Yeah so basically you don’t give a shit because Mexico isn’t more powerful than the US.

You’re privileged (feel a little weird saying this about America) to live in the world’s most powerful country. But things change. Look how quickly China has changed. Just in my lifetime they’ve gone from the equivalent of the poorer parts of Africa to having a pretty decent standard of living.

You can’t just isolate yourself and say fuck you, you’re on your own Ukraine, when they get invaded by Russia. I mean you can. But as I say, it won’t stop there. It didn’t stop with Crimea. Appeasement failed.

Your balloons comment just indicates you actually have no credible argument. You know that I’m right. Just admit at least that you’re selfish and care only about yourself.

That Russia can invade the whole of Europe if they want to do, kill as many people as they want, just so long as they don’t attack the US.

That’s basically your argument isn’t it? At least be honest about it and we can just conclude that you’re not a very good person but at least you’re honest.

Also you aren’t saying it out loud in an obvious way. But you are clearly admiring Trump. Who the fuck would admire Trump!? You’re the sort of person who would look past all the rape allegations his other trials and convictions and still say something positive about him. You’re clearly a republican who doesn’t give a shit about others life’s. Just like with gun control and republicans - “it’s a fact of life that school shootings will happen” no it’s fucking not. They don’t happen anywhere else (or not on anything remotely close to the scale of the US) so of course we can solve that problem

Like let’s give you a scenario. Let’s say Mexico were more powerful than the US. Would you be fine with them invading you? No you clearly wouldn’t so why is it fine in Ukraines case?

lol dude I wasn’t critical after I was always critical. In the UK we had our biggest protest march ever when the Iraq war was about to start. Plenty of people were against it.

I’m just gonna simplify the Ukraine thing. They are a country. Who cares democratic or not although they are they might not be perfect but they are nothing like Russia. But the point is no country has the right to invade their neighbour.

I can’t keep up with too many of these different talking points so I’m just gonna push you on the fact that you don’t see a problem with a sovereign country being invaded.

And I brought up the appeasement because it’s what you’re advocating and it hasn’t worked before and it hasn’t worked now. If appeasement worked then Russia would have stopped after crimea - why didn’t they stop after Crimea

Ok my point about Palestine was to prove that I wasn’t on America’s side in most of its wars. Like I’m largely in agreement with you on US’s interventions in other countries.

Just not completely. Not if we are counting Ukraine. Ukraine were attacked by Russia, we are trying to help them defend themselves and in the process hopefully put Russia off pulling a stunt like this again. They’ve had a pretty sharp shock that it wasn’t the walkover they thought it would be.

Where America piss me off in regards to the Ukraine though, is this trickling of weapons. Basically America have given Ukraine everything they have asked for… just a year after they ask for it. Had they given them everything they have given them now at the start of the war, then Ukraine may well have won this war.

I have no idea what the fuck you are going on about saying Ukraine isn’t much different to Russia??? Dude they were fucking invaded they don’t want to be part of Russia. They are a democracy - Russia is NOT, they are not similar at all. The Ukrainian people aren’t fighting and dying for nothing dude??? If Russia wasn’t that different they would have immediately surrendered rather than lose all the lives they’ve lost over this.

In regards to sanctions, we sanction countries that need sanctioning. We sanction North Korea because they openly say they want to destroy America given the chance, so we aren’t making it easy for them to fund their nuclear program.

I’m a socialist. But if you’re somehow saying that STALIN is someone we should have left alone because Russia was communist, like dude have you been on the crack or something cos you appear to have lost your mind.

You say you want peace in Ukraine and giving up territory blah blah. Holy shit. Crimea. 2014. Do you remember that? That was them giving up territory. That was the western world not responding to Russia, not interfering. That has led to their invasion of Ukraine. That literally proved that Russia will not be happy until they’ve restored USSR borders.

You’re literally promoting appeasement. Do you remember world war 2? The policy of appeasement worked wonderfully there didn’t it?

You mentioned China. Have you heard of Taiwan? Taiwan is China’s Ukraine.

The reason China haven’t been involved in any major conflicts is literally because of the current situation where we have NATO.

You’re advocating to get rid of all that. To isolate. If we did that, that’s when you’ll see a major military invasion from China and Russia and whoever fucking else has the means to bully their neighbour.

You clearly haven’t thought this through very well. I’m not really sure I’m going to be able to get through to you at this point.

The major thing that’s hit me with your response is the way you’re saying how big shit hasn’t happened with Russia and China trying to take over the world. Well for one, Russia have clearly already started with Crimea and then Ukraine. China are eyeing up Taiwan. But yes they aren’t going full on world war 3 yet as I say, LITERALLY BECAUSE OF NATO PREVENTING THEM FROM DOING SO. They wouldn’t dare invade a NATO country.

