“I told them [Ukraine] that I want the equivalent like $500B worth of rare earth. And they’ve essentially agreed to do that so at least we don’t feel stupid,” Trump said.
“Otherwise, we’re stupid. I said to them we have to — ‘we have to get something. We can’t continue to pay this money,’” he added.
“The Americans helped the most, and therefore the Americans should earn the most,” Zelenskyy said Friday in an interview with Reuters.
I’ve been thinking about this lately.
Trump being so open about imperialism will make it easier to convince people that the US war machine is about profits, but it also makes it easier to convince them that imperialism is necessary to maintain their economic privilege. It’s easier for people to be against something bad when they don’t think they’re getting any benefit from it.
I don’t think those minerals will benefit anyone but the ruling class, but your average American could be easily convinced they will.
Yea, although there are still people who think this is just unique to Trump and the democrats/Biden were the good guys using diplomacy rather than force and blackmail
I’ve thought about this explicitness being easier to identify too.
However, you make a good point that libs will just act like it’s a specifically Trumpian evil. I also remember that no one pays attention to anything and if they do hear about something then they just generally dismiss it in some form or another, so I don’t know if previously unaware people will be any differently disposed at all.