Foni

I’m not against professional politicians—there are things they handle and defend better than "amateurs." What I’m against is dishonest politicians, and he’s shown himself to be one, by far.

You can agree with his policies, measures, and ideas—whatever they may be—but if a politician is dishonest, they’ll always end up betraying you for their own interests.

Until now, it was mandatory to spend 2%, and almost no country met that goal. Now it’s going up to 5%, and it’ll be followed just as strictly as before. On top of that, the deadline is set for 2029—by then, Trump will either be out of office in the U.S., or he’ll have damaged their democracy so badly that it’ll be impossible not to call him a dictator. In any case, by then the game will have changed enough that a renegotiation will be inevitable.

As a Spaniard, I can tell you that our president’s tantrum has more to do with trying to project strength at home—at a time of serious corruption scandals—than with any confrontation that might actually achieve something.

The rest of the world: oh my god

I think any European politician who said anything remotely close to this would see their careers instantly over. How is it possible that saying something like this doesn't cost them votes in the US?

Land of the free

Again, I'm European so I can't be sure about this, but I think some of those issues are worse because of the scale, not the thing itself. The entire healthcare system is private—if all prisons were too, I think that would be much worse than the healthcare situation.

As for politicians, up until this election cycle, they at least had the decency to pretend. From now on, we'll see what happens.

In the Southeast of America a judge was fairly recently convicted of sending underage boys to a private prison in exchange for kickbacks from that prison. He had been doing it for over a decade. And that’s just one that made the news.

It is obvious that something like this would happen. You cannot create a system with perverse incentives and expect the good faith of those who participate to keep it clean. It is exactly the opposite of the spirit of the American revolution (and the rest of democratic revolutions)

As a European, I wonder what kind of dystopia the concept of a "private prison" fits into. I don't understand how anyone could have imagined that this would end well.

Not always. I'm from Spain, and you can read about how our dictator Francisco Franco ended his life (spoiler alert: his regime lasted from 1939 to 1977).

Unfortunately, the real world is not like a movie where wars are always won by those who defend the most just cause.

I would like to leave this here as a warning, because it seems relevant to me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire

Could someone explain it like I'm 5 years old?

By overcompensating for the past, Germany is siding with the genocidaires. And the problem is that it's dragging the Union down, preventing a joint response.