Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
User ID: 137
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
The "European blue tribe" invariably tends to mean ca 80 % of (voting) Europeans here, though. The share will most likely remain similar in the future, considering that Trump just played, among others, all the rw Euro parties that had been praising him and assuring that the transatlantic alliance will continue without problems in the future.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
The Twitter MAGAboomer extraordinaire CatTurd2 has been beating the anti-Europe drum heavy, at least.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
There is, famously, an European country that has gone gung-ho for anti-immigrant measures, not only in their country but trying to push them Europe-wide, in the recent decades. The said country is currently at the center of global politics due to being specifically targetted for Trump in this entire Greenland debacle. Clearly the whole idea that these things are somehow connected is just as much a figleaf for Trump's monkey impulses as anything else than MAGA talking heads have attempted to present in an effort of sanewashing.
Moreover, it's obvious that there's a fraction of the American right (a powerful fraction? Who knows, but it tends to become evident in times like this) that just plain hates [Western] Europe. This issue cannot be even discussed, as Euros pointing it out immediately leads to the said rightists going "you're imagining it, you're gaslighting us, nobody here even THINKS of Europe at all [post le epic Mad Men meme here], we just hate cucked European governments, Europeans have always hated us so we're only reacting now" etc etc.
If one was online 20 years ago, the same fraction was hating on [many countries of Western] Europe back then, too, for not joining the Great Freedom Crusade for Freedom, with somewhat different arguments (the word "cuck" hadn't been invented back then, after all), but clearly still similar impulses. Indeed, it seems likely that many of the warblogger readers and Bush diehards of those days are now Trump diehards, doing the same stuff as back then but believing it to be somehow different because Trump is so so different from all the preceeding libs and cucks that it's completely different when the same things happen over and over again.
The European right, or parts of it, shares a part of the blame too - there's been a veritable cottage industry of European RW grifters painting a hysterical and exaggerated image of the situation in Europe regarding immigration, specifically posting in English and not their native languages for an American audience (often since they've already tried their hand in local politics and failed to gain any traction) to get Substack subs and, if particularly successful, even appearances in popular American podcasts or pivots to the American RW think tank / media ecosystem or whatever. It's almost certain that these types and their arguments have also affected the American RW ecosphere, including it's social-media-addicted leadership, creating room for the mindset that leads to the current events happening. Some seem to now be going "C-come on, you guys... it wasn't THAT bad, we don't need all this..."
I was just recently thinking about the guys I know (from a various social circles) that have had a lot of girls and how what they have in common, moreso than looks, is just that they're generally lively, charismatic and fun to be with, the sort of guys that guys also generally want to have as friends. When it comes to lotharios I've known short guys, tall guys, thin guys, chubby guys (even at least one morbidly obese guy), muscular guys, non-muscular guys, whatever. I'm not saying looks are unimportant, just that looks more affect the attractiveness of the girls you can get with rather than the basic ability to be a promiscuous guy if you wish. (And also that heterosexual guys genuinely don't always understand what girls find physically attractive.)
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Is this the sort of a motive where words like "right" or "wrong" even have any meaning?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Because Trump has got it in his head that great leaders are the ones who expand their country's territory and Greenland seems like the easiest possibility for expanding bigly. I don't think there's anything else to it at this point, the given explanations don't hold water. Just monkey brain going ""Give Greenland me give annex Greenland me annex Greenland give me annex Greenland give me you."
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
I thought that this was an artifact of how the survey supposedly finding this was conducted, ie. they asked about domestic general in general, during a woman's lifetime, and then this was represented as abuse within current relationship, ignoring cases where women turn towards exclusively dating women in part because they've been with so many abusive men in the past.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Even if we treat this by the standards of traditional power politics, traditionally, when a big country has a vassal state that has gone above and beyond the call of duty to pay obeisance to the patron, the patron would still not turn around to fuck the smaller vassal just for the lols.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Probably prudent to also mention his follow-up tweet, where he acknowledges the criticisms he's been getting and commits to self-improvement.
