Trump also ordered a few coup attempts that we’ll learn about soon enough.
People need to stop acting like he was “at least good in terms of foreign policy.”
They never are.
Qasem Solemani
Most ppl forgot about that because covid came soon after.
I could very easily see Hilary pulling this trigger (or Obama or Bush for that matter).
If anything, I suspect Trump mismanagement of the occupation probably was what opened up diplomacy with Iran wide enough to convince Solemani that a visit was possible. The bombing (of Iraq’s own airfield!) was just Trump trying to slam the door shut after the horse had left.
I could very easily see Hilary pulling this trigger (or Obama or Bush for that matter).
Obama had reached a diplomatic agreement with Iran on their nuclear program; Trump was a big step backwards there, as he was on Cuba. Even with the DPRK I don’t think anything substantive materialized.
Looking at everything reasonable in Trump’s favor, he was just as bad as Obama on foreign policy. “He was actually OK there” has always been more contrarian than anything.
Obama had reached a diplomatic agreement with Iran on their nuclear program
But he held the line on Iraq and even opened up fronts in Syria. If the Iranian military left itself exposed like that? Obama might be willing to take the shot, if he thought he could advance his position further in the region.
Trump was a big step backwards there, as he was on Cuba. Even with the DPRK I don’t think anything substantive materialized.
Obama was trying to carrot the Cubans toward privatization after decades of stick. But he was just as invested in an eventual corporate takeover as Clinton or Carter.
Trump was a flailing putz who did everything for attention. His moves weren’t strategic past the next headline.
Looking at everything reasonable in Trump’s favor, he was just as bad as Obama on foreign policy.
He was worse in strategy, which made him better in consequence. He undermined international institutions and tried to grift NATO states. He made catty remarks and empty threats to look tough, without having any kind of interest in a protracted commitment to any one conflict.
A Trump mix up at the White House would force another big wave of resignations and bring in a bunch of new grifters and know nothings.
Whether that would be better or worse is forever up to debate. But it will erode US statecraft faster than a stable continuous second term.
He was worse in strategy, which made him better in consequence.
I don’t give Trump credit for accidentally harming stuff like NATO because the same rash decisions that did that almost started war with Iran (twice, actually, if I’m remembering correctly). Accidental good is also good you can’t count on going forward.
I don’t give Trump credit for accidentally harming stuff like NATO because the same rash decisions that did that almost started war with Iran
The biggest thing keeping us out of a war with Iran is the Zagros Mountains. Trump bombing an Iraqi air field fucked US/Iran diplomacy for a generation and caused every other government official in the region to take a step back from the nearest American military base. But it wasn’t going to initiate a direct attack from Iran into Iraq (because they’re trying to cultivate an alliance). If anything, it heightened the support Iran had for Yemen, which culminated in the closing of the Gulf of Adan to… 90%+ of traffic through the Suez? If you want to talk about something that hurt Western nations as much as losing Solemani hurt Iran… Billions, if not tens of billions of dollars, and right through the heart of Mediterranean shipping (ie, Israeli accumulated wealth) industry.
If we can assign Trump credit for that… well… god damn. Way to go, dude.
Accidental good is also good you can’t count on going forward.
Biden is consistently bad on policy, while maintaining a pipeline of experienced professionals with long term job aspirations. Trump occasionally prat-falls over his own dick, while hundreds of experienced professionals in the various agencies flee the sinking ship he’s created.
I see Trump as a kind-of American Boris Yeltsin. I don’t think that will make America a better place, but perhaps it will allow other nations to assert themselves when the US retreats from the global stage.
But it wasn’t going to initiate a direct attack from Iran into Iraq
It did exactly that! There were acts of war exchanged by both sides; we’re extremely lucky the situation didn’t boil over.
Trump accidentally did some harm to the empire, but we were right on the precipice of a war that would have killed (easily) millions.
The goal at this point is for America to become so preoccupied with internal contradictions that they withdraw from the world. Allowing for multipolarity (and God willing, unipolarity from the Chinese).
few coup attempts
Off the top of my head… Venezuela, Cuba, Hong Kong? I’m sure there are more.
