Trump insists it's very normal for the winners of wars to pay billions to the losers
1d 17h ago by piefed.ca/u/ZeroCool in theonion@sh.itjust.works from www.thebeaverton.com
WASHINGTON D.C. - As details leak of the Iran-US peace plan, including a rumoured $300 billion reparations payment from the US to the Iranian regime, President Donald Trump was quick to reassure supporters that this by no means indicates that the US lost the war.
It seems they believe this is satire, but the US did support the rebuilding of Germany after World War II. In this case though, Trump is just a complete idiot, as usual.
We didn't pay it to hitler though.
Sure but the title of this article doesn't work if you know WW1s lack of nation building/stabilization caused Hitler in the first place.
In that sense, if we paid Hitler and other vets after WW1, he wouldn't have ended up homeless in a crashed economy and there wouldn't have been a Hitler/WW2 situation.
That's the big thing that the world learned. Then the US forgot and caused ISIS. So the title is still a fail. Americans need to remember this lesson more than anyone.
Hitler's experience being homeless in Vienna influenced his antisemitic views, but just to be clear, he was homeless prior to WWI.
After the war he was sent by his military superiors to spy on a German Workers party in 1919, and the leader of the party, Anton Drexler, ended up taking Hitler under his wing. Hitler eventually took over the movement that begun under Drexler, before turning it into the Nazi party. At one point, Hitler threatened to abandon the party unless Drexler handed over complete leadership.
Drexler remained a party member in name only, and seemed to basically serve as a propaganda tool to help retain pre-nazi membership. For some odd reason Hitler even ended up adopting Drexler's unique little mustache.
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/adolf-hitler
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Drexler#CITEREFEvans2003
So after WWI an already antisemitic Hitler with a reputation in the army as unfit to lead due to psychotic tendencies, felt strongly that Germany had been greatly betrayed. But so did the military superiors who first sent Hitler to spy on Drexler and the Workers party, before eventually ordering him to join the party's leadership when Drexler took an interest.
Despite his experience in Vienna homeless shelters influencing his antisemitic views, Hitler's superior, and head of German Intelligence's "Education and Propaganda Department," Karl Meyer, was allegedly the person who first instructed Hitler to write about those views.
As the Nazi party grew, it seems a bit unclear when (if?) Hitler's superiors stopped providing him with official commands/communications, but Meyer would later state that he had been instructed by General Erich Ludendorff to have Hitler join the workers party.
Ludendorff oversaw virtually all decisions regarding Germany's strategy and war effort until the country's defeat in 1918. Later during the years of the Weimar Republic, he took part in the failed 1920 Kapp Putsch and Adolf Hitler's 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, thereby contributing significantly to the Nazis' rise to power.
After the war, Ludendorff became a prominent nationalist leader and a promoter of the stab-in-the-back myth, which posited that Germany's defeat and the settlement reached at Versailles were the result of a treasonous conspiracy by Marxists, Freemasons and Jews. He also took part in the failed 1920 Kapp Putsch and 1923 Beer Hall Putsch before unsuccessfully standing in the 1925 election for president. Thereafter, he retired from politics and devoted his final years to the study of military theory. His most famous work in this field was The Total War, where he argued that a nation's entire physical and moral resources should remain forever poised for mobilization because peace was merely an interval in a never-ending chain of wars. Following his death from liver cancer in Munich in 1937, Ludendorff was given—against his explicit wishes—a state funeral organized and attended by Hitler.
TLDR: Is there a chance preventing a German economic crash also could have prevented a Hitler situation/WWII? That's difficult to say.
It might not have had prevented Hitler leading the Nazi party, but it probably would have prevented that much support in the population for it.
I agree the circumstances 100% led to the public support, but the war/power hungry military higher ups who picked Hitler for an oddly specific mission and helped launch his political career, raise two questions.
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Even if you could go back in time and prevent Hitler from being born/make him be a more talented artist, would the most powerful General of WWI have just found some other unstable loyalist for the mission?
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The General's view on war vs. peacetime, doesn't seem too dissimilar to the neoconservative views we see in modern America. The belief that the only real justification any war needs is America is #1, so if you have something we want, it's ours to take. Plus war is good for business.
I have to wonder how long the practice of manipulating public sentiment and even intentionally undermining economic circumstances has been accepted as an honorable military strategy. We're seeing it happen again now, and they're not even bothering to really disguise what they're doing.
Considering how embarrassed the General was following WWI, it almost reminds me of what many people believe were the actual causes of America's war in Iraq under George W. Bush. Vengeance for daddy. (Somewhat unrelated sidetrack. It's kind of a fascinating coincidence that Skull and Bones, the Ivy League secret society Bush Sr. and many other powerful neoconservatives belonged to, was created by an American who had been allowed to partake in the rituals of a German secret society while living abroad, and was inspired by their antidemocratic elitist legacy of a few chosen men destined to control the rest of society from the shadows).
Anyway, getting back to Hitler/Ludendorff (who coincidentally was born to a noble German bloodline): When General Ludendorff sent Hitler to infiltrate the Worker's party in 1919, or more specifically, when Ludendorff instructed the intelligence head of the "Education and Propaganda Department," to send Hitler, what was the purpose of the mission?