You take away NATO and the situation completely changes. So obviously things would be massively different.

Well countries may not want to trade with someone at least not on favourable terms if that country isolates itself in every other way.

My point about NATO was that it’s all about working together to defeat something, so okay, in that case communism if you say so (honestly don’t know that much about it).

The point is that Russia and China are dangerous. I suppose you’re okay with the Ukraine stuff because it’s all about America right? Okay with the Palestinian genocide?

Note that I’m clearly not supportive of all Americas wars. Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam etc.

But to just not form military alliances with other countries? That’s dangerous. Because Russia and China aren’t gonna stop with their alliance. If the US was to just ignore them two slowly taking over the world, then guess who will be the last country left, isolated as is your wish? The last country left to be taken over? Which will be much easier once they’ve conquered the rest of the world.

You can’t let the likes of Russia stomp around invading its neighbours. It’s a very selfish attitude that ironically won’t benefit itself. As in letting Russia do that will eventually lead to America’s own demise. We also won’t be able to trade with the countries who have been bombed into oblivion by Russia/China/North Korea and whoever else joins them rather than die.

You want America to be isolated? In a world where we have a Russia and a China? Are you for real dude?

When the US finally pulled it’s finger out of its arse and stopped just benefiting financially from world war 2 and decided (more like was forced but whatever) to join in and fight Hitler, they were able to end it.

That was a good thing. The UN and NATO originated off the back of that stuff.

You cannot be isolated in a 2024 globalised world. Absolutely bizarre take. I suppose you don’t want to trade with anyone else either right?

Dude, Trump would be a nightmare on foreign policy. All Putin would have to do is give him a compliment and he’ll start trading sensitive documents with him.

I suspect a big part of the war lust in America is because politicians are getting hand jobs and bribes from people who benefit in the defence industry. Trump is certainly not above being bribed.

The way he spoke to North Korea’s leader whose name has escaped me for now… king jung un? Or something. The way he spoke to him could have potentially caused a fucking nuclear war. He got lucky and came out of it looking good, there was no skill there just absolute stupid luck.

You want America to pull out of NATO? Wtf? Haha maybe you didn’t mean that? Hopefully not cos that would be crazy and yeah he could well pull the US out of NATO, so again - not good.

I’m not understanding you at all in thinking Trump would be good for foreign policy.

If that means they were going to have them muted then yeah that’s what I understand. That they will be muted just like with the Biden one.

That was what was reported on bbc news well I think they actually said “likely” about their mics being muted so actually it wasn’t conclusive. I know Harris didn’t want them muted.

I agree with her wanting them unmuted, I think that will benefit her. She’s very quick on her feet from clips they showed of her (I literally hadn’t seen her speak until today, so I’m only going by a few clips they showed of her in debates and in congress).

She will be quick. Trump will be senile and slow and she can quickly shut him down while also letting him ramble just enough to show he’s senile.

But Trumps side wants them muted, clearly knowing it will be better for Trump that way. Especially if Trump needs to shart again. He will be hoping he can hold it in until he mic is muted and it’s Harris’s turn to speak.

I thought they were going to have microphones muted? So no interrupting possible.

I had a quick google of this (I’m from UK) and it seems to indicate that in most states you can actually vote early.

Well specifically it says:

For the 2024 Presidential General Election, early voting will be available from Thursday, October 24, 2024 through Thursday, October 31, 2024 (including Saturday and Sunday) from 7 am to 8 pm.

That’s for Maryland. Gotta say it’s confusing that you seem to have different rules in different states, well not just confusing but actually undemocratic surely? Because it means some people in some states will have an easier time voting than others so are more likely to vote.

Surely it should be exactly the same rules in every state. I’m assuming now that the times you can vote on the actual day may even be different depending on state.

I get that you have different laws in different states for stuff. But surely for voting, it should be the exact same rules, because you’re electing the president of the whole of the USA not your state. (Although maybe you technically actually are only voting for the elector in your state that then casts their vote on your behalf, I even read that there have been rare occasions where the state elector went against what their state voted for!?)

I dunno. Seems a little crazy and quite confusing.

What time can you vote from then? I think in the UK it’s 7am-10pm so surely anyone can make it at some point during then?? If it’s the same there… but to be honest at least making it a two day thing seems like a decent option.

But I struggle to see how you can’t make it between 7am and 10pm. It should be a legal right that your workplace has to let you have time to vote at some point during the day.

Ohh Biden said “will you shut up man?” to Trump? Aha that’s pretty funny.

Surely they’d just split up the fight lol. If you can grab hold of one of them, then the fight is over isn’t it? So it doesn’t matter who you grab or who you protect, you’ll be protecting the other in the process.

