Does anyone in power anywhere actually think China has finally overtaken the US hegemony? Or are we pretending someone else might somehow hold that position?
Nobody appointed the US leader of the world, what are you talking about? It's just a matter of "whoever is most powerful and influential". There's no war needed, and the US never conquered the planet.
I'm not doubting that China is the likely eventual successor, I'm doubting that they can succeed anything at this particular point in time. Nobody wants China in charge. It would make any issues experienced with the US in charge like a joke. Maybe once their dictator dies?
China has historically been the most powerful nation in the world multiple times, but always remained relatively inward looking, while acting as more of a merchant towards the rest of the world. I don't see any reason to think that will substantially change. So the most likely scenario is we end up, and arguably are already in, a truly multipolar world where no individual nation is the hegemon.
China is currently trying to take control of the whole South China Sea. They’re in a cold war with the Philippines and Vietnam.
Next it will go for Taiwan.
Then either Siberian or Indian territory with the same “these used to be ours” justifications.
At the same time I think will use shadow fleets to take as much fish stocks from around the world as it can.
Not acting yet is not the same as not being expansionist. With all that “we’ll smash your head on the concrete” rhetoric China’s wolf warriors are very clear on where they’re headed.
Everyone is just gonna stop trying to acquire influence for some reason...? Or do you just think that, for some reason, this would now magically balance itself out any time any world leader thinks "wow that's a huge vacuum that needs filling!"
Empires expand when the benefit exceeds the cost. The US is currently doing quite poorly against Iran. The US military is not incompetent, nor is the Iranian army supercompetent, so why? It's technology. The traditional way the US invaded countries was by assassinating the leadership, gaining air superiority, and then basically playing shoot fish in a barrel.
Iran, and likely all major US adversaries now, were/are fully prepared for the US assassinations. And gaining full air superiority is no longer possible in the era of drones, because you're no longer shooting down a small number of high value targets (like planes), but instead a practically infinite amount of low value targets that can be readily replenished.
Spending interceptors that cost millions of dollars to shoot down drones that cost thousands of dollars just doesn't work. We might be able to obtain air superiority in terms of e.g. Iran being unable to fly fighter jets over their own country, but that says nothing about their ability to launch endless drones and otherwise inflict a severe toll on any invading army.
So it's likely that modern war has mostly gone back to times long since past where the bottleneck is no longer cost in $$, but cost in lives. And that makes militarism far less attractive for every single country, even moreso in the era of plummeting fertility rates when the people who are going to be killed are precisely those who are supposed to be birthing and raising your next generation.
So there will certainly be wars when nations see the benefit as being especially high, but I think the idea of trying to casually 'project strength' half way around the globe is probably already dead. The cost is too high, and the benefit too low.
It does not, because it imposes extrinsic constraints on what is possible. Iran is imposing a severe cost on the US. It doesn't matter what the US wants to do. When such a relatively minor power is able to extract such a high price, it limits what we can do. Ukraine was probably a big mistake, because it's the first time in modern history that the US got involved in a relatively large scale conflict against a peer level power. That severely damaged the perception of Western weaponry, training, and technology as being superhuman in capability. The US was obviously banking on Iran not counter-attacking out of fear, and that might have indeed been the outcome prior to Ukraine.
What little rational justification for Iran there was, probably rested in some part on trying to undo the perceptual damage to the US military tech by scoring a quick victory over a minor power. But the catastrophe that has unfolded there has essentially nailed the coffin shut on any concept of military superiority, let alone dominance. This doesn't mean that the US will just completely surrender Taiwan or whatever, but rather that it's clear to every single world power that such claims of protection are now just empty rhetoric. And that's almost certainly going to be acknowledged frankly between nations in private discussions going forward.
Those intrinsic costs are still muddled within digital payment systems which represent nothing tangible. You can take loans out from world banks, you can run your country into slavery, or you can do a million other things you want which are irrational but still overcome these nonexistent constraints. Do you think the US is printing out a dollar for every single bill they pay? Do you not understand that the US is currently trillions of dollars in debt? Do you not see how constraints are, at best, suggestions enforced only when the majority agrees something is not worth profiting off of?
What do you mean it doesn't matter what the US wants to do? The US doesn't want to go into another war. One man at the top forcing his army against their will and advice to do something is simply obedience, not a sign of what a country wants anyways.
Nobody wants this in the US, and it's why even traditionally extremely neutral outlets like Reuters and AP News are willing to state that Trump is currently deeply unpopular with Republicans.
Pay attention, and let go of your strawmen, I beg of you.
You're not seeing the big picture. The US is losing in Iran. How can that change? It would require a ground invasion. The losses there would easily be in the tens of thousands, and very likely order(s) of magnitude higher. And at the end, it's reasonably doubtful that even that would be successful.
So on the cost the constraint is not just in dollars, but blood. Although even in dollars - I'd also observe another issue. Inflation and money printing is making money increasingly meaningless, but 'things' are not. You can fart a quadrillion dollars into existence, but you can't fart a trillion artillery shells into existence. During WW2 certain metals became so scarce that we started making nickels out of silver and pennies out of steel to have more copper and nickel for war purposes.
The US is already blowing through massive resources against Iran, and we'd likely need orders of magnitude more for a ground war. These sort of resources simply do not exist, and arguably cannot exist. The defender has always had an easier time in war, but drones have bumped up this power by orders of magnitude. Decentralize your drone production, organize your military to prepare for assassinations, ensure significant decentralized under-ground logistics and production facilities, and you're basically good to go.
I don't really understand what you think I'm straw manning. We're disagreeing while agreeing in a way that's slightly bemusing to me.
Oh I see. Well these do seem like end times for US democracy, very similar to the fall of Rome. So yes the problems are broader than Trump and probably won’t end with him, but he is the most dangerous character so far and I’m entirely unsurprised that other countries are disengaging
As we’ve seen from the violated norms so far and the attack on the capital building, it would not be a big step to dictatorship disguised as firm leadership in time of war or civil disturbance.
He’s just one part of the explanation, it’s also all the people who are behind him. He’s mostly a front nowadays. If Trump is gone, things wouldn’t be better with Vance taking his place
It’s the voters that put him back. You could say it was an aberration the first time but the second? Americans are too stupid and selfish to be trusted with the immense power they were given.
“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.”
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
Education, healthy media environment, healthy culture of understanding and respect. Exactly everything the conservatives have been pushing against since decades
He's the center of gravity who's enabling the decline at the moment. It's a rare case where doing the thing would probably result in less instability instead of more.
Consider that trust still declined so much more under the current government. How do you explain that?
No matter who did Nordstream and why, there are rational reasons that explain why the different parties might have done it. Even when you've been negatively affected, you can still somewhat understand it.
This is no longer the case under Trump 2. Since this term started, every day begins by checking what random decisions the US made to screw you over today. Treaties and agreements are torn up on a whim, and they can't even come up with halfway sensible explanations hold up to any scrutiny.
The only common denominator the world can see is the senseless cruelty being gleefully inflicted by the senile pedophile leader and his deeply brainwashed followers. The hatred spread by the US is taking root, and they will be reaping it for an entire generation if things go on.
The only difference between Trump and previous US presidents is Trump isn't concerned with facade, so it's pretty obvious to everyone in the USA and outside of it what kind of country it is and how trustworthy it is.
As someone who survived brutal attacks of American bombers during the time of some of the most beloved democratic presidents, I find Trump much better. At least he doesn't even pretend he's a good guy.
Sorry, but I can't take anyone seriously who just brushes off all the batshit insane moves Trump has been making. No, previous US presidents didn't turn the US into a fascist hellhole.
Previous presidents bombed my country. Trump didn't.
If we measure US president quality by the number of people the US directly or indirectly killed, Trump is still one of the better in our lives, despite the latest attack on Iran.
You're not "measuring" anything, you're just moving goal posts to things that do nothing to refute what your "measurement" is supposed to be a reply to.
IMO it's obvious that such numbers can only be judged long after the respective government/presidential term has ended, since the effects of their actions obviously reach much further than their last active day due to the changes caused for laws, government institutions and the overton window. Because of this I would point out the many ways he deliberately deepened the political divide both locally and globally, how his government explicitly re-orients their society and institutions towards war, how he and how him fucking up the world economy AND their own ensures that the oncoming climate catastrophes will turn violent much sooner and likely become much worse due to desperation and isolationism. And I'd point out that his destruction of the US government along with establishing a para-military force basically guarantees that the far more aggressive political side will keep control over the world's biggest military as their country circles the drain.