Bolivia. I was there.
Right, I forgot about that one
I just assume the CIA brings any president paperwork for this kind of stuff and says “sign this or you’re dead.” Like there will never be an American president that doesn’t do this kind of stuff. American foreign policy is inherently hostile by nature.
feel like they screen candidates well enough that they don’t have to threaten them.
for trump they could be like “hey wanna order some cool guy james bond shit?” and he’d involuntarily get sharpie everywhere
Exactly, like I’m not defending any presidents, but I’m kinda surprised at some of the comments that make it seem as if the president is coming up with the foreign policy themselves lmfao no. All that stuff is being done by the CIA and more importantly all the CIA adjacent organizations like the NED and others. By the time it gets to the president for signing so much work has been put into it that there is no way it ISNT going to be signed off on. The president is just a stamp to legitimize the appearance of civilian leadership. A good example would be Eisenhower, who directly called out the military industrial complex as a phenomenon and a problem that goes against his own personal beliefs of what is good for America before it really had a chance to take off. Did he try anything to stop it? Nope, still signed whatever they put in front of him.
Did he try anything to stop it? Nope, still signed whatever they put in front of him.
He basically gave that speech 3 days before leaving office lol
Correct, but it’s something he was obviously aware of his entire presidency and he personally felt Americas best interest was not in the hands of the MIC. His personal feelings didn’t matter because he was smart enough to know if he doesn’t sign on the dotted line he’s fucked.
“sign this or you’re dead.”
Don’t be silly, they’re all committed imperialists.
Somewhat. Like I said in a different comment the different organizations tangent to the CIA are the ones that actually develop foreign policy and strategy. They don’t really need a person who is committed to the cause, they just need someone who isn’t going to tell them no imho.
This is silly lol. Why would they need to threaten the president? What about the CIA’s agenda do these people disagree on? Perhaps who and when to kill, but ultimately someone will die. Even JFK was still a piece of shit imperialist. He just stepped on the wrong foot trying to do it His Way
They do bring paperwork to the president though. It’s a kill list, and they get to choose who to kill from that list. They reportedly nudged Trump into selecting high priority targets, but Trump supposedly only checked big name ISIS targets to boost ratings
Why would they need to threaten the president? What about the CIA’s agenda do these people disagree on?
He just stepped on the wrong foot trying to do it His Way
Kinda answered your own question - it doesn’t have to be an ideological disagreement, even if they just get too uppity about doing things their way, the hammer comes down.
I don’t think they need to threaten like that, presidents delegate this stuff out.
They really don’t. Presidents are in power for 4-8 years, that’s basically nothing. The entrenched powers in the CIA (read also as the NED, ADL, defense contractors, whatever ngos etc) are the ones that really direct foreign policy and strategy. These are the people actually doing the work. Presidents to my mind are just rubber stamps because by the time it comes to sign the order so much work has been put into it by all these entities that it’s not really an option to not sign it. Obviously the system is not going to pick someone who would refuse to sign it, but the appearance of democracy is still necessary. It’s really only recently that the mask has been slipping a little too much in this regard.
Historically it’s been like “yeah do what you do just don’t tell me what it is you’re doing”
Crazy to assume they gotta threaten them when these motherfuckers are bloodthirsty.
“sign this or you’re dead.
I remember ages ago watching a documentary about conspiracy theories and one of the people they brought on basically said this, except instead of outright threats they just show a video of Kennedy getting his brain ventilated from a completely unseen angle.
I mean,
tried to step on the CIA a bit and suddenly his mind was expanded all over the highway 
The only way he’s “good in foreign policy” is by taking America’s mask fully off and showing the world the ugly truth. Whether they believe it or not is up to them
I know many Chinese people that turned very anti-American after 2015 to 2016.
I’m not aware of anyone here that says Trump was “good” on foreign policy. The critique is that he’s a substantially less effective steward of the imperial machine and even does accidental propaganda work against it.
Which, of course, is untrue.
That would be an unpopular opinion among most people here, “of course”.
