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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025

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EU institutions and bureaucrats are unironically proud of EU being regulatory superpower, some of them really believe in how they are essential for regulating the whole world.

It's practically dark humor that EU efforts to be a regulatory superpower abroad are fuel to the EU-US divorce, which in turn justifies further strengthening the EU institutions. It may be all according to keikaku to some EU advocates, but I've heard many express incredulity about how various US political leaders might take issues with attempts to fine American companies with great political influence into compliance with European Union political interests.

The sort of default Atlanticism that might view continental political propaganda as unobjectionable but Russian political propaganda as toxic is passing away with the Boomers. The emerging generations filling the bureaucracies are increasingly likely to see it either from a neutral principle lens, in which case either European propaganda is just as bad or Russian propaganda is just as harmless as the other, or through a partisan friend-foe lens. The later case is just as bad in its own way, as it means the European-Russian axis only matters in so much that it provides a stick to beat the opponent with, regardless of from which direction.

Geopolitical alliances crack when one party is seen as the partisan partner of one's own domestic political opponents. Sometimes that crack can be overcome by sufficient time, see the South Korean left's political evolution regarding views on the US following the dictatorship period. But actively pursuing it unprompted is somewhere between feckless, malpractice, or a deliberate tradeoff for shorter-term priorities considered more important.

Geopolitical alliances crack when one party is seen as the partisan partner of one's own domestic political opponents.

TBF, this kinda goes both ways.

From the US point of view, the EU supports the Democrats against the Republicans (in a lot of ways), and thus the Republicans see the EU as backing their domestic enemies.

From the EU point of view, the US is supporting the European far-right (by providing communications that circumvent the various EU censorship laws), and thus the EU establishment see the US as backing their domestic enemies.

I happen to be extremely unsympathetic to the EU establishment's position, but that's because I see their suppression of the far-right as an oligarchical attempt to revoke democracy and thus not a legitimate state interest.

It indeed was written to go both ways. The number of alliances that have died after a suppressive elite supported from afar was overthrown is uncountable, as are the number of alliances that are stillborn because one party excepts assistance / pardon for suppressing domestic opposition.

It does not help the European Union that it is not actually a treaty ally of the United States, but rather that its elites tried to transfer the benefits of alliances with various national members to the EU itself.