I'm not interested in discussing whether or not only deaths during a given presidents term should be counted, so unless you're willing to discuss under that presumption we won't find common ground.
I’d be really interested to see all European countries & Canada dump their US bonds en mass if trump does anything untoward in Greenland, Canada or elsewhere.
As an American trying to retain my sanity in this country, I have to tell myself that such things are just trollish nonsense from the ultimate reality television troll. It is comforting to me that 50% of what he says is bluster and the other 50% is pure fabrication. I think we have developed some resistance to it where, like, a few years ago we would say "OH MY GOD! HE CAN'T POSSIBLY BE THREATENING CANADA!" and now we're just like, "there goes crazy old man again, don't worry, he just shit his pants on the golf course".
Not saying it's right or sound that he's the elected leader of the country or that our politics is so warped... I mean, I blame it on being on the losing end of the most rigorously fought information war in history.
But I believe you can relax, because this is all nonsense.
FWIW, the American people can't even support a war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has been blowing up our soldiers for decades. Hard to imagine they'd show much support for invading an ally.
> But I believe you can relax, because this is all nonsense.
Sorry, but no.
Even if there are no kinetic attacks towards allies right now, the "crazy old man" is causing real harm. Harm to global stability and the world order, economies, to businesses and individuals, to long term initiatives such as research and healthcare.
But most importantly, real harm to the trust between ourselves. Western allies can no longer trust the USA, it is broken, we no longer have the same values.
The first time in 2016 we forgave, everyone makes mistake and Europe is certainly not free of them. But the American people chose to elect him twice with full knowledge, now everyone suffers.
So the rest of the world forges its own path now.
America's military, economic and cultural hegemony will decline. Not tomorrow, maybe not even quickly, but inevitably. Godspeed !
Which is it... Godspeed the decline, or you hope it doesn't?
I think it's a tragedy that America elected him twice, and it has already led to chaos among our allies and irreparable harm to the postwar order in which America was the seat of empire after Britain. I think that [the populist brain virus which took hold of America, in 2016 and particularly after covid] was done intentionally by Russia and China who are enemies of America. Is the loss of that order what you are bemoaning?
We are also a country that established itself from European colonies. Every time Argentina or Brazil or Chile or Venezuela or Colombia go through spasms of communist or fascist takeover, Europe takes that as an unsurprising fact, and the bankers keep doing business with them. There is something much more frightening about America reaching some polar political extreme, and it's not simply nuclear weapons (because several very extreme dictatorships have those).
What is scary about it is the same thing that's scary about the AfD in Germany... the idea that we are losing the generational knowledge we built to safeguard some of the world against savagery. In order to believe this, you must also believe that Germany and the US are not already, inherently savage and that some of the order brought by NATO and the postwar order has been a good thing, even up to and including the Cold War.
Then, we can define what is worth saving about America and why it matters.
> What is scary about it is the same thing that's scary about the AfD in Germany...
Without downplaying or excusing the US' problems, I hope everyone in other countries thinking "that can't happen here" realize that's what most Americans thought just a decade ago too.
Turn that disgust with the disease into preventative treatment.
Frankly, the government that America has right now is nowhere near as extreme as AfD. I wouldn't be surprised or sorry if the next President of the US sanctioned goods out of Saxony. But we have both types of populism here. Both of them incredibly stupid. Our true war is against the foreign social/mainstream media saturation which is pushing our population away from reading and away from analytical thought, manipulating them into the arms of either type of extremism, for the benefit of the autocracies who want to cause us to fight amongst ourselves. Trump is just one manifestation of that. "It can't happen here" relates to a particular sort of fascist or authoritarian takeover of society, and I still think it can't in America. Trump's approval rating is under 35%. I live in Oregon, the most progressive state in the country, and spent 2 hours on the phone today buying insurance from a guy in Georgia who got excited talking about what guns I owned (and what he owned). I think the idea of a hard takeover in America by the far right is ...bullshit. And I even wrote a novel about it happening 20 years ago. But the rest of the world can't keep going through the vicissitudes of America's increasing whiplash at being manipulated and dumbed down this way. What has to change is something in the American mind before it allows its empire to collapse.
While I personally believe a lot of America is worth saving, it is not up to us, and the arcs of history take many decades to play out.
As Brexit has shown, even when sanity returns, the previous reality does not.
So it is not that we wish the USA ill, or harm, quite the contrary - we did not ask for this. But we have clearly understood the message and we are focused on our own future now.
Previous reality probably won't return... although you never know. I think a lot of the world would breathe a sigh of relief and get back to normal under a more rational American leadership. Unlike Brexit, we haven't literally burned our bridges.
I think it's important to understand that there's a difference between American right wing populism and the British form. Brexit was a self inflicted wound whose harm was almost entirely limited to Britain. If anything, it shored up some European resolve against the anti-EU parties for a time.
On the contrary, if the isolationist wing of Trump's party had its way, American withdrawal from the world would have a far worse impact on the stability of European politics and concrete strategic defense.
I'm a 2nd generation American ... my family is Polish and Ukrainian. I had / have the option to reclaim citizenship elsewhere, both in and out of the EU. I've lived in France and Spain, Czechia and Argentina, and in 15 countries in total since 2004. I didn't choose to be born in America but I also can't imagine a world where it doesn't retain military and financial supremacy. The vacuum would be immense and the only powers which could fill it are, for lack of a better word, evil. I believe the only option is to resuscitate and improve America, because without it exercising political power, the whole world will instantly be on fire.
Except that “crazy old man” (I’d have gone with corrupt criminal malignant narcissist to be honest) isn’t just shouting at pigeons in the park he already screwed up the world economy by staring a war he can’t figure out how to exit and dozens of other things.
When the pigeon shouter threatens to annex Canada/Greenland you can shrug it off, when the leader of the largest economy and military says it, you can’t.
Words matter.
I’m British, We are often regarded as one of the US’s closest allies, I’m fucking furious with Trump and the people who support him, I’ve been boycotting everything US made that I can and I essentially see the current US as a globally destabilising force.
Are there decent Americans appalled by what they’ve become, sure, doesn’t make a difference to the outcome though either.
Trump isn’t the main problem, he’s a symptom of the disease that is the main problem, the US elected him twice, that rot goes to the core.
I bought that initially, but Trump is causing real harm. The abandonment of WHO and USAid programs, stepping out of the paris accords etc. etc.
But the real issue is that he has been elected twice, it is not some one-off freak accident, a lot of americans just care more about transphobia or pizzagate than climate change or geopolitics and thats why its now clear to the rest of the world that we can’t trust the US any more.
> But I believe you can relax, because this is all nonsense.
Tell that to Iran. Or Canada. Nobody in Europe is certain that he won’t do anything stupid in Greenland, either. We’re already in a trade war (mostly one-sided but still).
> But I believe you can relax, because this is all nonsense.
We're at the point where the two countries, with most wars between them in history, stood side by side, ready to defend Greenland against a U.S. invasion.
The monkey has a hand grenade. You lot gave it to him. Twice. You might find that it's a bit late for "relax, he's only kidding".
Well, who knows? The trajectory has been set in and it is downwards. After Nero and the year of the four emperors the Roman Empire still had ways to go. So, I would say also the US can potentially recover. On the other hand the saying 'it cannot possibly get worse than this' has also been disproven may times in history. In any case, I like to sum it all up by saying "The US is a superpower attempting to become a third world country".
lol, we(america) were the ones who fucked with the gold standard and had the system collapse due to lack of trust in the first place[1]
Please explain your logic behind the idea that European countries needed to have adopted the gold standard that the US unilaterally changed the rules on, to be independent from the US.
I guess he means the Bretton Woods system, where the US dollar was backed by gold and everything else was backed by the US dollar, wouldn't have existed. Everything would have been backed by gold, instead.
If America had not forced the gold standard we might have gotten an international currency as proposed by Keynes.
The idea was soundly rejected because it would have led to rapid post war reconstruction with a loss of American power (they wanted to play at empire).
The dangerous situation we are in is that entities outside of the USA hold significantly more US assets than US entities own assets outside the USA.
So if the USA declares "ownership be damned", it would be a net win for the USA.