Seems to be a lot of people who are having their first rodeo with Murphy. This sort of autismal "brutal self-honesty" stuff has always been his "thing".
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
Just an anecdote, but I just read this webcomic by a Finnish webcomic artist Minna Sundberg (apparently her main webcomic Stand Still, Stay Silent was pretty big in that sphere? I hadn't encountered it before, though I had encountered some panels she had drawn), with the comic detailing her conversion from atheism to Calvinism through listening to online Calvinist content makers. Converting to Calvinism is really really rare here, the parish she goes to was established in 2018 and I'm not sure there even were any formally Calvinist parishes here before, say, 2015. Seems like there's some pull, at least.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
I suspect Elop did that intentionally, though he just wanted to deliver fresh game to Microsoft and fumbled the company altogether. Now it's either iPhone or Chinese phones, and you tried to kill Huawei too.
This is a pretty common theory in Finland. After some Googling I found a translation of a book attempting to deboonk it, though I haven't read it myself.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3mo ago
My understanding is that, in France, they genuinely attempted to uphold a government with negotiated support from Le Pen's party (not an uncommon model in other European countries) only for Le Pen to end that co-operation for populist reasons at basically the first opportunity.
Barnier’s minority coalition had been essentially propped up by Le Pen, who, although outside government, had an unprecedentedly powerful role as Barnier attempted to placate her to avoid her party joining a no-confidence vote. Barnier had negotiated with her directly, tapering the budget to her demands.
But Le Pen pulled rank, saying Barnier’s budget was a danger to the country. She said French people had expected Barnier’s appointment to calm government institutions and provide a “vision for the country”. Instead, she said, the budget was a disaster.
Le Pen wrote on social media that, by following the “catastrophic continuity of Emmanuel Macron”, Barnier, who led a coalition dominated by the right and centre, “could only fail”. She said she was “protecting and defending” her party’s 11 million voters, who she said were deeply concerned about the cost of living. Jean-Philippe Tanguy, a National Rally MP, said: “[Having] no budget is better than the actual budget, which says a lot about how bad it is.”
Not only is that not something that happens in countries where the firewall actually continues to exist (meaning Germany and... what? Belgium?), it's also an example that mainstream parties may have legit reasons to not work with populists even beyond "they disagree on immigration and are afraid of being called racist fascist Nazis" and similar stereotypical reasons.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3mo ago
You seem to lack a theory of mind, so perhaps try to imagine Chinese doing a color revolution in Canada, the victorious revolutionaries installing a government that's half Chinese and then signing a defence pact with China that promises PLA bases on the Great Lakes and both seaboards within a few years.
I genuinely do not understand why this hypothetical scenario keeps being used when a similar thing has already happened for realsies in Cold-War-Era Cuba. As we know from history, the US reacted with great hostility but did not actually end up doing anything resembling the current war; even the Bay of Pigs was basically a single instance of prodding without US ground troops. Furthermore, Russia has certainly never acted in a way indicating that it respects spheres of interest of the sort it claims for itself in post-Soviet territories regarding Cuba, consistently supporting Castro and opposing US sanctions and other procedures even after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3mo ago
Maybe it's the social media and the presense of foreigners that draws out the sort of affected soccer-hating I often see.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3mo ago
Yeah, he's mentioned Barron's fandom as a reason for some of these, but I don't see Trump as the sort of a guy who would go to these lengths just to make one of his kids happy.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3mo ago
Trump: "When you look at football in the US, soccer in the US -- we seem to never call it that, because we have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that's called football. But when you think about it, shouldn't it really be called football? We have to come up with another name for the NFL stuff." (https://x.com/atrupar/status/1997001519829242351)
Like said, this is Trump being Trump and Fifa, the corrupt institution that it is, had just awarded him the "Fifa peace prize" to sweeten the pot, but this is hardly the first or even the second or third time Trump has specifically sought to be associated with soccer teams or soccer in general. Trump apparently played soccer in high school.
