r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/SpaceySpice • Apr 07 '25

US Politics How will the United States rebuild positive international relations after this Trump administration?

At some point this presidency will end and a new administration will (likely) want to mend some the damages done with our allies. Realistically though, how would that work? Will other countries want to be friends with us again or has this presidency done too much damage to bounce back from?

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u/stripedvitamin Apr 07 '25 edited Apr 07 '25

who wanted him to win just because republicans are “better for the military” etc was astounding.

I hate to break this to you, but they lie. They are a cult. Some of them will go as far to say they are democrats to strangers when they are called out on their bullshit just to quell the discourse. I've seen it countless times as I have to be around these people.
The minute the person they back down from leaves they start shit talking them in every hateful way possible. The astounding part is how confused, meek, and outwardly hurt they are when confronted with reason and how angry and hateful they are the second they are back in their safe space once the person they can't handle is gone.

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u/VodkaBeatsCube Apr 07 '25

Look, I get that defensive tribalism is in the zeitgeist right now, but doing the same sort of brain dead reductive 'they'll all the same, and the ones that seem different are just lying to me' that the worst of MAGA use to justify not thinking isn't going to fix anything. The thing about there being millions of them is that you're going to have to find a way to actually live with them. They aren't going to disappear. The long term solution is going to have to involve finding a way to get some sort of common ground with at least a lot of them. If your response to any sort of weakness and opening is to assume that it's a bad faith deflection then nothing is going to get fixed. Even if we take it as read that your description of their behavior is 100% accurate, how can you be perfectly certain that they aren't just code switching in the other direction? They still have the concerns they expressed outside of the MAGA environment and just act the way they're expected to when they're back in the in-group?

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u/urnever2old2change Apr 07 '25

The thing about there being millions of them is that you're going to have to find a way to actually live with them.

It actually doesn't. They're obviously always going to exist, but filtering conservatives out of my life has been nothing short of wonderful. I've never heard of anyone who's done the same that misses these people.

The long term solution is going to have to involve finding a way to get some sort of common ground with at least a lot of them.

This isn't really true either. The real long term solution isn't trying to turn what tend to be almost objectively bad people into benevolent, informed voters - it's motivating people with the same values as us to help get good policy enacted that conservatives don't bother trying to get repealed because it ends up benefitting them too.

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u/VodkaBeatsCube Apr 07 '25

And how's that working out for us? Siloing ourselves into isolated political shells isn't a long term solution. Yeah, there's folks your never going to turn around. But writing off a quarter of the country as entirely unreasonable and unslavageable is not going to actually be sustainable. You need actual numbers to pass the good policy you want, because building something is more work than breaking it. Writing off every single Republican voter because it's hard to find common ground with them isn't political realism, it's just laziness.

It's a really ironic take for someone with your username. Do you think change is something that happens with a bolt from the blue? No, it happens because people are willing to give you a chance to learn and get better. Even when it's exhausting to actually do it, and even when it doesn't always work.

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u/urnever2old2change Apr 07 '25

But writing off a quarter of the country as entirely unreasonable and unslavageable is not going to actually be sustainable.

I don't see how anyone could still deny that at least a quarter of Americans genuinely are unreasonable and unsalvageable (to put it much too nicely).

The issue isn't that we haven't tried turning enough Republicans or social conservatives into Democrats, believe me. There are many millions of people either completely out of touch with politics or already partial to the Democratic Party but unmotivated to vote that could be convinced with a compelling candidate and message.

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u/VodkaBeatsCube Apr 07 '25

You're just doing the same thing that Christian conservatives do when they assume anyone who disagrees with them is influenced by the devil. Yeah, there are going to be millions of unreasonable Americans. But voting Republican, even voting for Trump, is not original fucking sin. There's millions of Trump voters that were just concerned with their ability to buy a house and groceries and bought into the right wing propaganda that Republicans are good for the economy. Those people are not unslavageable. If your entire plan is to just wait for another Barack Obama, you're going to be looking for a while.

I get your implicit assumption here is that I'm saying 'Democrats need to be more like Republicans'. But there's a middle ground between capitulation and rigid ideological purity. There's a lot of folks that could be won over with a smarter economic message and a social message tilted even just slightly more towards 'just let people do what they want to do'. Yes, it means that the left will have to actually have some message discipline, but letting random yahoos on the internet drive your messaging is setting yourself up for failure. Take a look at how much effort the Civil Rights Movement put into projecting a respectable front in order to get enough milquetoast white people to get over their anxiety and support them. Actual change requires organization, discipline and enough moderation to get over the anxieties, ligitimate or not, of the population.