Or in simpler terms: The USA has been giving out IOUs for real goods for decades. It is now tempting to default on those IOUs. They did it before. Before 1971, a dollar certified a claim to gold. Then that claim was simply waived.
> So if the USA declares "ownership be damned", it would be a net win for the USA.
This opinion is very naive. The moment the US declares "ownership be damned", the US dolar stops being the currency used in things like the oil market and it's value tanks. The world will scramble to use an alternative currency, which will end up being either the euro or the yuan. This effectively marks the end of US as a world power.
> Or Bitcoin. Of which almost half is already under US control.
This sort of opinion is laughably out of touch. Listen to yourself: oil markets will move away from the US dolar due to how the US governments destroying its value, and instead will move to bitcoin because... The US controls it?
Are you aware you are posting these outlandish opinions on how the world trusts the US with it's currency in a discussion where literally European countries are pulling their gold reserves out of the US because they no longer trust the US?
Gosh, have we in the West forgotten so much of our history already?
Much of the gold was moved out of Europe prior to and during WWI. Partly out of fears of German aggression b ut also because throughout the war, European countries bought massive amounts of materiel from America, which increased the flow of money out of European and into American coffers.
But gold itself is very heavy and thus cumbersome to transport. It doesn't make sense to run transatlantic gold shipments every time a few bars change hands. So central banks tended to keep the gold more or less in one big vault and just sort of move the bricks between one country's pile and another. So there would be, in essence, a large stack of gold in the US Federal Reserve, and that gold belonged to France, or whomever. When the war ended, European countries were devastated and needed goods from somewhere that didn't have depleted industrial capacity and whose farmlands weren't littered with UXO.
This situation more or less cemented America's position as the world's creditor, and so it simply was more convenient to keep a large portion of one's gold reserves in the country with whom you were doing a lot of business.
Now that Americans have decided they like being a military, economic, and cultural superpower less than they like electing a dementia-ridden child rapist, other countries have correctly realized that America's decline cannot be stopped, only slowed. After all, it's Americans themselves who are the root of the problem, and Trump is but a symptom. This instability is not going to stop when he leaves office. Better get your gold off the sinking ship, but do it slowly so as to not accelerate the sinking before you can get it all out.
Re: the gold situation after WWI, if you're interested I encourage you to read Liaquat Ahamed's excellent Lords of Finance, which won the Pulitzer, IIRC.
It's a remnant of the cold war and the two preceding hot wars. The plan was to ship big parts of the gold overseas, just in case Europe gets nuked and occupied in a ground invasion from the east. But lately there have been more threats for an invasion from the west, so gold goes back.
Sure, you can replace US with anything in the sentence. The problem right now is there's a feeling that even decades-old alliances are no longer something you can count on when you're talking about the US.
> If there is ever a conflict, US will seize assets of whatever country..
Canadians, and the rest of the world is finding out that you don't even need a conflict for US to lay claim over your stuff. "We want it", is perfectly legitimate and legal reason for the taking.
it gets easier to understand if you adopt the anti-imperialist position, these are vassal states, the us hold incredible influence over them. Gold reserves are just one of thousands of levers at their disposal, if some european nation has a revolution and seeks to assert their sovereignty then the US has a lever to pull. The point to question is the existence of the lever in the first place, the US doesnt have gold in any other country, china or iran doesn't put gold in the US because it gives the US this lever. Thats one of the mechanisms of imperialism, it means if some "western-aligned" (people dont like the word vassal) nation acts in their own interests against the US the US can pull that lever. Why would any nation ever place such a lever in the hand of the US? It's the same exact mechanism why many african nations have the french CFA currency, it gives french the lever to pull its a remanent of colonialism in the case of france.
I have seen moldy produce all over the GTA here in Canada lately. The homeless situation in Hamilton Ontario is getting out of control.
The province posted a billboard the other day around the corner of my house showing some woman "protecting her community against encampments" (aka homeless people).
There are hoards of homeless people that live in the woods just around the corner of this billboard.
It didn't last 3 days.
Neither did the one they put up after it.
Neither did the non-encampment-scare-mongering-one they put up after it.
The homeless or whoever kept destroying it visually with paint/etc.
It advertises TSN sports now.
And I live in a "nice part of town". East hamilton is another planet. Children stabbing children over bicycles. Children shooting random passerbys. [0] Etc. It's bad.
Russia is invading Europe. They started years ago.
The US is enabling Russia.
In fact, the USA is supporting Russia. This might not be entirely intentional, and a lot of ways of trying to excuse it, but it’s what the reality on the ground adds up to.
You are as wrong as your parent comment. Not only Russia is invading US, but US is less of the supporter of Russia than EU. EU literally funds Russia and doesn't plan stopping completely.
Russia had assets in Europe, look what happened to those. We got so naive and relaxed in the abscense of big wars within the "western hemisphere" that some people geniunly forgot what will happen to all of their "assets" when shit hit the fan.
Most of the major Bitcoin spikes and leveling-up of the price since 2012 have preceded or corresponded with governments tightening controls, and people using BTC they owned or buying it to evacuate capital to more lightly regulated countries. That's also why there hasn't been a Bitcoin rush for awhile, imho... it's no longer very useful for that, now that all the entrance and exit nodes are monitored. Gold is a bit hard to move, but this article may be underselling to what extent the recent spike in gold prices is attributable to demand for that kind of liquidity. The cross-border, anonymous kind.
The demise of Localbitcoins actual local meetups and trading for cash was the end of a significant way to move money out of regimes that people suspected were going to take it from them.
and it's going to be like that for decades unless in like november there's a broad sweep of offices and the other party actually exercises power for once and prosecutes politicians criminal behavior instead of that infuriating clemency nonsense they always do.
I'm betting they'll get elected and then sit on their hands as hard as possible calling it a "return to normalcy", fight their constituency, insist on doing absolutely nothing, and then get kicked right back out 2 years later and whine about people not voting for them.
> and it's going to be like that for decades unless in like november or so there's a broad sweep of offices and the other party actually exercises power for once and prosecutes politicians criminal behavior instead of that infuriating clemency nonsense they always do.
European here. I've written about that on Reddit but can't find it because the search there is dogshit so I'll have to write from memory...
We will not trust the US again any time soon, and so is our position regarding the UK. What both of you did, and especially how you got there, is an appalling history, a tale of a completely subverted democracy, and most importantly of a system that never got forced to be updated to centuries of learnings, unlike virtually all developed countries who underwent sometimes multiple wars, revolutions or the occasional peaceful democratisation.
Before we trust you again, you must undergo what we Germans had to post-1945. You have to update your constitutions, yeet out the fossil crap that in no small part led to the situation (FPTP voting, media regulations, in the case of the US making voting either a holiday or move it to Sunday like everyone else), prosecute not just the corrupt politicians but also the oligarchs that backed them, introduce an educational system that is actually worth the name to prevent the youth being corrupted, and demonstrate for many years that you can be trusted again.
Trust is easy to tear apart. All you need is a buffoon shitting in his own diapers [1] or a bus littered with propaganda [2] and a dumbass uneducated populace. But it takes decades and/or immense suffering to (re)build. And for both the US and the UK we gave you not just one chance to show you're better, but multiple. The US first had Bush wo tried to rope us into the Iraq war with his WMD lies, then after Obama came Trump 1, and after Biden came Trump 2, and the final straw regarding the UK and its ever more braindead PM choices was Lettuce Liz [3].
Trust and trustworthiness. Trust is very hard to win back, once its gone. Trustworthiness makes you willing to rely on a partner. Trustworthiness only builds very slowly over prolonged periods of time, by consistently not betraying ones trust.
The AfD, which became Germany's top-polling political party for the first time last year, is now the clear leader in polls. It may soon win an absolute majority in a German state election.
The far-right is also widely projected to win the 2027 French presidential election:
And Switzerland seriously considered immigration restrictions much harsher than anything contemplated by the US.
It's interesting to see how leftism changes as you cross the Atlantic. In the US it's usually baseless moral self-flagellation; in Europe it's usually baseless moral preening. In neither case do the facts seem to be particularly important.
"we gave you not just one chance to show you're better" is such a fascinating thing for you to say. For years our leaders told you to be less dependent on us. Now you're speaking as though your dependency on us was some kind of favor you were doing for us. It's mind-blowing how out-of-touch you guys can be.
Please elaborate, whats so strict about Switzerlands restrictions? Why shouldnt a country be allowed to limit the people they want to have from immigration?