Who cares what the popular opinion here is? It’s wrong lmao
The point is in the air quotes, as parent was (and is) being condescending and escalatory rather than engage in a comradely way. My hope was that by pointing out they were being condescending to more than just myself might give them pause and to change the way they were interacting. As you can see, that strategy of mine didn’t work lol.
Your question is about relevance, and I actually agree. That was actually my point in its own less direct way. My grandparent reply was to say they were mischaracterizing a sentiment but the response didn’t actually address that, so I drew attention to the misdirection. I think I was unclear about that being the point, though.
Then ask every single Hexbearer what they think and come back to me if you want instead of speaking for everyone.
Of course.
Do you think these are reasonable responses to the things I’m saying?
Yes. You’re literally speaking for the 26k users on Hexbear.
Nobody really thinks that, like a MAGA communist might say, Trump is somehow “less dangerous” or whatever. Or “at least he’s honest” or “reveals the dreck of U.S. imperialism.”
He’s done more to radicalize people to the ultra-right than most U.S. Presidents.
The idea that Trump was a less competent imperialist is very popular here. You are straw manning this to mean, “every person who has every registered an account here agrees with me”. Do you think this is a reasonable way to approach what I’ve disagreed with you about?
Can you state, in your own words, what points I’ve made?
26k users lmao. 26k accounts, of which 90% are dead or banned, and the remaining 10% include tons of alts and duplicates. There’s probably like 2000 active users on this site.
Untrue to what degree though? One of his biggest scandals was attempting to refuse military aid to Ukraine in an effort to get dirt on Biden. Ultimately ineffective, but his attempted actions in this scenario prove the point.
He then refocused more efforts on attacking and isolating China head-on, hence the DPRK ordeal.
The nicest thing you can say about Donald Trump is that he’s completely mercenary.
He’ll turn on a dime if he sees advantage in a position and there’s nobody he won’t stab in the back given half an opportunity.
Biden is a fixture of US Foreign Policy. Trump is a Wild Card.
No, Trump is very much a fixture of the faction that backs him.
He’ll just do what his donors or base wants. That’s it.
IMHO.
Trump is very much a fixture of the faction that backs him.
The fixture that backs him is largely scammers and rubes, stacked one on top of the other, in an oversized shit sandwich.
Trump can glad-hand Kim Jung Un and his base will clap. He can bomb Korea and they’ll clap. It’s pure cult of personality.
He’ll just do what his donors or base wants.
Donor focus is more a Biden thing. Trump does what he thinks will feed of popular base, and the donors follow him.
It’s what really separates an insider from a populist.
Trump literlaly started a crisis with the DPRK and coup’d Bolivia while I was in the country lol
A fascist uprising at that.
“Donor focus”
is more of a Trump thing and he gets the most donors and the largest and most right-wing ones too.
Trump literlaly started a crisis with the DPRK
We’d been in and out of crisis with the DPRK all during the Obama era, thanks to their restart of nuclear testing and long range missile testing. That’s in no small part thanks to Obama inheriting Bush Era Pentagon officials, rather than shitcanning them on day one.
and coup’d Bolivia
The MAS party resigned itself out of office and handed the keys to a Social Democrat. Possibly the stupidest thing a party leadership has done since Allende appointed Pinochet as General Chief of Staff of the Army. That wasn’t Trump’s magic fingers, it was an own-goal by Bolivian national government which the US pounced on in their moment of weakness.
he gets the most donors and the largest and most right-wing ones too
He’s been far less successful at fundraising than his predecessors, in large part thanks to Citizen’s United fracturing the old PAC coalitions and letting every billionaire run around doing his or her own pet project. But he’s brought in a ton of new voters that guys like Romney and McCain failed to engage.
“We’d been in and out of crisis with the DPRK all during the Obama era”
And Trump did the same lol
“The MAS party resigned itself out of office”
No, it was forced to resign by the military. I saw guards outside the palace. Get outta here.
“He’s been far less successful at fundraising than his predecessor”
Actually, no, even Sheldon Adelson donated more compared to most candidates.
“populist”
which Trump isn’t
“Populism” isn’t a political philosophy, it’s a rhetorical tact, and one that most Republicans and some Democrats take. It’s not to be confused for an idea like “popular rule”.
