For anyone who like me was unaware why Trump all of a sudden cares about Greenland and Panama

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Honestly I think the "Trump as an agent of Russia" take is an extremely uninformed take on geopolitics. Trump is an agent of the U.S. empire. That's why he supports all the U.S. fascist militarism, xenophobia, giveaways to arms manufacturers, oil/gas/etc. companies, giveaways to Wall Street, all of that. Russia is a whole separate power structure whose interests are largely opposed to those of the U.S. empire. So where does that leave you? It seems this is meant more for Democrat ingestion and boogeymanism/scapegoating to detract attention away from the actual workings of the system here.
- Ooh, this is interesting.
  I've talked before about how I have a working theory about how when the top comments section looks "wrong," some of the propaganda accounts will make new top-level comments and top-level replies, in a sudden flurry of activity to a previously pretty dormant comments section, until it looks "right" again and the conversation they're trying to downplay, in this case suprh_ninja getting ridiculed for being transparent propaganda, is shifted to way down the page.
  That might sound like some tinfoil hat stuff except for how low-effort and bizarre this comment is. Trump was proven after extensive investigation to be an agent of Russia. He's pretty open about it. He is actively hostile to the US empire, both the good and bad parts, although he is also aligned with a lot of domestic fascist elements. Are you saying Trump is happy about spending $60 billion dollars on aid for Ukraine, because it's part of "all the giveaways to arms manufacturers"?
  
  He's "actively hostile" to the U.S. empire? Show me where he decreased its budget:
  
  It's ridiculous to just start throwing around "propaganda" accusations at any random user you disagree with. Evidence first, smears later.
  What "extensive investigation"? What is the specific evidence that was shown to the public, and what does it establish?
  Trump is a war criminal and a fascist, focus on what you can actually prove that he's done wrong, so you're not chasing red herrings that validate him to his supporters when you can't prove them.
  
  And now there are three more top-level comments.
  Timestamps of all the top-level comments on this post:
  Original post, Jan 8 6:38 PM
  Flurry of new-post replies, ending with:
  Jan 8, 7:43 PM
  Jan 8, 8:55 PM
  Jan 8, 9:02 PM (last comment before things die down)
  Jan 9, 9:51 AM
  Jan 9, 10:14 AM (this is surph_ninja's comment with a massive replies section which over the last couple of hours started going poorly for him)
  Jan 9, 12:52 PM
  Jan 9, 12:43 PM
  Jan 9, 1:00 PM
  Jan 9, 1:13 PM
  Jan 9, 1:18 PM
  Why just now did it become active again, and all with top-level replies, not people responding to anything in the conversation below?
  This is actually the first time I've seen some real confirmation for my theory about specific activity to bury conversations that people don't want to have at the top of the comments. Before this, it was just a feeling, but this seems pretty hard to explain any other way.
  
  real confirmation
  Sure about that one kiddo?
  
  ^ Beware of confirmation bias.
  
  Dude figured out how the ‘Hot’ sorting algorithm works, and thinks he’s uncovered a conspiracy. LoL.
  
  That's actually, in all seriousness, a really good point. I think it's "Active" that works that way, not "Hot," but I get your point. It still doesn't explain why they're all top-level comments, or why there was a sudden rush of new ones all with similar totally bizarre lazy takes, like "Trump loves expanding the US empire and doing the bidding of the US foreign-policy establishment."
  
  It's so cool watching conspiratorial thinking consume every level of society.
  The russians are highly invested in swaying the tens of people on lemmy, theyre watching this post like a hawk.
  
  To be fair, there’s definitely astroturf and propaganda accounts/bots on here. They don’t set those propaganda budgets up for nothing.
  But accusing every single criticism of US foreign policy of being a foreign bot just makes me think that account is a domestic bot. Or a deeply propagandized individual.
  
  I believe Russia has influence operations for purposes of making US divisive, fanning both neo-nazi/hatred, and victim attention/reaction against right wing hate. You can consider Russian influence assistance to the GOP agenda of pillaging America, but there is no debt/subservience to Russia by US politicians, and GOP messaging would not differ in the slightest. It just gains volume. Russia DGAFs about Canada, Greenland, Panama changes.
  There should be a reaction from "allies"/world to pivot to much lesser evil Russia/China from new US warmongering freedom, but even Biden's war on Russia was simply a perpetual weapons and oil profits scheme meant to subjugate Europe. That Trump offers bigger military budget and harsher terms for EU existence is just a continuation of simps who promise to be simps under all circumstances being punished more harshly for their alliance.
- An empire builder would work with existing alliances, surely, rather than weakening them all systematically, threatening the allies, and undermining their governments until only the USA's enemies remain strong, while simultaneously implementing policies that damage the USA's own economy.
  
  Empires are generally more about having puppet states - subsidiaries - then "allies" that they're on equal footing with. It's tempting to think of things in terms of countries being allies, since that's how we're used to thinking of the organization of the world, but economically - i.e., in terms of the bulk of how power is exercised - those boundaries are more like minor obstacles than defining features. I say "U.S. empire", the U.S. is the seat, but states like the UK, Germany, and so on ad infinitum, are just under the same command structure. One "country", the government and related machinery, undermining another, that looks more like a power struggle inside a corporation.
  I'd also point out that Russia doesn't have this kind of influence compared to the West. At all. The U.S. has over ten times the GDP of Russia. You factor in the other OECD countries, we're talking 20-30 times as much. That's one economic bloc. You throw in the other BRIC countries on the other side, it starts looking a little more balanced, but still not even close.

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