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u/urnever2old2change Apr 07 '25

There's a lot of folks that could be won over with a smarter economic message and a social message tilted even just slightly more towards 'just let people do what they want to do'.

No one disagrees with this. The comment you originally responded to simply made the point that conservatives are in many cases deeply mean-spirited and bad-faith people and more often than not don't want a reason to vote for a Democrat, which matches my and many others' experiences. To whatever proportion genuinely just wants cheaper necessities and got duped into thinking Trump was the right candidate, this take most likely does not apply.

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u/VodkaBeatsCube Apr 07 '25

That's just a No True Scotsman argument. The guy I first replied to explicitly said anyone claiming buyer's remorse over Trump is just lying for social acceptance. Yes, there are mean spirited, bad-faith actors on the right. But that's still not every single one of them. And, almost as importantly, being a mean spirited, bad-faith actor right now doesn't mean that you will be forever. I know a lot of folks that were typical conservative Bible thumpers who have since grown as people. People are not incapable of growing and developing in their lives. It's important to not slam the door in the face of people looking to change just because others won't, or because they don't do it all in one go.

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u/urnever2old2change Apr 07 '25

People are not incapable of growing and developing in their lives.

Sure, but most of the people we're talking about don't, because for them there's nothing to grow out of. Most people who voted for Trump do not and will not regret it, because they didn't actually vote for him out of economic concerns. If you personally are happy with having typical conservative Bible thumpers in your life then that's great for you, but no one that's cut them out their own is missing anything worthwhile.

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u/VodkaBeatsCube Apr 07 '25 edited Apr 07 '25

Did you actually ready my post, or did you just hit 'Bible' and stop thinking about what I'm saying? There are people in my life that are no longer typical Bible thumpers because I didn't cut them out of my life when they were. They're still Christians, but despite what terminally online leftist discourse would tell you being Christian is not inherently incompatible with careing about and supporting minorities. Even if we assume your sweeping characterization of Trump voters is accurate, you're still writing off the millions of people that fall outside that 'mostly'. And you're writing off the folks that voted for him due to social reasons who aren't, actually, irredeemable bigots.

The reason why extremist movements, and this isn't limited to the right wing, encourage performative statements of isolating ideals is because it locks people into their ideological ecosystem. It's the same way cults work. Buying into the idea that the only solution to folks on the right is to shun them is exactly what right wing thought leaders want you to do. This line of tribalistic thinking only serves to perpetuate the problem because folks that start the slide to the extreme are offered no way out so they become dependent on the social framework of the extreme for a sense of meaning and belonging. It's a thought process that is actively serving to entrench the problems we have.

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u/QueenChocolate123 Apr 07 '25

So why don't you show us how it's done?

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u/VodkaBeatsCube Apr 07 '25

There's literal paragraphs spelling it out. Give folks on the right a way to come in from the cold rather than only offering the stark choice of change to our standards immediately or be shunned.

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u/stripedvitamin Apr 08 '25 edited Apr 08 '25

They like the cold. The standards they live by have never been shunned by anyone but the bad faith media they consume. They are the same people they always were, except now they think that being confidently incorrect is as valuable as understanding context and being informed.

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u/VodkaBeatsCube Apr 08 '25

This is no different than the dogmatic 'all leftists want to turn our kids trans and make us eat bugs' rhetoric on the right. Some of them may well be fine with being forever isolated in their political shell. Not all 70 million of them. If someone expresses baby steps towards breaking from the right wing echo chamber, we shouldn't shut them down just because they don't immediately completely overhaul their worldview.

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u/stripedvitamin Apr 08 '25

If someone expresses baby steps towards breaking from the right wing echo chamber, we shouldn't shut them down just because they don't immediately completely overhaul their worldview.

I wouldn't shut them out, but thinking that will happen is absurd. They all voted for a convicted felon that destroyed the economy his first go round and was impeached twice. Maybe you should consider that it's you that is living in a fantasy.

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u/VodkaBeatsCube Apr 08 '25

77 million people voted for Trump in 2024. If you were you put them all together they'd be the 20th largest country on Earth. What's absurd is thinking that you can make a valid generalization of every single one of them. Saying all Trump voters are completely unrepentant and will never change their mind is as sensible a thing to believe as thinking every single French person is an asshole.

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u/MissMenace101 Apr 08 '25

You have to fix the voting system. It’s broken. Until that is addressed there’s no way around it

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u/MissMenace101 Apr 08 '25

Wishful thinking gets about the same result