Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
User ID: 137
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3d ago
Well, yes, but he's also in a different position from just some ordinary Joe Sixpack shooting his mouth. He is supposed to be a statesman of some sort. There are (unstated but still existing) rules and codes for statesmanly behavior, especially in international contexts.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3d ago
I'm not really even talking about choosing masters, just that the current chaos in DC makes China look at least a bit more appealing than previously.
One of the huge risks involved in China is, of course, that if it decided to fundamentally and decisively to alter its tack (restore doctrinaire Marxism-Leninism and go for global revolution, say), it would be that much more fateful for everyone else. Nevertheless, insofar it is in America's interests to prevent this for happening, it's currently dropping the ball.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3d ago
When OUR guys do it, it's just Twitter ragebaiting and flaming. When THEIR guys do it, it's some unsolicited jab about "Murka," or obesity , or guns, or something the current president did.
I also wonder how much of this is just Europeans trying to do to the Americans the same sort of international bants that Europeans tend to do to each other when meeting in international settings, and those bants failing to land.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3d ago
Is it really that weird why there's now a certain amount of speculation about whether it would be wise for EU (or Canada) to move at least a bit towards China?
What is prized in global politics is consistency and predictability. China is extremely predictable. The outlines of its foreign policy have been the same at least since the end of Cold War. When Xi took over, nobody seriously entertained the possibility that he'd do something different in this sphere than his predecessors, which he indeed hasn't done. When he relinquishes his position, his successor will do the same. His rhetoric matches what his country does. What China does may be annoying (going bonkers if someone caters to Dalai Lama or Taiwan) or hostile (espionage, support to Russia), but these can be priced in and accounted for.
Trump is inconsistent and unpredictable, both regarding his own previous actions and the policy lines of the previous presidents. While America's foreign policy largely the same, there are now new elements (who could have guessed that the idea of military intervention to seize another NATO member's territory would have even been on the table?) to account for. These wild scenarios probably won't take place, but they might - Trump's rhetoric doesn't match what his country does, expect when it does. What's more, there's a general feeling that Trumpists seriously believe in Trump Year Zero, that Trump is so special and so different that his election means America can just junk all of its previous commitments (made by worse cucked presidents who are not Trump and thus are not as legitimate as he is), which just increases the unpredictability. What will Trump do with, say, Russia? In the end, who knows? He probably doesn't even know himself right now what he will do in the end.
I think that one of the reasons for the TACO narrative is less that it's a burn on Trump (though it plays a part) and more that it's a narrative that attempts to assert at least some normalcy and consistency to this maelstorm. However, a problem is that now that the narrative itself is at play, there's a risk that it bugs Trump enough that he stops chickening out.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3d ago
There's a nonzero chance of being invaded by Russia with participation of Chinese troops.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3d ago
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.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3d 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
3d ago
The Twitter MAGAboomer extraordinaire CatTurd2 has been beating the anti-Europe drum heavy, at least.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
4d 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
8d ago
Is this the sort of a motive where words like "right" or "wrong" even have any meaning?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
8d 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
13d 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
16d 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
20d 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
24d 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
29d 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
1mo 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
1mo 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
1mo 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
1mo 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
1mo 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
2mo 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.
But it's not "seemingly out of nowhere"! If you're an European who's been using the Internet for decades then that entire time has meant encountering American conservatives and libertarians shitting on Europe and pouring scorn on it! And it is assuredly just as annoying to see European rightwingers (and, of course, liberals and left-wingers too) adopting and trying to ram through simplified American slop ideologies that they haven't bothered to even try to localize.
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