This isn’t 1991 USSR. He’s not stripping copper out the US and selling it to foreigner investors. He’ll scam, sure, but it’s wild how people on here seem to subscribe to Great Man Theory more than America’s enemies. Even Assad said that it doesn’t matter who the fuck the president is because as long as the institutions retain the same agenda, nothing will change.
Trump being loud and threatening NATO allies doesn’t do anything to change reality. The people with actual power, the security and military apparatus, will not let it happen. NATO won’t collapse because BRUMPF called Europe freeloaders or shit on American soldiers. It won’t change reality because he pulls out of a war because there are still hundreds of spec ops and CIA goons deep inside the country, and he’ll reroute those soldiers to another war next door.
The US is having trouble diplomatically because of the inherent racist and profit-driven nature of its ideology, and it came into full swing when COVID was introduced and the invasion of the Ukraine
This isn’t 1991 USSR. He’s not stripping copper out the US and selling it to foreigner investors.
glances at US Steel being sold to Japan
Maybe not literally. Not yet, anyway. But we’re getting real close.
Trump being loud and threatening NATO allies doesn’t do anything to change reality.
It does. It kills initiatives under prior administrations. It alienates the people who have to physically pull the “Yes” lever in other countries. And, frankly, the endless “Trump is Putin’s best friend! Trump is on Russia’s side! Trump ❤️ Putin kissing in a tree!” agitprop is going to have some kind of effect on how people take Trump’s picks for ambassadors and Sec State head when it comes time to do international diplomacy. That, plus his habit of fucking around with state secrets, means you can’t be Olaf Sholtz in Germany and glad-hand the guy who everyone in your country thinks is a hand-puppet for the FSB.
The US is having trouble diplomatically because of the inherent racist and profit-driven nature of its ideology
That’s not a problem with France or the UK or Germany or Japan. Not normally. But you have to tack on all the “Fifth Column!” hysteria that’s been building around this campaign. How do you integrate with the Five Eyes network when your main go-betweens with the CIA and NSA are a bunch of Groypers?
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the complete full-pedal commitment towards killing local minorities characteristic of the Republican Party
My city of Houston has had Democrats at national and local governments all firmly committed to dumping as much money and manpower as possible into the Republican-controlled police forces inflicting these harms upon their constituents. The current mayor is entirely in bed with the GOP police establishment. His singular claim to fame during his legislative tenure was stripping death row victims of their last meals. “Ah, but Trump will be worse” constantly overlooks the persistent harms inflicted by compliant Democrats.
Do not vote for the bad cop, please.
I can’t vote for the “good” cop either. They’re both working to the same effect.
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Are you trying to vote-shame me into voting for Trump instead of Uncommited?
Yes. This is exactly what I’m doing
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they’re not being literal. you’re misreading the tone. it’s a backhanded way of saying you misunderstood them the first time.
anyone posting agitprop for voting for the Rs deserves an instant ban for fascism. I would be shocked if they don’t immediately receive one. I’m pretty sure what people are saying here is that they’re ambivalent to who wins the election and contrasting the harms of the Biden administration with the harms of a second Trump admin. it’s not an endorsement, it’s just analysis.
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I don’t think anyone disagrees with that? no one is talking about voting for them. they’re engaging in analysis about the effect the Trump admin had on the USian empire.
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People need to stop acting like he was “at least good in terms of foreign policy.”
So many people let “at least he’s funny” transform into “actually he’s unironically the harm reduction candidate!”
It’s such a bizarre take that only people who get their news from irony accounts believe. They let him say and do whatever up until it actually starts affecting the security state.
He’ll type up hot shit on twitter about nuking North Korea or Syria or Iran, then a few moments later he’ll appear in a video where he speaks slowly, properly in whole sentences, in a normal voice and volume, without going on tangents and insulting people, and explaining the situation without making threats. You think that was voluntary? It’s all a wrestling match. Just don’t break kayfabe
So many people let “at least he’s funny” transform into “actually he’s unironically the harm reduction candidate!”
