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Going to steel man this since theres obviously no one on here answering this question seriously. Not a republican and don't agree with all this, just imagining what my republican dad would say about this:
For ukraine and Europe, we have no interest in protecting them besides sentimental attachments. Ukraine is not our problem, it's Europe's and if they want to dump money into a lost cause by all means go ahead, but leave the u.s. out of it unless your going to compensate us for it. The u.s. isn't threatened by Russia, we have an ocean, the world's largest navy and nukes to protect us. The larger threat is China and we should be focusing on them, not russia which can barely invade it's neighbor, much less march across Europe and the atlantic. Europe can handle its own problems.
For Canada and Mexico and tarriffs in general. We need to bring manufacturing back to America and revitalize the rust belt. We can't do that if companies find it more profitable to go over seas and pay people pennies when they'd have to pay Americans much more. The only way to get them to come back is to make it too expensive to import things.
This is all about putting America first. For decades America has been spending billions to protect Europe and has been sending billions of dollars over seas to build factories owhile factory after factory closes here in the u.s. We need to stop all of that and spend our money in America for Americans.
Feel free to use this comment as a punching bag, I don't care, just trying to give OP an actual answer if this was a legitimate question and not some rhetorical question seeking affirmation on how dumb the Republicans are. They are, don't get me wrong, but just say so and don't dress it up in questions like this.
Even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it had occurred to me that the US disproportionately spends much, much more on military might than our allies do. Europe pulled a good one on us, ensuring they could lead more carefree lifestyles with first world social safety nets while we take on that heavy burden of being the sentry guard of the entire western world.
However, we made promises of security to Ukraine in return for their nuclear disarmament. It isn’t right that we turn our backs on them now.
Trump is a simpleton. He doesn’t truly understand the long-term butterfly effects of the decisions he’s making.
No, we did that to ourselves, by always cutting taxes instead of raising them to pay for things that are public goods, like single-payer health care, public transportation, public education, and so on. Our taxes are too low, and as a result we pay far, far more for the same things as private services rather than public. You can complain that the gov't is inefficient, but there's no profit; profit takes a far bigger bite than waste, inefficiency, and fraud does.
Great post! And I can see the point of most of that take.
My riposte, which I bring up frequently, is that a smart capitalist isn't going to invest in American factories, knowing damned well they'll be left holding the bag on a multi-million dollar facility when the tariffs drop.
That's not even mentioning the employment costs, which are far more than most on lemmy understand. tl;dr: If I'm paying you $15hr., it's costing me $30hr.
Canada has
One of those must be the issue. ;-)
The thing is, it's not total rubbish. The problems are real - rust belt decline, life is harder for Americans than it was in the past. America is more protected from Russian aggression than Europe. He doesn't seem to realise or care that the reason for that is because we trusted that the US would have our back and its not like the us wasn't getting anything in return.
It's just that these truths are mixed in with lies - immigrants are the problem, tariffs will fix anything, that if america abandons it's allies and its promises (over protecting Ukraine after they gave up their nukes), this will lead to a better long term outcome for America.
Trump is too dumb to understand subtlety and he's being played by multiple bad actors, domestic and foreign.
Thing is, what the USA was buying with its expensive umbrella over Europe was a disarmed Europe. At the time, the USA felt it was in their interest for EU to be weak.
For a variety of reasons, the rise of China perhaps being at the forefront, the USA no longer believes its in their interest to keep EU toothless.
When we spend money in other countries, we are spending it on Americans. When free people thrive, America wins. When people around the world have stable governments that at least try to look out for their own people, America wins. Even if 49% of it is wasted to fraud and abuse, we're still coming out ahead: the only Americans who have lived through a draft are in their 60s, and a nuclear attack in their 80s.
This hedgemony has staved of world war three and nuclear war for 75 years, and kept the world a relatively stable and safe place for virtually everyone.
Even if you completely disagree with me, and feel like voting for conservatives is the better alternative, two facts completely undermine that decision. First, the times America has failed to live up to its ideals or faltered in its highest pursuits have been exclusively presided over by conservatives. Second, the number of times conservatives have cut spending and passed the savings on to the 99% is exactly zero, but their track record of increasing spending while only significantly cutting taxes for the 1%...is 100%. And, as a bonus fact, this the wealthiest nation ever to exist in the history of the world. The diea that we can't afford to help Americans and keep up our global spending is meritless, for example, we could eat like three billionaires and end global hunger, provide healthcare and education to every American.
This is a good steel man response, very much like Facebook posts I have seen lately. It's really sad how much the right has abandoned listening to experts and just assuming we can apply "common sense" answers to fix problems that are complicated.
Dad? Is that you?!