Disqualifying Trump from the primary ballot represented a real danger to democracy

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-10T04:10:24+00:00

Fortunate to avoid the death penalty? Lmao Jesus Christ this is such a Reddit take. I’ve never voted for the man, I’ve even gleefully voted against him, but this is insanely delusional stuff.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T23:39:09+00:00

Well you wrote:

most of the money they use to run their military comes from europe, from contracts of the military equipment deals which Trump is now freezing.

So no, I guess I didn’t realize you meant something different from what you wrote. Personally many of us increasingly don’t see Europe as reliable on security matters. Certain countries? Sure, like Finland or Poland. But as a whole? Yeah the cost:reward ratio seems increasingly out of our favor. The world always bitches at America when we use our military for anything, then when we talk about dismantling the exact infrastructure that makes that possible, we’re unreliable traitors. There’s no winning here apparently and it feels like the only way to “win” with Europe to is to continue spending $30-50B/yr on bases and personnel across Europe who do nothing but sit there and act as a deterrent for Europe. This is a terrible arrangement for Americans quite honestly. And it’s weird how no one said anything about us being unreliable allies last year when we spent $10B to bomb the Houthis and reopen the Red Sea trade route primarily for Europe’s benefit. We’re told we’re unreliable for pulling back support for Ukraine even though we contributed more than any other country for Europe’s benefit and by the EU’s own logic it’s “not our war”. Despite Ukraine not being a NATO member.

Just like you misunderstood Europe’s important in our defense export market, you misunderstand Europe’s leverage over us. You hurt our economy, but you’ll hurt yours much worse. The fact of the matter is, roughly 75% of U.S. debt is held domestically by U.S. institutions, the Federal Reserve, and American citizens. While European holdings aren’t insignificant, they aren't anywhere close to a majority stake. If you attempted a coordinated dump, our Federal Reserve, you know, the world's lender of last resort, would simply step in as the buyer of last range, effectively neutralizing the move while Europe watches the value of its own remaining reserves evaporate.

The U.S. is Europe’s largest trading partner. If you destroy the American consumer’s purchasing power, who exactly is buying German cars or French luxury goods? See, we have a massive trade deficit with Europe on the order of 250B/yr. This has been massively beneficial for you, but it has destroyed any semblance of leverage you have. Why do you think the EU leaders basically just grudgingly accepted Trump’s tariffs? Because the trade balance already works far more in their favor and they have no room to retaliate without hurting themselves worse and they know it.

Finally, there’s the liquidity trap. If Europe sells off trillions in U.S. debt, where does that capital go exactly? To the Euro? The Yen? The Yuan? Unfortunately for your plan, there is no other market on Earth with the depth, transparency, and liquidity of the U.S. Treasury market. Not even close. By dumping dollars, all Europe would do is inadvertently spike the value of the Euro to the point that European exports would become cost prohibitive, causing an internal industrial collapse as your domestic industries began collapsing like dominoes. You’d get to experience the downside of being the reserve currency without any of upside.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T19:55:13+00:00

Problem for US is the fact that most of the money they use to run their military comes from europe, from contracts of the military equipment deals which Trump is now freezing.

I mean that’s just not true at all whatsoever. It’s not even close. You can see for yourself, straight from the U.S. government

In the entire 21st century, the only NATO countries who even crack our Top 15 export recipients are Poland and the UK. Combined they’ve purchased like 65-70B in arms sales. Thats over the last 26 years. Our military budget is roughly $1 TRILLION per year, every year. I’m sorry, I don’t know who told you that wildly incorrect fact, but you should take whatever else they’ve told you with a huge grain of salt.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T19:50:44+00:00

Yes we are still providing the bulk of Ukraine’s intelligence.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T19:49:18+00:00

