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It’s not just Europeans who are beginning to realize that the U.S. can’t be trusted; Australians are still waiting for a hypothetical delivery date for their AUKUS submarines.

The Gulf states find themselves with too few interceptor missiles and a war in Iran.

The Japanese and Koreans are building as many war ships as they can.

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I don't understand why US weapons manufactures are not lobbying harder. They are losing the European market just as the largest rearmament since ww2 happens.

Maybe they are and its just a lost cause with the US administration.

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> I don't understand why US weapons manufactures are not lobbying harder

It doesn’t really matter if your product is better or cheaper, if the customer thinks that service and spare parts might possibly be withdrawn in the future for political (or whatever) reasons they won’t buy your product.

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That is what they need the political lobbying for. Obviously not to help their pricing.
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If you mean they need to lobby the US government to be less schizophrenic, I agree. Though I suspect the government would just decide to start more wars.

If you mean they need to lobby the other governments, I don't think that'll work, the decreasing trust is associated with the US government's actions, not as related to the arms dealers' actions.

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So they need lobbying to lie to customers? Why would that help people choose Boeing when it ultimately is up the whims of one single individual that can drastically change moods every four years?

There is a reason why imperialism ultimately always fails.

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No. You do understand how lobbying works right? You don't lobby your customers, you lobby that single individual. Which has never been easier as the current one takes bribes almost directly and has no true opinions.
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They're very scared of their boss and the CEOs are short sighted by virtue of their compensation packages.
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You can’t lobby the Trump or “America First” crowd to not be themselves.
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You have to understand that the smartest people in the US didn’t vote for this administration and are just as horrified as everyone else with how inept and pathetic this administration is. Unfortunately we’re a minority, the senate’s design (Wyoming has the same number of senators as California even though a small city in CA may have more people than the whole state) and the US is so ridiculously gerrymandered.

Sorry everybody but we just have to wait this stupidity out.

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This stupidity is not going to simply be waited out. It is becoming even further entrenched.
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There are a lot of issues in the American political system but the structure of the Senate is not one of those.

It was explicitly created as a way to balance sovereignty of the states against populism, such as that enacted by MAGA or leftists.

If you are a small state like Vermont, you don’t want to just have California, New York, and Texas dictating all rules and laws for the country by sheer weight of their population sizes. That is expressed in the House, but the Senate serves to balance that and ensure that populists don’t run roughshod over the country.

Without such a structure states with less population would either band together and create their own super states - and you can see where this leads, or they wouldn’t have agreed to join the US in the first place.

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> That is expressed in the House, but the Senate serves to balance that and ensure that populists don’t run roughshod over the country.

Yet that is exactly what has been happening twice now.

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Well, dissolving the Senate would just make that problem even worse if that's your viewpoint. "Twice now" seems to be a dig at Trump as though MAGA is the only populist movement, but ANTIFA/BLM and other, similar populist groups have taken hold of power in various forms as well, primarily in certain west coast states and cities.
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Yes, if anything the issue is that the House was capped in seats in 1929 and the population has tripled. Smaller states have an outsized representation in Congress currently.
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I'm strongly in favor of expanding the House. I failed to mention that in my original post.
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This might have made sense for the original 13 colonies but after westward expansion, it clearly does not. Most of the western state borders were formed for administrative reasons
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It still makes sense today. It's not perfect but it's a pretty good balance most of the time.
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> Sorry everybody but we just have to wait this stupidity out.

And the rest of the world has to suffer the consequences. It has been incredible watching americans shrugging off any responsibility.

Insufferable hypocrites.

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> the smartest people in the US didn’t vote for this administration

Trump has support from SV and Wall Street leaders, and the whole Republican Party.

> gerrymandered

Trump won the popular vote, and iirc the GOP got more total votes for the House of Representatives. What about for the Senate? Sure NY and CA are big, but so are FL and TX.

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