(Exercise for you: Try to get a passport from Liechtenstein, even if you work there permanently for a Liechtenstein company, its unlikely that you can even rent an appartment there!)
As an American, I don't necessarily want the US to be trusted. I want foreign governments to put pressure on us to stop developing omnicidal AI. The sooner the "rogue AI agents" conversation links up with the "USA is untrustworthy" conversation, the better.
I'm not as optimistic as you are, because a component of the rightward shift is the international collaboration of the respective movements' leaders. For example, US republicans closely worked together with Orbans party and Germanys AfD, exchanging strategies and such. This is also reflected across the media landscape in these countries - when new fabricated talking points pop up across US conservative spaces, it usually takes 2-4 weeks until the same talking points are repeated by many German right-wing media outlets.
Of course these alliances won't survive forever, as these movements have to continually expand their definitions of "out-groups" to keep their core "in-groups" satisfied, since they keep making their countries' issues worse by attempting fixes that are easy, simple, and wrong. But when a movement is built around the rejection of any uncomfortable history or research mixed with a huge dose of anti-intellectualism, it is fundamentally incapable of ever reflecting and learning beyond what the personal gain of their leaders.
Why do you think so? The US funding won't suddenly stop, especially given how much the GOP hates the EU. Plenty of other rich people too.
Unless there are objectively good reasons to expect this we must stay vigilant, since if we gamble on infighting and it goes poorly, the consequences could become horrifying.
yup, but the utter majority of foreign funding that was found in the AfD and the other far-right parties' scandals came from Russia. The propaganda they spout comes straight from Russia. The bot farms amplifying their propaganda are mostly Russian.
Sure, the US MAGA network, the super riches (Musk, Thiel, ...) aren't to be underestimated. But they are breaking apart already and without a cohesive force connecting them, they will be much less powerful.
Sure, so far the funds came from Russia, but the US government has openly talked about increasing their funding.
I don't think that their propaganda is fully dependent on Russia. IMO their strategy was really easy to observe during/after the 2020 election: they do contentious things with barely any justification, then watch conservative social media spaces for explanations/justifications that users naturally share & amplify. From these options, they select ones advantageous to them, and then turn them into talking points. This machine doesn't need to get talking points from Russia! They just need a halfway charismatic leader to keep it going, especially due to my next point.
The bot farms are no longer needed thanks to AI! I guarantee you, they are already running plenty of bots themselves. And since these days most social media & news media companies are aligned with/owned by them, they can easily optimize their approach well enough to become dangerously effective.
I just don't see a reason to feel so safe about them breaking apart before major damage is done. Just look at how genuinely friendly Trump acts towards most highly authoritarian leaders, compared to the way he acts towards most other leaders. I assume they'll definitely break apart after e.g. the EU is broken up, because then the US will squeeze everyone else. But under Trump they're going to keep it up, as far as I can see.
You write as if you have confabulated yourself into being Europe's official spokesperson. This is all a bit high-handed.
I'm not really sure how you are comparing Trump's US - responsible for pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, tearing up the Iranian nuclear deal and then starting a war to reimpose it that has created a global energy crisis, kidnapping Maduro and threatening to invade Greenland, beginning a global trade war, giving up on climate mitigation, nuclear treaties and AI safety - with the UK over the same period.
Liz Truss is not really Trump's equivalent. She achieved exactly nothing in the UK, let alone the world, in her few weeks in office. It's also worth pointing out she didn't win a general election: she became PM via the Conservative Party's internal selection process.
> I'm not really sure how you are comparing Trump's US - responsible for pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, tearing up the Iranian nuclear deal and then starting a war to reimpose it that has created a global energy crisis, kidnapping Maduro and threatening to invade Greenland, beginning a global trade war, giving up on climate mitigation, nuclear treaties and AI safety - with the UK over the same period.
The Brexit shitshow took years to resolve from the Brexit vote to the actual Brexit event and absolutely hogged attention all over the EU apparatus. We could have used the energy we had to expend on that crap (including trying to prevent a restart of the Ireland-related violence) to instead make the EU itself better, react to the multitude of crises happening during the time, or furthen the EU integration. But no, we had the constant noise of Brexit all the time.
Well, the only thing the Trump admin did that really hurt us was the tariff trade war and the Iran war. The rest sucked for those affected, but had little consequence for Europe, and so the prevailing attitude here is "we can't do anything anyway, why should it matter for us"...
Feel like there’s an opportunity for a faulty towers reversal where we apologise for Brexit, Boris and Truss. If it helps any, 48% of us wanted to stay. This Brit has a profound sense of wehmut. Seems like the whole continent is struggling with nationalism though, no? Hearing AFD is on the rise
> Feel like there’s an opportunity for a faulty towers reversal where we apologise for Brexit, Boris and Truss.
There certainly is, and I for one would certainly appreciate it. The problem is, with Reform polling as high as it does... there is a pretty high chance that they torpedo any negotiations :(
When your nation voted poorly last time you picked a homicidal maniac who killed people in death factories. Americans helped you then, at extreme cost.
Trump pumps-and-dumps the world economy, but his approval rating is also below 1/3. Most Americans clearly don't approve, so why should we not trust them?
If all it takes for democratic nations to stop working together is that they elect a crook once, we're all doomed. Many european nations are very close to picking their iwn "trumps" int he next elections.
In a democracy, any one crook's influence should be short-lived. That's the whole point of a democracy.
We need to help each other remain democracies, as the alternatives are so much worse.
That said, sometimes help comes in the form of removing the gold to say "you're out of line buddy".
> Trump pumps-and-dumps the world economy, but his approval rating is also below 1/3. Most Americans clearly don't approve, so why should we not trust them?
because all it takes is for someone not as toddler-y as Trump to run for the job, the "moderates" in the GOP are mostly gone.
To me it never made any sense. The buffalo hat guys clearly had no greater plan, and the BBC actually had to apologize for faking a clip to make it seem Trump ordered it.
The BBC spreads to all of the EU's other news outlets, so Europeans "know" there was a putsch attempt based on a fake clip. Literally fake news, which plays directly into Trumps narrative and adding to the teflon layer he seems covered in.
Exaggerations, bad faith reporting, assumptions of guilt based on hunches - that's counterproductive if you really want to hold power accountable.
It's very important that the accuser of a crook is not a known liar. Because then even the true accusations won't stick and the crook gets away.
>nothing was "faked", the footage shown was of things Trump actually said
Of course he said the words, but not together as the sentence the BBC reported. The meaning was faked.
What the BBC did here was literally equivalent to filming someone saying "We should support Kamala and fight Trump at every opportunity" and cutting it to say "We should support Trump at every opportunity".
No honest person can accept that. No honest person can accept Trump either, for many reasons, but perhaps an actual coup-attempt is not one of those reasons.
We all live in bubbles these days, it's not easy. :-/
Your post sounds like concern trolling to me. I'm not a European and I watched the whole speech in real time and it was clear to me that he was attempting a coup.
If you think the buffalo hat guy was a coup attempt, fine - I have no interest in defending Trump.
I just wanted to highlight a common bubble-truth that turned out to not be as true as many think. You may be convinced he tried a coup, but does the BBC story perhaps move the needle a little bit towards understanding how someone else might feel that maybe he didn't?
Accusations of trolling is depressing, but I appreciate you actually writing a comment instead of just smashing the downvote.
> We need to help each other remain democracies, as the alternatives are so much worse.
Trump and his cronies are openly attempting to break the EU apart via funding and amplifying right-wing movements across the EU. These movements are collaborating, sharing strategies and spreading the same talking points, while they're using their control over social media platforms etc. to suffocate our democracies.
I would love to be able to trust the US. But the guy currently pissing against everyone's legs was re-elected after an attempted Putsch. How could they ever remove all MAGA influence from all of society and government?
Even if the US proves me wrong and manages to turn the wheel around, I won't see the US as an ally again until 1-2 decades pass without republicans taking any control over the government.
>The votes in 2024 demonstrate that the average American is either proudly ignorant of the actual policies they're choosing
That's a simplistic take.
Trump had less than 50% of the popular vote even though his opponent was clearly showing signs of dementia. The last-minute replacement had spent too much time being the "defund the police/eat the rich" sidekick to Biden and was clearly not representative of the views of the average American. She still got almost as many votes as Trump, from Americans who wanted to vote "Not Trump".