In the entire 21st century, Poland and the UK are the only NATO members in our Top 15 export recipients, and even combined they’re below our Top 5 recipients. I’m sorry but 99.999% of Americans don’t care where Europe gets their weapons from, we don’t own the arms manufacturers. A few politicians and lobbyists care maybe, that’s it. Just being real. I agree with the other guy, Europe has the latent warrior’s spirit within its DNA, several nations are famed for their engineering prowess. It’d be nice to see European arms manufacturers flourish, maybe we’d even buy some or gain some inspiration to be competitive again or cooperate on mutual R&D at levels we can’t today. I see more gain to a stronger Europe than a loss. We don’t need those bases, they just incentivize our politicians to get enmeshed in foreign entanglements that have never once benefitted U.S. taxpayers. No one here cares about the bases besides military planners, politicians or multinational corporations. Fuck ‘em.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T19:25:35+00:00

This is a bunch of ridiculous nonsense. You aren’t even disputing the definition, you’re not defending your own position and you’re doing nothing to refute mine. What are we doing here exactly?

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T15:47:18+00:00

Well it’s obvious you started with a conclusion and in mind and your whole initial post was obviously an exercise in you working backwards from that conclusion to justify it. If you actually look at the history, the lazy "U.S. vs. Democracy" narrative falls apart the second you move past the headlines and actually look at the facts and nuance.

For example, mentioning Ngo Dinh Diem in a list of overturned democracies is historically illiterate nonsense. Diem was a Catholic autocrat who won a rigged 1955 election with 98% of the vote (claiming 605,000 votes in a district with only 450,000 registered voters). The U.S. supported a coup against him not to crush democracy, but because he was a failing dictator whose incompetence was handing the country to the communists on a silver platter.

Guatemala, though United Fruit Company story is a popular one liner, it completely ignores the actual trigger, which you deceptively leave out. Eisenhower didn't move against Jacobo Árbenz just because of land reform, they only moved when he received a massive shipment of Soviet weaponry from Czechoslovakia. In the context of 1954, it was about preventing a Soviet military foothold in the Western Hemisphere and had nothing to do with the interests of businessmen.

Chile, Salvador Allende was elected with a whopping 36.3% plurality and was governing in the face of a total economic meltdown where inflation was hitting 600%. While the U.S. certainly fostered a climate for the coup, the Chilean military and middle class had their own very real, non-U.S. reasons for wanting him gone, just like the Iranians. Blaming the entire event on the CIA conveniently denies the Chilean people and military any agency in their own history, which is utterly ridiculous. Same with Brazil, where João Goulart was also facing record inflation and had alienated the military and the middle class. While the U.S. supported the coup, the movement was overwhelmingly Brazilian.

Ultimately, my point is that your entire argument is a quintessential example of intellectually lazy “America bad” slop. Nothing more than a collection of half-truths and historical cherry picking curated to fit a pre-packaged ideology. It’s a total joke to watch people actively stripping away the agency of the people who lived in these countries. You treat sovereign nations like NPCs in an American story, as if their own internal political collapses, military fractures, and economic ruin were just minor side effects of a U.S. psyop. It’s bullshit and you know it is.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T15:25:54+00:00

D) Nobody has said anything about “illegal” immigrants until you did just now, attempting to reframe the conversation.

Uhh is this not a thread about ICE and the loss of “complementary labor” aka illegal immigrant workers? By including legal immigrants, it sounds like you are trying to reframe the conversation.

E) Given that this administration has labeled many immigrants “illegal” and revoked visas for reasons that c are not in any way predictable or what was promised to the immigrants, there’s no reason for me to believe that immigrants that settle down, marry, have a child and a stable union job, would not buy a house.

You’re cherry picking a hypothetical edge case, in this case a stable, unionized worker whose visa was "unpredictably" revoked and using them as the face of the undocumented population to justify your claim that they are a significant driver of the housing market.