At first, Hitler was allegedly just sent to spy/be on the lookout for political agitators. But pretty soon he was joining and climbing his way to top leadership, while the head of the department of propaganda, helped him begin writing about economic anxiety and the antisemitic beliefs that had allegedly caused Germany's defeat in WWI. So what was Ludenhorff's end goal?
looks at present-day Germany
yeah... about that...
Capitalism is quite capable on its own of generating crises that radicalize people who can then be recruited for fascism by the rich to increase exploitation further.
Even if Germany had been supported, the Great Depression would still have happened. And like the US, UK, France, Spain, Netherlands, and many other "winners" and neutral parties in WW1, Germany would have had a thriving fascist movement.
Maybe Germany wouldn't have been the first nation to take fascism to the point of rabid invasion of white countries and make all the other white countries retroactively frame fascism as an unconscienable foreign enemy, but some nation would have been.
(This time the US seems the most likely bet. They have the bloated and quickly-getting-outdated military, the fascist wrecking the local economy, the establishment of a post-truth society, etc.)
The last two videos of this playlist seems to suggest that hyper inflation in Germany could have been avoided... and that's a lot of what fueled Hitler's rise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AM2pncU4rs&list=PLMUzeMKhbl10X-XzH-6q4iU0Ysul7cC4c&index=13
It's been said "Fascism is Capitalism's immune system".... Hitler used the "Jewish backstabbing" mythology because of the mass poverty. Hitler went after "degenerate culture" in Berlin because mass poverty caused all sorts of sex acts and drugs to be sold as part of the city's underbelly/gray market. According to the documentary below, whole families went into prostitution:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWqnnUeD6cw
I think it's playing it up a bit in that documentary, but I do believe a lot of this stuff related to mass poverty, caused by economic destruction, and a lack of care post WW1. I'm a believer in the theory that fascism is a product of failed economics, and political disenfranchisement. I meant, I might even argue that Donald Trump's first term came off the back of the 2008 financial crisis, and his more recent term came after COVID's economic disruptions.
I'm not disagreeing with about economic disruptions and how anxiety around those disruptions influenced public perception and support leading into WWII.
Just wondering how long powerful men in the military and government have been manipulating public perception.
Especially given the stab-in-the-back myth seemed to be Ludenhorff's excuse for Germany's failure under his military leadership following WWI.
You are assuming that the German populous would follow hitler equally and only hitler would be influenced by the changed economics. The lack of economic opportunity drove Germans towards the right and made Hitler message more appealing
I don't think the USA just forgot about it, ISIS was never a real issue, just a anther cause for endless proxy wars, it's a machine that works as intended.
"Nation building" after WWII wasn't free or benevolent at all (USA or USSR), the tactic was to control the nations instead of letting them regain full independence - as much as/in a form a post-British-empire world can allow imperialism.
(Israel was a form/consequence of this 'nation building' as well.)
Nation building = funding german rebuilding efforts so they don't go into hyper inflation again.
Not carving up captured territory. That's not national building.
One is more literally building a "nation" than the other. I was more pointing out that USA just occupied a territory & stayed there forever.
(You don't leave your military in a nation after the war is over. Sovereign nations don't allow that. Eg Mexico iirc.)
Both in their (USA) image.
You don’t leave your military in a nation after the war is over
Yes you do.
Sovereign nations don’t allow that.
The occupied usually surrender territorial control, and all the allied nations stayed in Germany for a number a years... hence the whole east west divide.
Anyways, I get to say what I meant by Nation Building in my comment. I don't know what you're on about. Are you trying to point out that the US is corrupt? Because buddy, that's already apparent to most people.
I was saying that after the nation building the military usually leaves, not stays for 70+ years.
And the Marshal Plan bought the US a tremendous amount of goodwill in Europe, however I don’t think Trump understands the concept of soft power, the way he keeps pissing it away.
The smartest person to have ever existed, Elron Musk, apparently doesn't either. He literally didn't know what USAID did while he was destroying it, motivated by that he wanted to end their investigation into the possible use of missing Starlink terminals by Russia. Members of his admin and maga dorks in general often say "why are we spending money on other countries and not at home??" They're incredibly unaware of how global politics works and generally of other countries at all. Well, not as if Republicans allow taxpayer dollars to be used to help citizens domestically anyway.
Well, not as if Republicans allow taxpayer dollars to be used to help citizens domestically anyway.
They actually do. For billionaire citizens.
One could argue that USA rebuilt a colony & had vast interest in the region (still has to this day, military personnel & nuclear weapons included). So at best a smart investment that paid for itself several times over.
True, and we're not getting that in Iran. Germany changed after the war and it does not seem like Iran will.
Yes, the Marshall Plan. Not only did it help Europe get back up, it was a genious move to project US values and soft power against the sovjet block.
Also, that money was repaid (Iran probably won't do that)
since trumps father, grandfather are both war dodgers from germany, i doubt he knows about it.
Question:
This man is known for not paying his debts. His entire life it has been fact.