Seems to me the average American had little choice. All the Democrats had to do was field a candidate that could finish a coherent sentence mirroring the average American sentiment and they'd have landslide victory. But they didn't.
>For the actual reality, Harris was a public prosecutor - essentially a police officer's best friend.
That's not helpful though, as she also made multiple public expressions of support for the defund movement, the protests-turned-riots after the Floyd murder, and the BLM movement.
I can't help thinking that made her a weak choice for both sides of that divide. Is she the tough on crime option or the anti-police one? Where does she actually stand?
I think if she had gone all-in on the tough-on-crime track she'd still have gotten all the protestor votes, and perhaps also the "can we stop police brutality without burning cars" votes. Which I think is a sizable chunk, perhaps even the most common opinion on the matter.
Anyway, all this to say that the explanation for the current situation is not as simple as "half of all Americans are crazy and evil". Current approval ratings clearly say most Americans know they effed up.
My first response was to a German who clearly felt the US as a whole is a lost cause, without acknowledging that Germany is in the process of making the same mistake. I wonder if the Germans will realize they effed up as quickly as the Americans have?
Both sides of the atlantic are throwing stones from glass houses, when we should be cooperating. The dictators are rejoicing...
Sorry but no "unless" left IMO. China has been and is still gaining momentum in every strategic matter, and they are very probably going to lead from now on.
What I am curious about is how that global leadership is going to change them, from citizens to government.
I suspect the people of Greenland won't ever trust Americans again.
This isn't just going to go away. You can't just undo what Orange Mussolini is doing, and it'll take far longer than a decade before anything like a trusting relationship can be reestablished.
It's cute that you think power is going to change hands in November. It'll be his reischtags fire. He's already planning to send ice to police the elections and only in places he's bound to win will people be voting.
it's not about legislation and veto, it's about exercising congress's prosecutorial power. I don't want to hear any weak kneed bullshit about "well they'll do it to us".
Don't ever take that bullshit. Nobody else is doing anywhere near the wild level of criminality. Seriously, all this procedure stuff around groups that are breaking the law is insane.
It'd be like if a policeman saw someone rob a place, put the things in the car, and then the thief says "oh but there's a no looking in car rule" and then just drives away.
This is all complete insanity. Charge these people with the dozens of crimes they are committing every day.
Mitch McConnell holding the seat then railroading in a judge is bad faith cheating and we can't be constrained by procedure and let bad faith actors get away with cheating.
Revoke the appointments and change the rules. SCOTUS isn't some unquestionable papal position with divine right.
The wild corruption of accepting gifts from groups arguing on the court and then using Galaxy brain weasel language to claim it doesn't count. No. Every person in prison has a reason why the law shouldn't have applied to them.
Are we a nation of rules or aren't we?
You follow the rules and maintain integrity of your oath or you're kicked to the curb.
And calling this a both sides political thing is the most tired dodge I've seen. I'm tired of the bullshit excuses why someone with a Trump has can rob bank
> China handily beats the USA in the trust rankings in most of the world.
This can change quickly, as current management is less about comerce and more about "being the new Mao". If Russia can get Ukraine, USA can get Venezuela resources and threat Greenland, why wouldn't I get Taiwan?
Specifically because China has now opportunity to gain international trust. Also, their own advancements in semiconductor manufacturing make Taiwan less attractive of an asset.
Why do people comment when they understand so little about the China/Taiwan issue? It has never been about semiconductors, that topic only exists as a post-rationalization of why the U.S. should protect Taiwan against PRC takeover.
It has always been a legitimacy issue over who is the legitimate heir of the Chinese empire. China is still in a civil war. The communists (CCP) conquered the mainland and the former ruling party of China (KMT) fled to Taiwan. Taiwan is more successful than mainland China per capita on almost every standard economic and human development metric. It exists as a thorn in Beijing's side.
From the PRC perspective, reunification is a matter of national pride, and has nothing to do with semiconductors.
At the rate Taiwan's superpower ally is declining, China just needs a little patience and a beneficent long term strategy & Taiwan will decide to switch ally's from self interest
Switch allies, to whom? The PRC? Do you realize PRC (Mainland China) and Taiwan are in a civil war? Taiwan switching allies to the PRC literally means admitting defeat.
Recall that Taiwan only exists because during the Chinese civil war, the United States provided the KMT with billions of dollars of military and financial aid. The KMT lost the mainland to the CCP (supported by the Soviets) and fled to Taiwan. The U.S. provided $4 billion dollars of aid, worth approximately $50 billion today.
The PRC would have retaken Taiwan decades ago if not for the U.S. guaranteeing Taiwan.
So continue in this line of reasoning - what happens as a currency strapped US turns inward and is more globally eschewed while making more common outright projections of regional power in the hemisphere of the Americas (while showing logistical failures in demonstrating cross globe power projection). Meanwhile China climbs the semi-fab ladder and Intel and even TSMC (re)builds its fabs in the US. KMT seems to maintain an intentionally ambiguous one-China policy. What are possible outcomes in the new state of geopolitics?
What's hyperbolic? The trust thing is borne out by repeated polling of which countries people trust. The current US administration is openly profiteering from governing.
I do think it'll take a few years before Americans wake up to how badly their reputation has tanked around the world across successive governments of either party in the recent decade.
Greenland, Iran, Falklands, Ukraine, Gaza, Taiwan, all these things probably feel like minor missteps in the US news cycle but they have had a major impact.
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[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 9.0 ms ] threadYes, China is a likely eventual successor and in some parts is the world has replaced the US in being the influential superpower.
I'm not doubting that China is the likely eventual successor, I'm doubting that they can succeed anything at this particular point in time. Nobody wants China in charge. It would make any issues experienced with the US in charge like a joke. Maybe once their dictator dies?
No, not really. For now we are headed towards a multipolar world rather than a hegemony.
China is currently trying to take control of the whole South China Sea. They’re in a cold war with the Philippines and Vietnam.
Next it will go for Taiwan.
Then either Siberian or Indian territory with the same “these used to be ours” justifications.
At the same time I think will use shadow fleets to take as much fish stocks from around the world as it can.
Not acting yet is not the same as not being expansionist. With all that “we’ll smash your head on the concrete” rhetoric China’s wolf warriors are very clear on where they’re headed.
Iran, and likely all major US adversaries now, were/are fully prepared for the US assassinations. And gaining full air superiority is no longer possible in the era of drones, because you're no longer shooting down a small number of high value targets (like planes), but instead a practically infinite amount of low value targets that can be readily replenished.
Spending interceptors that cost millions of dollars to shoot down drones that cost thousands of dollars just doesn't work. We might be able to obtain air superiority in terms of e.g. Iran being unable to fly fighter jets over their own country, but that says nothing about their ability to launch endless drones and otherwise inflict a severe toll on any invading army.
So it's likely that modern war has mostly gone back to times long since past where the bottleneck is no longer cost in $$, but cost in lives. And that makes militarism far less attractive for every single country, even moreso in the era of plummeting fertility rates when the people who are going to be killed are precisely those who are supposed to be birthing and raising your next generation.
So there will certainly be wars when nations see the benefit as being especially high, but I think the idea of trying to casually 'project strength' half way around the globe is probably already dead. The cost is too high, and the benefit too low.
What little rational justification for Iran there was, probably rested in some part on trying to undo the perceptual damage to the US military tech by scoring a quick victory over a minor power. But the catastrophe that has unfolded there has essentially nailed the coffin shut on any concept of military superiority, let alone dominance. This doesn't mean that the US will just completely surrender Taiwan or whatever, but rather that it's clear to every single world power that such claims of protection are now just empty rhetoric. And that's almost certainly going to be acknowledged frankly between nations in private discussions going forward.
What do you mean it doesn't matter what the US wants to do? The US doesn't want to go into another war. One man at the top forcing his army against their will and advice to do something is simply obedience, not a sign of what a country wants anyways.
Nobody wants this in the US, and it's why even traditionally extremely neutral outlets like Reuters and AP News are willing to state that Trump is currently deeply unpopular with Republicans.
Pay attention, and let go of your strawmen, I beg of you.
So on the cost the constraint is not just in dollars, but blood. Although even in dollars - I'd also observe another issue. Inflation and money printing is making money increasingly meaningless, but 'things' are not. You can fart a quadrillion dollars into existence, but you can't fart a trillion artillery shells into existence. During WW2 certain metals became so scarce that we started making nickels out of silver and pennies out of steel to have more copper and nickel for war purposes.