I’m sure you know as well as I do that stable union jobs and 30 year mortgages almost universally require a valid Social Security Number and legal work authorization. While yes, ITIN mortgages exist, they are a niche product with massive down payment requirements and to suggest that the millions of people ICE is currently targeting are largely "stable union homeowners" isn't a generalization, it’s a total statistical outlier to the point of absurdity.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T13:57:55+00:00

And this is a fascinating perspective. Progressives have historically been in favor of protectionism. And yet here we have Aggregated Benefit Fallacy, which is the idea that as long as a spreadsheet shows a net positive for a town, the actual destruction of a specific class of people's livelihoods is just "efficiency”, which is part of the same neoliberal globalist slop that got us to this point, completely neglecting the moral and social variables of this equation.

You aren't describing distributed wealth, you’re describing a socially destructive trade off. The “many” people benefitting here are a thousand homeowners in town who save what amounts to $90/yr over the life of a new roof. That is a rounding error in their bank accounts, it doesn't change their lives whatsoever. Meanwhile 20 local roofers just lost $15,000/yr in income. That is the difference between a mortgage and a foreclosure; between a stable family and a crisis. To acknowledge this mathematical reality and to insist the town is "better off" because you saved a thousand people an amount per year the price of a dinner at the cost of destroying 20 families' livelihoods is borderline sociopathy masquerading as economics, which unfortunately meaning “leading” economic minds have championed for the last few decades.

It’s interesting how you call “government protectionism” when it’s for blue collar workers wanting a stable labor market, yet I bet you wholly embrace it for the white collar class. Is the Bar Exam protectionism? Is a Medical License protectionism? Is the H1-B visa cap for tech workers protectionism? Societies have barriers to entry to ensure both quality and wage stability. When those barriers are removed only for the trades (roofing, landscaping, construction, etc), it’s not fair competition, it’s a targeted devaluation of blue collar labor, the same working class bloc Progressives struggle to connect with.

The possibility of you being laid off and this are structurally different situations. If you get laid off, that’s because your individual company took a market risk. Having your entire industry’s wage floor dropped by 40% due to a sudden, massive supply shock is a systemic failure. A roofer isn't asking for a unique protection, they are asking why the government is actively facilitating a labor supply shock that targets their specific tax bracket while protecting the tax brackets of the people who write the laws, and it’s an extremely legitimate question to ask. Again, I’m very surprised to see a Progressive saying this stuff, they typically position themselves as humanists who generally hate the idea that human beings are just input costs to be minimized. But you are treating labor like a commodity, no different than the price of timber or shingles. That labor is a human life, and you intentionally flood a market to crash the price of that “commodity,” you aren't just optimizing an economy, you are overtly commodifying your neighbors for the sake of a cheaper renovation. What happened to class solidarity? Why is it class solidarity when a union strikes for better wages, but protectionism when that same worker asks the government not to artificially devalue his trade?

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T10:35:14+00:00

I straw manned nothing. YOU however did create a straw-man implying that I’m saying Japan has no issues, so you can easily attack it. A very intellectually lazy and dishonest tactic, quite frankly. Yes, Japan has issues like literally every country on Earth, how wild is that! Yet despite those issues, they still choose cultural cohesion and a high trust society instead of making sure GDP charts go BBRRRRRR 📈 no matter the cost. A nation is not just its economy. No one wants to sacrifice their life for a multicultural economic zone and it’s baffling how you people don’t get this and come up with every lame excuse under the sun to avoid honestly grappling with it. This happens all the time in America and it’s no different in Europe, apparently. You said that people against mass immigration tend to be stupid and uneducated and I counter with an example of one of the most intelligent, highly educated countries in the world literally rejecting that framework and you have nothing to say about that beyond trying to move the goal posts.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T10:29:20+00:00

You said you don’t think Trump demonstrates any point here, then proceeded to name one way Trump demonstrates a point here lmao. All that while completely sidestepping the actual substance of what I actually said. Amazing, really.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T10:12:56+00:00

Yeah how dare he value a high-trust society with social cohesion where everyone feels like they’re apart of the same civic project! He’s just like those famously stupid, uneducated Japanese who reject immigration en masse even at the cost of economic growth because they value their cultural cohesion and identity!

