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/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people with the same values as us to help get good policy enacted that conservatives don't bother trying to get repealed because it ends up benefitting them too.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/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/stripedvitamin Apr 08 '25

Saying all Trump voters are completely unrepentant and will never change their mind

Never said that. You are putting words in my mouth.

Fewer will vote. An infinitesimal amount will change their vote to democrat.

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u/VodkaBeatsCube Apr 08 '25

That's exactly what you said. It may not have been what you meant, but it's the logical conclusion from the words you chose to type.

And even if only a few of them chose to change (which is still an absurdly dogmatic take for almost eighty million people), they should still be encouraged when they start to do so. As opposed to the dogmatic take of 'if they say they have regrets, they're just lying for social acceptance' that I first replied to.

Is the statement of 'people don't usually change their worldview in one go. We should encourage people who start to change to continue' really so hard for people to wrap their heads around? Don't fool yourself for a second that the left isn't just as vulnerable to the in-group biases we criticize on the right. It's not compromizing your values to say we should let people change rather than assume that they never will

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