This is one way people dig themselves into silly ultra-left positions, too.
Ultra-leftism is rife on Twitter especially.
You get takes like “Trump good actually.”
Exactly.
Trump killed Soleimani for no reason
He was good in the sense that he was an incompetent uninterested imperialist, not because he was actually good. That’s the argument people (like me) make.
LOL Isn’t this what China was supposedly doing with TikTok?
I was wondering why every second video I watch is just some guy reading Mao’s Little Red Book and calling me a lib
Live!do you know how effing hard it is to convince youtube I only want commies? every time I click a link from someone it instantly reverts to libshit again.
there’s either a “politics” category and they slot everyone in there or they’re trying to purposefully push all these fucking fash piece of shits down my throat. No matter how many channels I block there’s always one more trying to push their filth
Youtube shorts is the worst offender by far
What China’s supposedly doing with TikTok is owning a 1% stake in the private company that made it. Everything else is baseless speculation.
Every accusation is a confession
The effort, which began in 2019, has not previously been reported.
Source: Gallup
Hey that’s weird, opinion is mostly unchanged for like 30 years, then in 2018 it just becomes net positive, and then immediately after it unfavorability jumps sky-high. Surely just a coincidence.
Yup and this, even after Trump campaigned against China through 2015-16
Though I think this needs more analysis. I can think of at least one pandemic that was blamed on China in early 2020 which might be the actual start of the decline.
That would be my guess also, and is probably the simplest explanation. The US media beat the “Chinese virus” drum very, very hard and a lot of people still seem to believe that China is mostly to blame for COVID. It’s at least possible that this was part of the same effort to discredit China both to the Chinese and to the world broadly, and that COVID was just a “happy” coincidence for the already existing propaganda campaign.
post 2020 its not that surprising: covid happened.
I think the Uyghur accusations played a pretty huge role though, there is no legitimate reason for that huge decline in 2019.
HK/Uighur stuff was the CIA psychological operation being discussed here. Uighur separatism was a project of the CIA in Afghanistan since we invaded, they indirectly caused the Urumqi riots that lead to the anti-terrorism policies of China. Then when their operatives started getting locked up and their ETIM terrorist networks smashed apart, they whined about it as “genocide” to the media through pseudo-academics like Zenz.
Hong Kong protests were NED funded, meaning the CIA also was running and operating those.
The American public reaction and acceptance to both is also emblematic of the CIA’s control over US media and social media narratives. This stuff is all directly related and connected.
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covid is what made me love China, their response to it was better than any capitalist nation and proved their distinction and reaffirmed to me they were still a dictatorship of the proletariat. It’s so weird to me that I have the exact opposite opinion of the median American in every single way. Another example is after Afghanistan withdrawal the approval rating of Biden plummeted, but in my opinion it was the one half-decent concession he made during his entire term, but for Americans their collective egos got bruised so they whined about how bad it looked for them.
This sucks so much that propaganda is so effective on people in the US. Like, I know
but I would still hope that sentiment isn’t that malleable over a couple years. 
I unfortunately work with a whole host of ex TLA people and they’re even more thoroughly propagandized than your average american imo. They’re extremely intelligent in so many ways but so absolutely blind to the programming that it’s pretty awe inspiring.
“No one is immune to propaganda” does not equal “everyone is equally scrupulous when confronted with propaganda”
You can judge people who repeatedly fall for blatant bullshit.
thats wild, holy shit
Is this a poll of Americans? I don’t think Chinese people have an approval rate of 15% of their own country.
The reported CIA activity occurred in China.
It is a poll of Americans, yes. I did see that the CIA activity occurred in China and I get what you’re saying, I just refuse to believe that the goal was only to cause internal chaos in China.
1000% its a limited hangout. There’s definitely been an ongoing social media campaign to prime the pump for escalating tensions with China.
If you’re already researching vulnerabilities and strategies to drive anti-China sentiments in China, how much more effort is it to adapt them domestically?
Leaking to foreign news wad probably meant to create stories that would circle back to the US.
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Almost like China did nothing questionable in Tiananmen Square…
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He’s a what? he’s a what?