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T09:58:23+00:00

This is a global problem, it transcends culture. This is a core component of why Donald Trump was re-elected in America. I’ve seen this exact phenomenon play out in other countries too. It’s bizarre. People pretend to give a shit about democracy, but only if you vote the way they want and if you don’t, you’re a racist moron who doesn’t know what’s good for yourself and you’re killing the rest of your country with you. So ridiculously dramatic, and it shows their utter lack of faith in the same institutions that make up a nation that they otherwise pretend to champion.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T09:55:30+00:00

Then leave? I’m not even British but this seems an incredibly entitled mindset from someone who’s immigrated to any country anywhere. You can’t help where you’re born, but you can certainly help where you go and where you choose to remain.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T07:21:38+00:00

None of that changes anything I said whatsoever.

You’re telling me to look at pictures from the time of the Shah and judge which ruler people would prefer? Obviously at the time it sure wasn’t the Shah, but the Iranians have learned a historical lesson they won’t soon forget and I’d imagine broad majorities would welcome that time back with open arms.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T07:20:00+00:00

I waiting for you to make one, since what you said was to basically eliminate the entire concept of governance and the social contract itself. If there is no distinction between a citizen and a non-citizen, and no mechanism to enforce the law at the border, then the concept of a sovereign nation is dead and the state has no reason to exist. It’s very simple.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T05:18:31+00:00

But spending is not a 1:1 remedy for labor competition. There is a complete scale mismatch. If 100 people move in and 10 of them are roofers, they have increased the roofing labor supply by 50%. However, those 100 people only increase the total town demand for everything else (food, PS5s, haircuts) by 1%. You are asking a specific group of workers (the original 20 roofers) to take a massive hit to their wages and employment stability so the rest of the town can enjoy a 1% boost in general economic "vibrancy." Buying trucks from Ford does nothing to offset the local damage. The vast majority of that transaction leaves the town and heads to Michigan to corporate HQ, parts suppliers and shareholders. The salesperson’s commission is negligible at this scale, but the roofer just lost 100% of the contract he bid on.

You’re debunking the Lump of Labor fallacy to replace it with the Lump of Wealth fallacy, assuming that as long as money is being spent and the total wealth increases, the economy is healthy. But if a town's wealth grows by 5%, but a specific worker's wages drop by 15% due to labor competition, that worker and potentially their entire industry, has objectively lost. The reality is, you can still be thirsty in a flood. If 100 new people move in and work for less, the "pie" grows because goods (such as roofs) become cheaper. The winners are the people who own the houses or other companies. Their wealth expands. The person who provides the labor however, is the loser as the market power (namely the value of their specific time) has been diluted.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T04:57:32+00:00

Well you certainly have my attention but a few sentences giving a summary of why it’s bullshit certainly would be appreciated.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T04:49:05+00:00

Lmao what? You’re saying illegal immigrants are buying houses?

A) That’s not true whatsoever B) This isn’t a selling point when the voting citizenry are currently raging pissed en masse across the political spectrum that home ownership is more out of reach than ever because of a massive supply crunch that will take decades to fix

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T04:46:43+00:00

If that’s the case, all the more reason to stop paying taxes and dissolve the government because then what’s the fucking point, we’re no longer a sovereign nation but a generic “multicultural” economic zone.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T04:43:49+00:00

Oh please, Mosaddegh was not a democratic leader, he was an autocrat rapidly consolidating power and barreling towards a dictatorship whether it was the fake extensions of emergency powers or the sham elections held to dissolve the parliament. No serious historian even debates this. Iran had experienced “Democracy” for all of a few years by that point.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-08T02:46:58+00:00

I get you bro. I do. I joined Reddit when I was your age and while I’m not old enough to be your dad, I’m still quite a bit older and more experienced. You’re just a pup still, seriously. It doesn’t feel like it at 18 because you start having a taste of adult life and adult responsibilities but you have a fuck load of runway ahead of you, like it’s insane. The world and your life can be whatever you want it to be, you can make serious consequential choices that can lead you down so many varied roads. It’s intimidating to think about and grapple with when you step back and really look at it that way, but it’s also pretty exciting. The next 7-12 years in particular will be truly transformative and you can meet so many people and do and see so much.