The US is already blowing through massive resources against Iran, and we'd likely need orders of magnitude more for a ground war. These sort of resources simply do not exist, and arguably cannot exist. The defender has always had an easier time in war, but drones have bumped up this power by orders of magnitude. Decentralize your drone production, organize your military to prepare for assassinations, ensure significant decentralized under-ground logistics and production facilities, and you're basically good to go.
I don't really understand what you think I'm straw manning. We're disagreeing while agreeing in a way that's slightly bemusing to me.
As for hegemony? Well the Chinese actually don't want to be world police.
Well. Not sure. Untrustable system, maybe. (The whole chain that brought to this stage is improper - and the damaging factors are still active.)
I am not sure that the regime they have created will disappear with their fronter.
As we’ve seen from the violated norms so far and the attack on the capital building, it would not be a big step to dictatorship disguised as firm leadership in time of war or civil disturbance.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
The second was very clearly a systemic failure out of many factors. Those systemic failures are the point.
Don't forget that Biden and not the orange one blew up the most important gas pipeline of the most important European ally^H vassal.
How can you trust USA after that?
That you don't like the answer speaks more to your state of mind than my own.
Someone writing such answer on a simple online forum statement should seek mental counseling. This is usually a sign of multiple mental disorders.
No matter who did Nordstream and why, there are rational reasons that explain why the different parties might have done it. Even when you've been negatively affected, you can still somewhat understand it.
This is no longer the case under Trump 2. Since this term started, every day begins by checking what random decisions the US made to screw you over today. Treaties and agreements are torn up on a whim, and they can't even come up with halfway sensible explanations hold up to any scrutiny.
The only common denominator the world can see is the senseless cruelty being gleefully inflicted by the senile pedophile leader and his deeply brainwashed followers. The hatred spread by the US is taking root, and they will be reaping it for an entire generation if things go on.
As someone who survived brutal attacks of American bombers during the time of some of the most beloved democratic presidents, I find Trump much better. At least he doesn't even pretend he's a good guy.
If we measure US president quality by the number of people the US directly or indirectly killed, Trump is still one of the better in our lives, despite the latest attack on Iran.
I'm not interested in discussing whether or not only deaths during a given presidents term should be counted, so unless you're willing to discuss under that presumption we won't find common ground.
Not saying it's right or sound that he's the elected leader of the country or that our politics is so warped... I mean, I blame it on being on the losing end of the most rigorously fought information war in history.
But I believe you can relax, because this is all nonsense.
FWIW, the American people can't even support a war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has been blowing up our soldiers for decades. Hard to imagine they'd show much support for invading an ally.
Sorry, but no.
Even if there are no kinetic attacks towards allies right now, the "crazy old man" is causing real harm. Harm to global stability and the world order, economies, to businesses and individuals, to long term initiatives such as research and healthcare. But most importantly, real harm to the trust between ourselves. Western allies can no longer trust the USA, it is broken, we no longer have the same values.
The first time in 2016 we forgave, everyone makes mistake and Europe is certainly not free of them. But the American people chose to elect him twice with full knowledge, now everyone suffers.
So the rest of the world forges its own path now. America's military, economic and cultural hegemony will decline. Not tomorrow, maybe not even quickly, but inevitably. Godspeed !
I think it's a tragedy that America elected him twice, and it has already led to chaos among our allies and irreparable harm to the postwar order in which America was the seat of empire after Britain. I think that [the populist brain virus which took hold of America, in 2016 and particularly after covid] was done intentionally by Russia and China who are enemies of America. Is the loss of that order what you are bemoaning?
We are also a country that established itself from European colonies. Every time Argentina or Brazil or Chile or Venezuela or Colombia go through spasms of communist or fascist takeover, Europe takes that as an unsurprising fact, and the bankers keep doing business with them. There is something much more frightening about America reaching some polar political extreme, and it's not simply nuclear weapons (because several very extreme dictatorships have those).
What is scary about it is the same thing that's scary about the AfD in Germany... the idea that we are losing the generational knowledge we built to safeguard some of the world against savagery. In order to believe this, you must also believe that Germany and the US are not already, inherently savage and that some of the order brought by NATO and the postwar order has been a good thing, even up to and including the Cold War.
Then, we can define what is worth saving about America and why it matters.
Without downplaying or excusing the US' problems, I hope everyone in other countries thinking "that can't happen here" realize that's what most Americans thought just a decade ago too.
Turn that disgust with the disease into preventative treatment.
As Brexit has shown, even when sanity returns, the previous reality does not.
So it is not that we wish the USA ill, or harm, quite the contrary - we did not ask for this. But we have clearly understood the message and we are focused on our own future now.
I think it's important to understand that there's a difference between American right wing populism and the British form. Brexit was a self inflicted wound whose harm was almost entirely limited to Britain. If anything, it shored up some European resolve against the anti-EU parties for a time.
On the contrary, if the isolationist wing of Trump's party had its way, American withdrawal from the world would have a far worse impact on the stability of European politics and concrete strategic defense.
I'm a 2nd generation American ... my family is Polish and Ukrainian. I had / have the option to reclaim citizenship elsewhere, both in and out of the EU. I've lived in France and Spain, Czechia and Argentina, and in 15 countries in total since 2004. I didn't choose to be born in America but I also can't imagine a world where it doesn't retain military and financial supremacy. The vacuum would be immense and the only powers which could fill it are, for lack of a better word, evil. I believe the only option is to resuscitate and improve America, because without it exercising political power, the whole world will instantly be on fire.
When the pigeon shouter threatens to annex Canada/Greenland you can shrug it off, when the leader of the largest economy and military says it, you can’t.
Words matter.
I’m British, We are often regarded as one of the US’s closest allies, I’m fucking furious with Trump and the people who support him, I’ve been boycotting everything US made that I can and I essentially see the current US as a globally destabilising force.
Are there decent Americans appalled by what they’ve become, sure, doesn’t make a difference to the outcome though either.
Trump isn’t the main problem, he’s a symptom of the disease that is the main problem, the US elected him twice, that rot goes to the core.
But the real issue is that he has been elected twice, it is not some one-off freak accident, a lot of americans just care more about transphobia or pizzagate than climate change or geopolitics and thats why its now clear to the rest of the world that we can’t trust the US any more.
Wow you guys really don't get it, do you? It's not nonsense to us.
Tell that to Iran. Or Canada. Nobody in Europe is certain that he won’t do anything stupid in Greenland, either. We’re already in a trade war (mostly one-sided but still).
We're at the point where the two countries, with most wars between them in history, stood side by side, ready to defend Greenland against a U.S. invasion.
The monkey has a hand grenade. You lot gave it to him. Twice. You might find that it's a bit late for "relax, he's only kidding".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTtf5s2HFkA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txyKenOq5Pw
Please explain your logic behind the idea that European countries needed to have adopted the gold standard that the US unilaterally changed the rules on, to be independent from the US.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock
The idea was soundly rejected because it would have led to rapid post war reconstruction with a loss of American power (they wanted to play at empire).
http://www.sofer.com/blog/keynes-on-the-balance-of-trade.htm...
So if the USA declares "ownership be damned", it would be a net win for the USA.
Or in simpler terms: The USA has been giving out IOUs for real goods for decades. It is now tempting to default on those IOUs. They did it before. Before 1971, a dollar certified a claim to gold. Then that claim was simply waived.
Is there something in the last 19 months of tariff chaos which makes you believe the Republicans currently in power are remotely concerned about that?
This opinion is very naive. The moment the US declares "ownership be damned", the US dolar stops being the currency used in things like the oil market and it's value tanks. The world will scramble to use an alternative currency, which will end up being either the euro or the yuan. This effectively marks the end of US as a world power.
Anyhow, much of the new currency will flow to the USA if the USA becomes the worlds source of (artificial) intelligence.
This sort of opinion is laughably out of touch. Listen to yourself: oil markets will move away from the US dolar due to how the US governments destroying its value, and instead will move to bitcoin because... The US controls it?
Are you aware you are posting these outlandish opinions on how the world trusts the US with it's currency in a discussion where literally European countries are pulling their gold reserves out of the US because they no longer trust the US?
Much of the gold was moved out of Europe prior to and during WWI. Partly out of fears of German aggression b ut also because throughout the war, European countries bought massive amounts of materiel from America, which increased the flow of money out of European and into American coffers.
