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sdcfgy • today at 3:29 PM • 11 replies • view on HN

As an outside observer, the US administration is an embarrassment to the country. You're never going to come back from this. Well done.


Replies

jimbokun • today at 3:45 PM

Oh, we are well aware.

Pretty sure even a lot of the current President's voters are slowly coming to this same realization. I predict soon in casual conversation almost no one will have voted for this man.

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waffletower • today at 6:08 PM

My largest problem with the statement is the utterly false claim that sanctions for the ICC have bipartisan support.

jolux • today at 3:55 PM

It’s a travesty but I think “never going to come back from this” is a stretch. There is no immediate replacement for the position the US holds in global politics. China has no interest in being the guarantor of freedom of transit in international waterways, to pick one example.

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nextaccountic • today at 4:08 PM

It's not just this administration. The US helped create this court and pushed other countries to join, but never joined themselves and always threatened the court if they indicted or judged American people.

There's an US law that says the US will invade Belgium (edit: Netherlands) if the court wanted to investigate an American (???)

I remember Hillary Clinton, in the Obama administration, saying the US is an exceptional country that deserves exceptional conditions regarding this issue

It's frankly ridiculous

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bijowo1676 • today at 4:10 PM

its only this administration, its the whole Congress and Uniparty in DC

Betelbuddy • today at 3:40 PM

The US is an embarrassment to the Planet.

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DFHippie • today at 3:44 PM

Most Americans agree with you at this point.

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simpaticoder • today at 4:11 PM

It's worse than an embarrassment - it is an indictment of democracy itself. It is difficult to imagine a people - on paper the richest, most educated and healthiest in the history of the world - intentionally choosing a real villain as their duly-elected leader. They elected a man whose outrages, corruptions, selfishness, malice and outright crimes are so egregious and obvious that the problem becomes organizing so long a list into a workable taxonomy. But he's not done this alone - SCOTUS is in his pocket and truly made him above the law. The Republicans have enabled him by staying silent and riding on his coattails - the most "principled" of them have retired. Media is consolidated and owned by the oligarchs he calls friends. He has a personal paramilitary force (ICE) roaming the streets, killing people, and who will be "observing" the mid-term elections.

The root of the problem is in the collective mind of Americans. We are the problem - we've been hacked to be both stupid and proud of that stupidity, to cease recognizing "character" or "virtue" as a signal, to cease caring about reality that doesn't support opinions that were installed on us, like malware, or anything really except entertainment. Because that's the ONE thing we do get out of all this - we get to be entertained. How funny when he says outlandish things like immigrants are eating the cats, eating the dogs! How hilarious (and macho!) when he brags about grabbing women. How wonderful it is to see the discomfiture of the libs when he parrots Nazi propaganda or when he encouraged the Proud Boys to storm the capital to overturn his loss, and then his lackeys claimed it either didn't happen or was a false flag. "Hang Mike Pence!" is what an obese, fentanyl- and TikTok-addicted mind thinks is doing something! And hey, you can say "retard" again without getting canceled.

I've got kids and I'm terrified for them.

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lapcat • today at 5:12 PM

> You're never going to come back from this.

This seems like an overstatement. After all, Germany came back from Nazism.

I also think this is not a uniquely American problem. If anything, the US is a political bellwether. And I would note that Australian Rupert Murdoch for example has been funding right-wing propaganda in the US, as well as some other countries, for decades. (Donald Trump himself is known as a voracious consumer of right-wing media. He's in their target demographic.) In addition to donating massive amounts of money to US Republicans, South African Elon Musk has also taken an interest in other countries such as the UK. The Israel lobby is of course very powerful in the US. This is an international problem. As arguably the most powerful nation in the world, the US is a natural target for those who would abuse that power.

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tiahura • today at 3:57 PM

Parents spend considerable time teaching children to not get caught up in other people's opinions.

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rfgplk • today at 3:36 PM

The International Criminal Court is a farce. How can you tell other sovereign nation what is a "crime" or what "is not a crime"? It has literally zero authority to decide such matters.

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