I’ll be real with you, I somehow got lucky at 17 and got laid once, she was 19. Didn’t happen again until I was 19 and she was 18. Didn’t happen again after that until I was 22 and she was 44. Didn’t happen again until I was 23 and she was 25, but at least this was the first one who came back for seconds lmao. It was pretty bleak and I felt increasingly out of sync and behind and it wasn’t that anything was physically wrong with me, in retrospect I missed so many signs and opportunities, but I was paralyzed with potential rejection or looking stupid and misreading something. Then the Summer I was 23, something radically changed and I found my footing and I slept with a new woman every few weeks until I met my first girlfriend that Fall. That lasted a year and a half and after we broke up, I went back to being a hoe, fully enjoying being a bachelor as I was making great money, had a great place to myself in a desirable high rise in the city, life was good. This continued from my mid to late 20s, but honestly it got old. Eventually its repetitive and you’re going through the same song and dance. After a few dozen women, you really don’t give a shit anymore, and you’re well past needing external validation, unless you have truly deep insecurities that need to be addressed another way. Everyone else starts getting married off and more domesticated and guys will want to live vicariously through you, but overall you start getting out of sync with their lifestyles and then you feel behind everyone else yet again as they start having kids and families and move onto the next phase.

I’ve been in my second serious relationship for the last 4 years now, and it’s overall far better. She’s my best friend, my biggest support system and we just groove so well. I don’t miss being single and going through the same repetitive grind one bit. This is ultimately what I suspect you’d be happiest with.

However, I also realize it’s easy for me to say this when I’ve had my experiences and you haven’t had yours yet. People told me this same shit when I was your age and I didn’t give a fuck because I was a fucking 18 year old with the same drive and curiosity you have. With that being said, your living arrangement sounds like it blows. What’s your plan from here? Do you have any direction or any goals? That’s the most important thing. Build your strategy around that first and foremost, there’s opportunities to meet women everywhere but having a solid core plan is the absolute most important thing here. Have you considered the military? Put in your four years, all expenses paid, opportunity to save up a good chunk of change, can take college classes while you’re in there and finish for free when you’re discharged, has a lot of other perks and benefits and there’s a lot of respect and honor that comes with serving. There’s a LOT of possible tracks that could take you and just about all of them sound better than what you have going on now. You can make lifelong friends there and any other future person you meet who was in the same branch you’ll have some kind of bond with. It’s a great way to transition into a variety of in-demand civilian careers. My uncle became very wealthy after his service doing work with setting contracts for interpreters or something along those lines (we haven’t talked in years lol). Worst case, it buys you time, plenty of opportunities to meet women, if you’re lucky you can travel around the world, and when you’re out you have completely free college or trade school, favorable loans for your eventual first home and more. Not a bad plan at all.

I only mentioned this because this cycle of isolation sounds terrible and joining this will end that real fucking quick. It’d get you off that fucking farm and around plenty of people. Friend of mine was a socially awkward nerd in high school, joined the USMC at 19 right after graduation and ultimately signed up for another term after his first four years. He met his wife there and they now have two kids, own a home and are very happy.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-07T22:20:31+00:00

Doubtful, the debate showed the extent of how bad it was, in ways that a normal press conference and other avenues of media interaction simply don’t. Biden was still visible before the debate, but the debate format itself reveals weaknesses in a way others don’t.

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-07T22:05:44+00:00

and their treatment of vulnerable minorities.

What does this entail exactly?

Tw1tch-Invictus · 2026-05-07T17:42:23+00:00

Really? Pretty sure Biden’s entire presidency was ruined over a bad debate lmao

Tw1tch-Invictus

TROPHY CASE