He’s a newspaper man
And he gets his best ideas
From a newspaper stand;
From his boots to his pants
To his comments and his rants
He knows that any little article will do!
Russia and China have troll farms. America has teams of operatives.
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2019 is the year the Winnie the Pooh shit started.
Call me crazy but I have never thought that shit was organic “from Chinese people on their internet”. This makes me even more suspicious about its origins.
There was a meme passed around on Weibo, but it wasn’t the same meme the west uses at all, and wasn’t even censored to my knowledge. The west just made up a story whole cloth about Xi Jinping banning Winnie the Pooh and just expected people to never fact check it (they didn’t.) I think it may have been a kind of “testing the waters” thing, they wanted to see how much they could get away with, they started pushing the Xinjiang stuff much more heavily shortly after, so it’s likely they were seeing if people would believe an obvious and easily disprovable lie before moving onto their big lie.
According to the KYM research the meme heavily predates 2019, however it does mention a 2019 “resurgence”.
This resurgence is where the cia lies imo.
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Mid movie relying heavily on nostalgia I doubt many citizens of China have
Yeah, they rarely make things up by themselves, they just take existing shitty ideas that serve their purposes and give them a megaphone. That way it gives them plausible deniability.
As Adam Johnson of
sagely said:“The atomic unit of propaganda is not lies, but emphasis”
It’s worth noting that this wouldn’t be necessary if the government of China didn’t have broad support and legitimacy.
Also classic buying their own bullshit.
They convinced themselves “influencing” enough people to vote against their own self interests by posting a handful of racist facebook memes was actually some brilliant espionage move and thought they could do the same.
Only works if your population is stupid and ignorant to be predictably influenced by mispelled racist memes.
This is my new response to someone calling me a wumao.
Dumbass Chinese liberals ate it up too. Right-Wing west fetishists are lower than worms.
Shanghai syndrome
How much of the so-called “authoritarianism” of communism would cease to exist if capitalism simply…allowed other economic systems to coexist?
All of it, but if capitalism allowed socialism to flourish without constantly trying to destroy it, the people in capitalist countries would see how much better socialism is and revolt.
If that is the case, then it’s funny how unaware capitalists are about how well-propagandized the west is.
That’s the other half of them ensuring a revolution doesn’t happen. Constant propaganda about how evil socialism is. But that only works when they can point to “surveillance states” and militarisation of socialist countries, when they can point to socialist nations being poor and struggling. It’s hard to propagandise people if the socialist nations are clearly doing far better than any capitalist ones.
It can’t though. It’s in the nature of capitalism to squeeze out any other mode of production. Even without overt sabotage. It’s like how it’s almost impossible for a developing nation to industrialize unless they basically ban imports.
I decided to see what the sinophobic den of
has to say about this, and unsurprisingly most of the libs there try to act like it’s nothing, and totally normal. (Except when Russia or China does it in their eyes, then it’s bad) On r/neoliberal they’re more concerned about this being public than the actual operation itself. I saw them calling it an “extremely uncommon Trump W”. No surprise there, I suppose. Despite their theatrical opposition to Trump, they support all this sort of scummy shit, as long as it’s done silently in the background and with a dose of decorum. Fucking scumbags. 
Love when people bring up “Russian interfearance” as if it’s some act of war.
I always ask them if Russia published an article of Time magazine bragging about how they influenced the american election for a more favorable outcome for them because if not they did less then us.
Then they call that whataboutism because hypocrisy is fine as long as you come up with a different name for it.
the origin of the term was always a justification for hypocrisy so that tracks
Always a self admission when US officials accuse other states of trying to influence the American state through media
How well did all that US worship go for them?
Some of the operatives got Aslume in Europe and UK where they lost all relevancy. Others went to jail for conspiring with the US government and getting caught on camera doing it.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Looks like a classic case of accuse others that which you are guilty of wrt TikTok.
the west attacks you and calls your self-defense authoritarianism
And some dumb libs fell for it. I’d bet a lot of this was also pushed on Western social media too, where it would have the greatest effect on the more rabidly pro-war, anti-Chinese racists.
I fucking hate America.