What are the chances he thinks he can get away with not paying?
To be fair, it's not his money he'd be paying with this time.
He's quite happy to pay contractors with the taxpayer's dime
Especially when it means kick backs for him and his family
To the untrained eye, great success looks like a massive failure, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That's why they call it the "art" if the deal.
For real though, I'm sure geriatric Garfield and co. went into this knowing they would always find some way to fuck over everyone else and make a small fortune, no matter what the outcome.
He literally just built a gold plated ballroom and a UFC octagon in his backyard, and his lap doge just became the world's first trillionaire after breaking multiple laws and facing zero punishment, but we can't have cancer research or healthcare bc the national debt is unsustainable.
If I didn't know any better, I would think it's almost like Trump, Musk, and all the other hated public figures in this wrecking crew, were put together to do an unbelievably bad job, while failing upwards at the most inopportune times, in order to further destabilize the United States and the entire globe.
Hey. Don’t insult Garfield by linking him to Trump. Garfield was an intelligent (if hungry) cat!
UHM, NO??? It’s usually the losers who pay back the winners???????? For loss and damages of their own home country. It’s really funny how he thinks throwing money at the problem will solve any issues. Far as we know they still want his head.
Ate the onion?
FUCK thought it was the “not the onion” LMAO
I had to look twice. Fucked timeline.
New level achieved! The source, while not literally the onion, is still confusing people. That being said, I expect a lot of smelly breath in these comments.
I blame the onion for being too close to reality recently. They should adjust for to the absurdity inflation.
C'est le beaverton.
He ate the beaver.
Can we give it to them?
Well, US is the warmonger. They killed many people of all ages, destroyed houses and roads, together with Israel. Shouldn't such a country pay to try to compensate for all these wrongdoings ?
I feel like a lot of this satire stuff is starting to really push the boundary of just being misinforming or at least very confusing.
Yeah, yeah, I know you can say, well, that's reality's fault for being so close to satire. Or the fact that this is believable basically makes it just as good as being true.
But I don't know. I think the time for satire is kind of past. I'm not sure that it serves any good. It's not really funny. All it does is make me frustrated about situations that didn't even exactly actually happen. When I'm already frustrated about the real thing that the satire is based on, it doesn't provide any sort of catharsis. And there are definitely at least some people who get confused and misinformed by it.
“Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously, and the politicians as a joke, when it used to be vice versa.”
- Will Rogers in the 1920s
It's always been this way unfortunately...
Art and expression should not be policed. The onus of having media literacy is on the consumer and educators.
Giving someone's opinion on something isn't policing it. If you don't want people to give their opinion then dont present art to them.
I believe it's done a lot of damage to political discourse in general. It's normalized the "dunking on your opponent" shit to the point that people go for that stuff over actual logical discussion and this has allowed all these grifters to get their feet into the door of politics. I really don't think we'd have had Trump getting memed into the white house the first time if satirizing politics hadn't become so mainstream.
Seems kind of insane to put that all at the feet of satire
Well, the root of the problem is that most people are fucking morons who can't think critically. Satire isn't fully to blame but I think it pushed enough people into getting more politically involved to get him over the line. The "LOL Trump is owning the Libs" crowd probably wouldn't have voted so much if there wasn't a ton of memeing about it going on the internet. It also didn't help that the Dems ran Hillary against him.
HUNDREDS of billions of dollars.
$300,000,000,000 to be exact.
That's about $1000 a person
It's more than that for the people actually paying their taxes, the rich aren't paying their share and the very poor rightfully don't pay enough to cover it.
Don't forget the extra 25 billion for the cost of the weapons they launched at Iran
Trump insists it's very normal for the winners of wars to pay billions to the losers
Isn't this just the Marshall Plan?
The difference is, that money wasn't given to Hitler.
Whose Hitler in this case?
I didn't mean one person. But Germany got economic help only after the Nazi regime surrendered and a new country with a democratic constitution was founded in its place.
In Iran, the same regime is still in power. Some people at the top were killed, but replaced by others who are even more hard-line.
It's so depressing that I had to see this was posted by a satire website to know it wasn't something he actually said. I think Trump is trying to put satire news papers out of business by doing shit so insanely stupid, the satire sources sound more sane.
Omg that totally explains WWII! The evil winners of the great war paid (force fed!) so much monies to Germany they directly caused hyperinflation of Deutsche Mark in the 20s which had catastrophic effects on the international art community.
Stay safe, buy NFTs from the local loser/influencer/president, just in case.
Just make sure you pull out (like daddy drumpf shoulda) before the obvious rugpull to come.
It'll be interesting to see how well thr hyper-reality simulacrum conservatives maintain holds up to this defeat.
It's like all those legal cases he's always winning and having to pay out on.
And the rest of the world insists he started the war as a deflection from his organized pedophilia cabal. He then lost the war, made a worse deal than Obama, and the "Trump/Epstein" issue is still alive and well. What a huge, colossal waste.
how much did we get when we lost Vietnam and Korea?
According to the Martial Planning the cuck payment, for the lack of a better word, is good.