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Watching the disastrous discussion between Zelensky Trump and Vance I wonder how you guys here feel? The whole thing made me nauseous , treating an ally like that is disgusting , unpresidential and certainly geopolitcally inept. The EU-US relationship is not salvagable and at this point I would clap if US bases were emptied and NATO dissolved. Decouple the EU from the US as fast as possible and be independent. There is no way to talk sense into lunatics like Trump and Vance and Putin's control over them somehow seems to be absolute. What an absolute disaster. I know that there will be differing opinions here but at least most of you must agree that this is too much, or not , maybe Russian propaganda really has you convinced that Ukrainians are stealing money and started the war or some nonsense.
I'm embarrassed and disgusted. We should be the ones thanking Ukraine for doing the dirty work of defending Western civilization for us. All we've had to contribute is $120 billion in weapons that probably would have been thrown away. What an absolute bargain. I'm glad that Zelenskyy held his ground and didn't cave into their petty guilt-tripping bitchfest.
What, specifically, about Western Civilization has the war in Ukraine defended?
Russia is an authoritarian regime that doesn't respect secular liberal values, allies with muslim terrorists, and oppresses its own people. Anyone fighting such a regime, and preventing its incursion into Europe, is defending Western civilization.
I do not share your "secular liberal values", and am not interested in maintaining them. The median European neither shares my values nor respects my inalienable rights, and are both willing to coordinate meanness against me and has a long history of cooperating with efforts at such coordination. Any claim that Europe is a bastion against Muslim extremism seems laughable on the face, given Europe's obsession with importing as many people from extremist Muslim countries as possible and their evident failure to actually suppress the extremism of their new citizens. Europe as a bulwark of "Oppression" is likewise laughable; the median European would prefer me to be imprisoned than living as I am.
"Western Civilization" does not, I think, have a definition that we share in common, so I decline appeals to it.
Of course Europe is not a bastion against muslim extremism, but I think that's simply a failure of Europeans being too optimistic about letting in highly religious immigrants, hoping they would be converted to secular values. Russia, however, openly sides with dagestani warlords and invites them to rape and pillage Europe. If I had my way, Europe and the US would be completely rid of both christian and islamic oppression. That's not possible right now, but it could happen someday. Defeating Putin's barbarian orc army is a start.
If your starting point in a negotiation is "let's defeat this army first and THEN we can rid the US of your chosen religion's oppression" it seems like you are not going to win a lot of new allies.
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