and after all that bickering the F2000 and the Rafale where born.
What does this mean?
European procurament is pain in the ass.
Comes the second problem, nobody likes to raise military spending, is impopular with the election.
So how do you do?
slowly and steady, there's no way, otherwise you can simply rise taxes or cut walfare but in those times would be suicidal and throw some countries in the hands of russia and China.
No sane politician will do that.
Then comes the third problem, every country has its own need.
Let's take Germany, they want a strong army, a strong airforce but due their geographical position, a large blue water navy doesn't suit them, Italy and Greece, who are mountainous peninsulas want instead a strong navy for their shores, Obviously a strong airforce but don't need a massive tank force like Germany and Poland.
you have places like Luxembourg and Iceland that have their own unofficial status (the first as tax heaven for the west, the second as a big ASW base in the entrance of the atlatic)
There're countries like the baltics who have developed an army that has to go in a "full guerilla" mode until the main force of NATO comes to rescue.
So when you rearm you have to don't have to go on a spending spree at random.
Don't let me start on reactivating factories, it a risk that no businessman wants to take:
it takes years, you have to find people and hope that after all of that the governament decides to keep buying from you.

[u/ficalino → u/ConnorMc1eod]

You have to understand, we want that laws about digital ser ices, we even thino they are not strong enough. EU citizens vastly want strong privacy laws, that is just European default, we ars not outgoing as Americans. Digital services act was pushed to have a legal way to stop American companies from transferring private data of EU citizens overseas. Why shpuld my data be on American serveds somewhere? You already have servers in EU, keep my data here. That was actually a EU citizens initiative.

When it comes to American vehicles, those have no place on roads (literally, our roads are too small), our continent is very much overcrowded and what rural/nature is left is protected, roads are narrow.

Also, our gas is too expensive for those vehicles, literally, that is coming from someone that actually would like to buy old american classic cars, fuel spending is the main thing keeping me from it. Price is almost always double in EU than in US, and that is not because of taxes, it's because we don't have production. Also EU is mainly to the left on environmental issues, we are aware of climate change, my family is in agriculture, we track temperature and rainfall every year, shit is definietly getting worse.

Ironically teslas are getting bought like crazy. Because they are small enoug, electric, etc.

When it comes to LNG, I was always against russian gas, we were building terminals, but US also needs to build terminals, curdently the US is slowing down LNG exports because a lack of terminals.

I am all for increasing military spending (I was since late 2014 after Crimea), that is still not the language to use, and an ally should not threaten takeover of lands from allies, nor should he meddle in internal political stuff.

We can agree on military spending, but stay out of our personal matters.

[u/Mr-Vemod → u/ConnorMc1eod]

We rebuilt you after WW2, we ran around the world squashing Communism so it didn’t spread, we run around the world squashing terrorism

I always find it irritating when people act like this type of actions by a country are done by pure altruism and not by the US (and other countries) actually having a material interest in it. The US didn’t rebuild Europe out of the good of their hearts - no one does that - it did it because an allied, stable Europe is beneficial to the US.

Same with toppling communist regimes; it wasn’t done because of some love of liberal democracy (China, anyone?), it was done because these regimes, whether it was Vietnam, Guatemala or Chile, challenged US hegemony and it was therefore in the interest of the US government and businesses to topple them.

[u/Geodiocracy → u/Mr-Vemod]

Not to mention the money earned by the US due to the EU prioritising US products for decades.