I don't think the previous US presidents have gone this far in associating themselves with soccer. Googling mainly reveals them congratulating the USWNT when it has won something, or the like. Is Trump the first soccer president? If he is, it would probably be something hardly anyone would be prone to taking into account, American soccer fans still being stereotypically left-wing and Trump supporters probably falling into the "soccer is ghey crap for commie faggits" category.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3mo ago
I've only seen the phrase "quiet quitting" being used by employers complaining about the employees doing this when they, as said, just punch the card and do what is necessary. If there's some trend of employees using this phrase, it seems like it's a recuperation of an earlier employer jargon term.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3mo ago
But… they weren’t being jerks? What’s the specific outrageous thing here?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3mo ago
For those too young to remember the 2000 election, Cheney was viewed one of the elder statesmen of the Republican party and what we might call today an "enlightened centrist". He and George Bush Jr. (son of Former president George HW Bush) were presented as a return to the norms of civility and collegiality after the chaos, acrimony, and culture-warring that had defined much the Clinton administration. The idea was that by embracing "Compassionate Conservativism" the conflict between traditional conservatives and what we would recognize today as the proto-woke could be resolved.
I'm not an American and was 16 when the 2000 US election happened, but wasn't "compassionate conservatism" more an attempt to differentiate the Bush campaign from the economic views of the Gingrich era than anything to do with "proto-woke" and culture warring? Like, the Bush admin certainly didn't seem like it was shying from 00s culture war when it put John Ashcroft in as the Attorney General, but also seemed like it was attempting to offer conservative-ish, Christianity-tinged solutions to traditional lib welfare state issues like education or Social Security.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3mo ago
Just to check, you know the women in the Gen Z Boss and a Mini video were running a profitable startup?
Also, they were specifically working in that video - in other words, they were creating an extremely successful, widely seen viral campaigning that still gets remembered to this day. (Why else would they be chanting about a "secret product and a trench"? For fun?)
I have to say that the Gen Z Boss and a Mini video also works as a great Shiri's scissor, as I've never understood why it sent people into such a frothing rage, not even before I learned about the wider context (the girls own the company, the company is successful, it was literally intended to be viral ad content etc.) and certainly even less after that.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3mo ago
Finlandization after 1944 (remember, after 1940 Finland's eventual choice was to refight the Soviets) was possible specifically because the Soviets were willing to sign a separate peace to free up troops for the vastly bigger and more important cause of vanquishing Germany. This time Russians are only fighting Ukraine and have basically no need to accept anything beyond complete submission, for now, unless the costs become too large.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
4mo ago
In my experience, the median European who "prances around with Ukrainian flags", if we take this to mean showing the Ukrainian flag on their online profiles and such, is a center-right-to-centrist liberal type moreso than an advocate of wokeness.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
4mo ago
Mamdani won Zoomers, including male Zoomers, as comprehensively as the Millennials. While there's no specific racial breakdown for age/gender classes, Mamdani also won white voters in general, so it's a fair guess that he's probably won white male Zoomers, too, as a demographic.
The whitehouse.gov / DHS Twitter messaging line is not really designed to appeal to Zoomers as a whole generation but to a very specific segment of forumlords of the sort that probably staff the junior ranks in the apparatus. The same problem in reverse the Dems had when they let Millennial Tumblr users design their messaging.
Without further statistics or anything my gut feeling is that actual Nevertrumpers are a very small section of people who supported GOP in 2005, that yoru standard hard Republican base type went just as bigly for Bush in 2005 as they are doing for Trump in 2025, and "neocon" is largely a meaningless label at this point, considering that the supposedly totally non-neocon Trump is doing or threatening to do the sort of interventions neocons only dreamed about in 2005.
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