Agent 00Soul

Surely we are doing the exact same thing to Russia and China. I hope so anyway.

I think the majority of average MAGA people would agree with you. The problem with this idealism on their part is that a) it's not really possible in the modern world (and wasn't in 1939 or 1914 either) as much as they wish it could be, and b) Trump and the other people in charge of this don’t really want it no matter what they might say. They want to dominate on their terms. They want to have their cake and eat it. They are Cakeists, to paraphrase their erstwhile friend.

I thought that was a much-needed editorial, thanks for sharing. I know you were referring to the 7th paragraph in particular, but the authors didn’t go deeper into the bifurcation of the West. The struggle between rule-of-law vs populism isn’t in and of itself international. Governments change all the time. That’s just the result of internal splits on worldview: Democrats vs Republicans, Reform vs Labour, LePen vs Macron, AfD vs everyone else etc. Until those national conflicts are settled, the international world will remain unsettled.

For whatever reason, the UK press isn’t covering this as much as the Zelensky/tariff/foreign policy stuff but most of Trump’s energies have been actually spent altering the US internally. Almost all my friends and family are convinced this is the end of the US as we have known it. But the progressives see it as the coming of a theocratic kleptocracy and the conservatives see it as the end of government waste/regulation and the end of foreign wars used to prop up useless regimes that are always lost and ultimately meaningless for the US outside of wasted money and a massive body count on all sides (Vietnam/Afghanistan/both Gulf Wars). I know more progressives than conservatives and they are in full panic mode. They have no idea what they are going to do in a new MAGA world or what their place will be in the future. Nothing ever prepared them for this. Obviously my conservative relatives and contacts are more serene and have adopted a “once all this shakes out, things will be better for all of us you’ll see,” attitude.

What about Europe (the non-USSR bits, including all Western European countries)? Seems to me they could be a fourth bloc. The EU has been talking about itself and its mission like it was Star Trek's utopian United Federation of Planets for years. Let's see it, or whatever replaces it, put its money, and it has lots, where its mouth is. And don't forget about the Global South. China already has Africa, but that's just one continent out of a vast region under this unbrella description.

Free speech is also pro-misogyny in some Tampa Bay circles. Even DeSantis drew the line under this one, not that he can do anything. https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/tampa-bay-young-republicans-welcomes-andrew-tate-with-open-arms-22569661

Why do US Republicans and the European public always manage to trigger one another so quickly? It's like chalk and cheese. I've noticed it since Reagan, but especially in the 21st century, there always seems to be this big contretemps when a Republican president enters the White House.

Donald Tusk, the Polish PM, said it well this morning: “A Europe that understands its global potential, its status as a superpower, will not be an alternative to the US, but the most wanted ally. In the end, that’s what Trump wants, for Europe to take much greater responsibility for its security,” he said. “It’s a paradox, someone rightly pointed this out, that 500 million Europeans are asking 300 million Americans to defend them from 140 millions Russians.” He was too diplomatic to say that one of the American political parties representing almost half the US population no longer shares the supposed values of most European countries anyway, but it’s the truth of course.

I know you are talking about Putin, but in so many ways this could be about Trump too with only a few things changed.

No offense taken. And I think a huge proportion of Americans do just that - it's why there is always some escalating kerfuffle whenever a Republican becomes president. I'm literally a mid-Atlantic guy: I've had one foot in Europe and North America for 30 years before I gave up on the USA and moved here full time, but even I used to come home to NYC from visits to Munich (where my best friend from Sussex Uni lives) long before Trump and be seething at how much higher the standard of living was there. I definitely felt Germany should be relying less on the US and paying more of their military for example - they could sure afford it. Part of that was jealously, but still.

That's the dark side of democracy I suppose. The kind that makes Chinese politicos chuckle. Trump won the popular vote fair and square, but it was hardly a landslide. A little over a single percentage point I think. Presidential elections tend to be close, but that was really close. (Winning all swing states and a historic high of Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters was a genuine triumph for him though.). Either way, I think it's smaller than the victorious leave vote in Brexit. Even in Congress, the GOP has a majority of 3 in both the House and the Senate. Again, that's all it takes, but it is hardly representative of some kind of monolithic consensus - quite the opposite actually. BBC - How Big Was Donald Trump's Victory

Although to be 100% fair, Truss wasn't elected by the public, she was elected internally by the Tories to be head of the party and thus PM. But I get the sentiment.