Exactly this! There weren’t Joe Biden fanatics about! There were people looking at the polling and hedging their bets on Biden. It’s easy to say we were wrong in hindsight. But we weren’t really wrong at the time.

No one knew how popular or unpopular Harris would turn out to be (although up until that point she was certainly UNPOPULAR).

I wasn’t in favour of him stepping down. And all the polls at the time showed Harris as being less popular so it just didn’t make sense.

After that debate I was still not really in favour of him stepping down from a pure just looking at the numbers stance that I’m sure still showed him as being more popular than her.

However when he called Zelensky, Putin, I knew the game was up. It was clear that he literally couldn’t function even when he wasn’t in a pressurised debate.

I don’t think it was obvious that there was a chance that Harris was going to be more popular than him until before that point really. Even then you couldn’t say for sure.

But it was obvious he just wasn’t going to make it to the election. You can’t mix up Zelensky and Putin and just carry on after that. I really think that was a much lower low than the debate.

The Democrats fucked up by not replacing Biden from the beginning, that was the time when it made sense to get rid of him. I was fully in favour of it at that point.

To change your candidate THIS close to the election of course seemed like an insane idea. The choice just got taken away in the end and he just had to go.

Thankfully it’s worked out really well but it’s easy to say that we should have changed him straight after or before that debate. The choice was not as obvious as you are making it out to be beforehand. Because the dem voters weren’t obsessed with Biden like the reps are obsessed with Trump. Everyone wanted whoever would be the best candidate to beat Trump. Literally no one gave a shit whether it was Biden or not, he just looked like the best choice until very late on.

What she needs to be doing is trumping all over Trump. Like farting all over his face. No cancel that. Not farting. She needs to be consistently SHARTING all over his face, all over his whiskers and in his mouth.

Yessss… yessss.

Side note: fuck Shapiro that guys a fucking sellout like I’ve never liked the guy at all. Obviously. And I’ve never really thought he was actually principled. But like he has always tried to act like he’s super rational and it just makes no sense that he could still be supporting someone who blatantly tried to steal the election to stop the transfer of power.

His excuses to justify still supporting Trump make me sick and he also needs a caking of shart IMO.

Yeah kinda special case there though I think. But of course they matter to an extent. I think there’s trumps strong hardcore nutter fans who would rather have Putin govern them than Biden or Kamala (actually heard one of them say this on a YT video about Biden).

These people won’t be swayed away from him by anything, therefore debate is irrelevant for them.

Then there are also hardcore anti trump people, the only sensible position to have, frankly. That would be the category I fall into but I’m not American so irrelevant for me lol.

But yeah, for those people, whatever percentage that is the debate doesn’t really matter either.

Then there are some people who are hardcore republicans. Really don’t like Dems but also do kind care about trump being cray cray and maybe cancelling all future elections if he gets in. So these people might be swayed I guess? I dunno. As I’ve wrote this out, I’ve actually more or less come to the conclusion that there really shouldn’t be many people who the debate will change their mind on anything.

But there has to be some undecided but it’s a weird position that I can’t really understand so who knows if it will sway those people either way. Some of them I guess. Also the evidence for these charges against Trump are coming out in a week or so I think, whenever that happens, that’s not gonna be good for trump. That’s for sure. How bad it will affect him I can’t really say, but it’s certainty not gonna increase his support.

So I can only imagine it will thankfully DECREASE IT. Overall I think Trumps bitten off more than he can chew. With these charges and with him basically alienating half the population (women) over abortion, I’d like to THINK, the Dems have this in the bag. But fucking vote people!

I doubt it. I don’t usually.

Well yeah. Because Trump’s strategy will just be to talk about all the shit he already talks about, regardless of the question. If he does actually try to answer the question he will likely just waffle, call things fake news, call Kamala a communist, shit like that. Kamala will have a normal strategy of actually answering the questions like literally any other politician would in any other debate. Hopefully she can also shut down Trump with a few simple similar to “he’s weird” comments, because even though it’s a shame that they work, they do actually work for just dismissing his bullshit and are simple to understand for the simple minded.

As I say, it’s a shame so many people are apparently that simple, that stuff like “make America great again” and “fake news, that’s just fake news” actually work: but they do work for persuading certain simple minded people who the Democrats need votes from.

It’s kinda how the whole “when they go low we go high” thing doesn’t actually work as a complete strategy.

Yes she needs to be making coherent, actual points as well. But having the odd simple put down and knowing when something Trump has said is so insane, that it actually doesn’t deserve a proper answer, but simply a dismissal is important.

Otherwise you end up being on the defensive constantly and run out of time to actually make your own coherent points.