But gold itself is very heavy and thus cumbersome to transport. It doesn't make sense to run transatlantic gold shipments every time a few bars change hands. So central banks tended to keep the gold more or less in one big vault and just sort of move the bricks between one country's pile and another. So there would be, in essence, a large stack of gold in the US Federal Reserve, and that gold belonged to France, or whomever. When the war ended, European countries were devastated and needed goods from somewhere that didn't have depleted industrial capacity and whose farmlands weren't littered with UXO.
This situation more or less cemented America's position as the world's creditor, and so it simply was more convenient to keep a large portion of one's gold reserves in the country with whom you were doing a lot of business.
Now that Americans have decided they like being a military, economic, and cultural superpower less than they like electing a dementia-ridden child rapist, other countries have correctly realized that America's decline cannot be stopped, only slowed. After all, it's Americans themselves who are the root of the problem, and Trump is but a symptom. This instability is not going to stop when he leaves office. Better get your gold off the sinking ship, but do it slowly so as to not accelerate the sinking before you can get it all out.
Re: the gold situation after WWI, if you're interested I encourage you to read Liaquat Ahamed's excellent Lords of Finance, which won the Pulitzer, IIRC.
Norway's Oil Fund Proposes Selling Roughly $80B in U.S. Treasurys
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49564189
Dutch central bank moves share of gold from U.S., Canada to London
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49535526
Would you keep your food or car in someone else's garage?
We are seeing that foreign countries no longer believe the USA is still a nation of laws.
Canadians, and the rest of the world is finding out that you don't even need a conflict for US to lay claim over your stuff. "We want it", is perfectly legitimate and legal reason for the taking.
but I want to offer the counterfactual with my comment that the "EU is foolish"
I'm pretty sure my take is right
Give me a break. In the present situation, the US is a lunatic asylum on fire, and the EU is a regular ol' boring place with boring problems.
We can't even keep fresh food on our shelves https://trends.google.com/explore?q=moldy%20food&date=all&ge...
I have seen moldy produce all over the GTA here in Canada lately. The homeless situation in Hamilton Ontario is getting out of control.
The province posted a billboard the other day around the corner of my house showing some woman "protecting her community against encampments" (aka homeless people).
There are hoards of homeless people that live in the woods just around the corner of this billboard.
It didn't last 3 days.
Neither did the one they put up after it.
Neither did the non-encampment-scare-mongering-one they put up after it.
The homeless or whoever kept destroying it visually with paint/etc.
It advertises TSN sports now.
And I live in a "nice part of town". East hamilton is another planet. Children stabbing children over bicycles. Children shooting random passerbys. [0] Etc. It's bad.
[0] https://hamiltonpolice.on.ca/news/sarkodie-homicide-suspect-...
The US is enabling Russia.
In fact, the USA is supporting Russia. This might not be entirely intentional, and a lot of ways of trying to excuse it, but it’s what the reality on the ground adds up to.
Some people would like to see them put to use in guaranteeing reconstruction and defence for Ukraine.
The demise of Localbitcoins actual local meetups and trading for cash was the end of a significant way to move money out of regimes that people suspected were going to take it from them.
At this point international trust in the USA is at around the same level as trust in Iran and Russia .
China handily beats the USA in the trust rankings in most of the world.
I'm betting they'll get elected and then sit on their hands as hard as possible calling it a "return to normalcy", fight their constituency, insist on doing absolutely nothing, and then get kicked right back out 2 years later and whine about people not voting for them.
European here. I've written about that on Reddit but can't find it because the search there is dogshit so I'll have to write from memory...
We will not trust the US again any time soon, and so is our position regarding the UK. What both of you did, and especially how you got there, is an appalling history, a tale of a completely subverted democracy, and most importantly of a system that never got forced to be updated to centuries of learnings, unlike virtually all developed countries who underwent sometimes multiple wars, revolutions or the occasional peaceful democratisation.
Before we trust you again, you must undergo what we Germans had to post-1945. You have to update your constitutions, yeet out the fossil crap that in no small part led to the situation (FPTP voting, media regulations, in the case of the US making voting either a holiday or move it to Sunday like everyone else), prosecute not just the corrupt politicians but also the oligarchs that backed them, introduce an educational system that is actually worth the name to prevent the youth being corrupted, and demonstrate for many years that you can be trusted again.
Trust is easy to tear apart. All you need is a buffoon shitting in his own diapers [1] or a bus littered with propaganda [2] and a dumbass uneducated populace. But it takes decades and/or immense suffering to (re)build. And for both the US and the UK we gave you not just one chance to show you're better, but multiple. The US first had Bush wo tried to rope us into the Iraq war with his WMD lies, then after Obama came Trump 1, and after Biden came Trump 2, and the final straw regarding the UK and its ever more braindead PM choices was Lettuce Liz [3].
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_Leave_bus
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Truss_lettuce
Literally just yesterday, Germany's public broadcaster released a 26-minute documentary. "The far right's rise: Is Germany at a breaking point?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOk01r2eoc0
The AfD, which became Germany's top-polling political party for the first time last year, is now the clear leader in polls. It may soon win an absolute majority in a German state election.
The far-right is also widely projected to win the 2027 French presidential election:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2027_F...
And Switzerland seriously considered immigration restrictions much harsher than anything contemplated by the US.
It's interesting to see how leftism changes as you cross the Atlantic. In the US it's usually baseless moral self-flagellation; in Europe it's usually baseless moral preening. In neither case do the facts seem to be particularly important.
"we gave you not just one chance to show you're better" is such a fascinating thing for you to say. For years our leaders told you to be less dependent on us. Now you're speaking as though your dependency on us was some kind of favor you were doing for us. It's mind-blowing how out-of-touch you guys can be.
(Exercise for you: Try to get a passport from Liechtenstein, even if you work there permanently for a Liechtenstein company, its unlikely that you can even rent an appartment there!)
Even if the EU becomes far right, far right governments don't work or trust each other. What you are saying is moot.
As long as ASML is helping to supply OpenAI with AI chips, Europe still trusts the US too much. https://pauseai.info/amsterdam-protest-2025-december
Of course these alliances won't survive forever, as these movements have to continually expand their definitions of "out-groups" to keep their core "in-groups" satisfied, since they keep making their countries' issues worse by attempting fixes that are easy, simple, and wrong. But when a movement is built around the rejection of any uncomfortable history or research mixed with a huge dose of anti-intellectualism, it is fundamentally incapable of ever reflecting and learning beyond what the personal gain of their leaders.
Unless there are objectively good reasons to expect this we must stay vigilant, since if we gamble on infighting and it goes poorly, the consequences could become horrifying.
yup, but the utter majority of foreign funding that was found in the AfD and the other far-right parties' scandals came from Russia. The propaganda they spout comes straight from Russia. The bot farms amplifying their propaganda are mostly Russian.
Sure, the US MAGA network, the super riches (Musk, Thiel, ...) aren't to be underestimated. But they are breaking apart already and without a cohesive force connecting them, they will be much less powerful.
I don't think that their propaganda is fully dependent on Russia. IMO their strategy was really easy to observe during/after the 2020 election: they do contentious things with barely any justification, then watch conservative social media spaces for explanations/justifications that users naturally share & amplify. From these options, they select ones advantageous to them, and then turn them into talking points. This machine doesn't need to get talking points from Russia! They just need a halfway charismatic leader to keep it going, especially due to my next point.
The bot farms are no longer needed thanks to AI! I guarantee you, they are already running plenty of bots themselves. And since these days most social media & news media companies are aligned with/owned by them, they can easily optimize their approach well enough to become dangerously effective.
I just don't see a reason to feel so safe about them breaking apart before major damage is done. Just look at how genuinely friendly Trump acts towards most highly authoritarian leaders, compared to the way he acts towards most other leaders. I assume they'll definitely break apart after e.g. the EU is broken up, because then the US will squeeze everyone else. But under Trump they're going to keep it up, as far as I can see.
I'm not really sure how you are comparing Trump's US - responsible for pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, tearing up the Iranian nuclear deal and then starting a war to reimpose it that has created a global energy crisis, kidnapping Maduro and threatening to invade Greenland, beginning a global trade war, giving up on climate mitigation, nuclear treaties and AI safety - with the UK over the same period.