Agreed. The problem will be a few specific bases like Ramstein which is crucial to US supply lines. I honestly don't know what would happen if Germany asked them to close it up and leave.

That's an odd thing to write. Well, I grew up in the US and am a citizen so feel free to ask me. I can answer for 1/346.649,379th of us.

"The piece of talking garbage asking Zelensky if he 'owns a suit' is congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend. This guy willingly has sex with MTG and he has the nerve to make fun of Zelensky? And his suit looks like an IKEA couch cover. I am surprised Vance isn't humping his leg right now. Did you also see secretary of state Marco Rubio during all this? He looks like he wishes he was never born." - from an American friend's Facebook post

Zelensky probably has become battle-hardened after all this time to not mind arguing with those two; they must seem like kids to him by this point. Everyone in the room also knew that if he did lose his temper and raise a hand to Trump or Vance, then the secret service would have gone full Bonnie & Clyde on him. Putin would have loved it, most everyone else not so much.

I guess the war will continue then? Just with no more American money or weapons. Europe is rich enough to pick up the slack with the money. Not sure about the weapons.

I was discussing this very thing with my usually reliably leftie neighbour and she basically shrugged her shoulders and said aid didn't stop 7/7 or 911. Again, not the reaction I was expecting.

In what way did the EU negotiators pull one over on the UK?

Why is there this assumption that UK negotiators are bad and are always going to accept a bad deal. On one hand, there is this stereotype about how uneducated and short-sighted people in the US are. On the other hand, whenever there is talk of UK-US trade negotiations, there seems to be the view that the UK negotiators are pliant and going to be fooled by the wily Americans. It was the same post-Brexit. I remember people in the Guardian writing about how the EU negotiators would outfox the UK ones easily.

That might help shore up the 18-30 male voters who swung their votes for Trump by a massive 56%. Women the same age were still 40%, which is kind of wild when you think about it. The thing that shows how out of touch I am as a 56 year old was how mainstream the Tates and their cohort are for people of a certain age: my 20 year old female intern, for example, didn't share their politics but still watched them and people like them from time to time. She also watched Loose Women when she was home. It's all just programming to her and her fellow teens and under-25s it seems. I was surprised, but Trump seems to get it somehow.

And that is already being considered a legit source of info by people, especially, it seems, schoolkids

It's funny you mentioned this. It can also be the unintended consequences of tech. I am a subscriber to a history newsletter and they literally just sent their email out a few minutes ago and discussed ChatGPT: "I recently came across a post (on Facebook? I couldn’t find it again just now), where a teacher was lamenting about a student who’d argued some pretty radical ideas in a paper but hadn’t cited any sources. (And by radical, I mean totally untrue.) The teacher wasn’t immediately convinced that the student had made things up or plagiarized anything, merely that she needed some secondary sources for verification. So, the student and teacher sat down together to search for the information he’d included in the paper. Instead of going to Google, the student went straight to ChatGPT, where—lo and behold—the A.I. chatbot regurgitated that same falsehoods the student had put in his paper. When the teacher tried to gently point out that these “facts” were not, in fact, facts, the student refused to believe her. Who was she, a fallible human, to argue that ChatGPT—privy to the entire sum of human knowledge—would be lying? But ChatGPT lies so much that there’s even a name for it—hallucinating...Here’s the thing about generative A.I.—it doesn’t want to do research; as the name suggests, it wants to generate something. ”

It pissed off his Evangelical supporters, who didn't hesitate to tell him so on Truth Social. Guardian - Gaza video backlash

It feels like it’s usually Republican presidents that have these giant ruptures with Europe. Dem presidents have squabbles but it never seems to get as bad as with the Trump/Bush Jr/Cheney/Vances of the world. I’m not totally sure why this is but I do know they wear it like a badge of honour and use it as an example of Democrats being weak and effeminate. The funny thing is that it’s always the GOP who go on about protecting European heritage and Judeo-Christian/Western values. Pete Hegseth even has a crusaders tattoo. https://www.timesofisrael.com/trumps-nominee-to-lead-pentagon-has-multiple-christian-and-crusader-inspired-tattoos/ I wonder if they see things like the EU as the “wrong” kind of Europe and they want to starve the beast or something.