Liz Truss is not really Trump's equivalent. She achieved exactly nothing in the UK, let alone the world, in her few weeks in office. It's also worth pointing out she didn't win a general election: she became PM via the Conservative Party's internal selection process.
The Brexit shitshow took years to resolve from the Brexit vote to the actual Brexit event and absolutely hogged attention all over the EU apparatus. We could have used the energy we had to expend on that crap (including trying to prevent a restart of the Ireland-related violence) to instead make the EU itself better, react to the multitude of crises happening during the time, or furthen the EU integration. But no, we had the constant noise of Brexit all the time.
There certainly is, and I for one would certainly appreciate it. The problem is, with Reform polling as high as it does... there is a pretty high chance that they torpedo any negotiations :(
That's a high horse you're sitting on there!
When your nation voted poorly last time you picked a homicidal maniac who killed people in death factories. Americans helped you then, at extreme cost.
Trump pumps-and-dumps the world economy, but his approval rating is also below 1/3. Most Americans clearly don't approve, so why should we not trust them?
If all it takes for democratic nations to stop working together is that they elect a crook once, we're all doomed. Many european nations are very close to picking their iwn "trumps" int he next elections.
In a democracy, any one crook's influence should be short-lived. That's the whole point of a democracy.
We need to help each other remain democracies, as the alternatives are so much worse.
That said, sometimes help comes in the form of removing the gold to say "you're out of line buddy".
because all it takes is for someone not as toddler-y as Trump to run for the job, the "moderates" in the GOP are mostly gone.
To me it never made any sense. The buffalo hat guys clearly had no greater plan, and the BBC actually had to apologize for faking a clip to make it seem Trump ordered it.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/13/bbc-doctored-tru...
The BBC spreads to all of the EU's other news outlets, so Europeans "know" there was a putsch attempt based on a fake clip. Literally fake news, which plays directly into Trumps narrative and adding to the teflon layer he seems covered in.
Exaggerations, bad faith reporting, assumptions of guilt based on hunches - that's counterproductive if you really want to hold power accountable.
It's very important that the accuser of a crook is not a known liar. Because then even the true accusations won't stick and the crook gets away.
The "apology" (BBC regrets the cut was not obvious to all) included:
which is hardly the hallmark of an apology.Of course he said the words, but not together as the sentence the BBC reported. The meaning was faked.
What the BBC did here was literally equivalent to filming someone saying "We should support Kamala and fight Trump at every opportunity" and cutting it to say "We should support Trump at every opportunity".
No honest person can accept that. No honest person can accept Trump either, for many reasons, but perhaps an actual coup-attempt is not one of those reasons.
We all live in bubbles these days, it's not easy. :-/
I just wanted to highlight a common bubble-truth that turned out to not be as true as many think. You may be convinced he tried a coup, but does the BBC story perhaps move the needle a little bit towards understanding how someone else might feel that maybe he didn't?
Accusations of trolling is depressing, but I appreciate you actually writing a comment instead of just smashing the downvote.
Trump and his cronies are openly attempting to break the EU apart via funding and amplifying right-wing movements across the EU. These movements are collaborating, sharing strategies and spreading the same talking points, while they're using their control over social media platforms etc. to suffocate our democracies.
I would love to be able to trust the US. But the guy currently pissing against everyone's legs was re-elected after an attempted Putsch. How could they ever remove all MAGA influence from all of society and government?
Even if the US proves me wrong and manages to turn the wheel around, I won't see the US as an ally again until 1-2 decades pass without republicans taking any control over the government.
That's a simplistic take.
Trump had less than 50% of the popular vote even though his opponent was clearly showing signs of dementia. The last-minute replacement had spent too much time being the "defund the police/eat the rich" sidekick to Biden and was clearly not representative of the views of the average American. She still got almost as many votes as Trump, from Americans who wanted to vote "Not Trump".
Seems to me the average American had little choice. All the Democrats had to do was field a candidate that could finish a coherent sentence mirroring the average American sentiment and they'd have landslide victory. But they didn't.
That's not helpful though, as she also made multiple public expressions of support for the defund movement, the protests-turned-riots after the Floyd murder, and the BLM movement.
I can't help thinking that made her a weak choice for both sides of that divide. Is she the tough on crime option or the anti-police one? Where does she actually stand?
I think if she had gone all-in on the tough-on-crime track she'd still have gotten all the protestor votes, and perhaps also the "can we stop police brutality without burning cars" votes. Which I think is a sizable chunk, perhaps even the most common opinion on the matter.
Anyway, all this to say that the explanation for the current situation is not as simple as "half of all Americans are crazy and evil". Current approval ratings clearly say most Americans know they effed up.
My first response was to a German who clearly felt the US as a whole is a lost cause, without acknowledging that Germany is in the process of making the same mistake. I wonder if the Germans will realize they effed up as quickly as the Americans have?
Both sides of the atlantic are throwing stones from glass houses, when we should be cooperating. The dictators are rejoicing...
What I am curious about is how that global leadership is going to change them, from citizens to government.
This isn't just going to go away. You can't just undo what Orange Mussolini is doing, and it'll take far longer than a decade before anything like a trusting relationship can be reestablished.
I promise you, no amount of change in US policies or election results is going to fix it.
Canada has realized that it's a national security issue. The issue is not "Republicans" or "TRUMP" , it's bigger than this.
There will be fuckery, and the election will not be fair, but any sort of steal will happen after votes happen.
Feels like I’ve seen this movie before
Don't ever take that bullshit. Nobody else is doing anywhere near the wild level of criminality. Seriously, all this procedure stuff around groups that are breaking the law is insane.
It'd be like if a policeman saw someone rob a place, put the things in the car, and then the thief says "oh but there's a no looking in car rule" and then just drives away.
This is all complete insanity. Charge these people with the dozens of crimes they are committing every day.
Revoke the appointments and change the rules. SCOTUS isn't some unquestionable papal position with divine right.
The wild corruption of accepting gifts from groups arguing on the court and then using Galaxy brain weasel language to claim it doesn't count. No. Every person in prison has a reason why the law shouldn't have applied to them.
Are we a nation of rules or aren't we?
You follow the rules and maintain integrity of your oath or you're kicked to the curb.
And calling this a both sides political thing is the most tired dodge I've seen. I'm tired of the bullshit excuses why someone with a Trump has can rob bank
This can change quickly, as current management is less about comerce and more about "being the new Mao". If Russia can get Ukraine, USA can get Venezuela resources and threat Greenland, why wouldn't I get Taiwan?
It has always been a legitimacy issue over who is the legitimate heir of the Chinese empire. China is still in a civil war. The communists (CCP) conquered the mainland and the former ruling party of China (KMT) fled to Taiwan. Taiwan is more successful than mainland China per capita on almost every standard economic and human development metric. It exists as a thorn in Beijing's side.
From the PRC perspective, reunification is a matter of national pride, and has nothing to do with semiconductors.
Why are people so condescending?
> and has nothing to do with semiconductors.
Sure, sure. That's why TMSC builds their fabs elswhere, that's why EU also stresses the priority of that. Also:
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/19/us-taiwan-chip-deal-silicon-...
https://taiwaninsight.org/2025/05/12/tsmc-the-enduring-silic...
https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/11/03/taiwan-silicon-shield-t...
https://finance.biggo.com/news/3fd3ce2a-9855-4b15-aef2-b9ec7...
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391522122_Silicon_S...
So how about you shut your mouth or speak with less arrogance.
Recall that Taiwan only exists because during the Chinese civil war, the United States provided the KMT with billions of dollars of military and financial aid. The KMT lost the mainland to the CCP (supported by the Soviets) and fled to Taiwan. The U.S. provided $4 billion dollars of aid, worth approximately $50 billion today.
The PRC would have retaken Taiwan decades ago if not for the U.S. guaranteeing Taiwan.
How does Taiwan "switch allies" to the adversary that's trying to annex them?
But regardless. Polls of your average citizen aren’t worth a whole lot considering most people get their information from social media.
I do think it'll take a few years before Americans wake up to how badly their reputation has tanked around the world across successive governments of either party in the recent decade.
Greenland, Iran, Falklands, Ukraine, Gaza, Taiwan, all these things probably feel like minor missteps in the US news cycle but they have had a major impact.
Is anyone storing their gold reserves in China except Cambodia?
PS: We are still doing trade with Russia regardless of how many of us they killed. Will happen with the US as well.