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I was pleasantly surprised to read a post from you that was not just more long-winded China-boosting, but you had to go and spoil it there at the end. I used to find your posts much more interesting before you developed this fixation, tbh. Do you live in China? If you do not, I strongly recommend you move there and work there. As your Carney quote points out, it's important to "name reality." The most famous Chinese sage even has a term for this, 正名. You'll love it.
Anyway, to address your main point, I don't see any rebuttal from you about why TiltingGambit is wrong, just more of your typical sneering about how Americans are arrogant and dumb. It almost seems personal. Chinese cultural output has made great strides in the last 15 or so years (when I was in college studying Chinese, China would come out with a martial arts movie that did decently in the US and the world maybe once every few years -- usually by Hong Kong directors) but it is anemic compared to that of the U.S. Now they produce web novels that are read by gray tribe weirdos (I say this with fondness) but nearly zero normal or high status people in the west consume Chinese content. An improvement but hardly a threat to American culture hegemony.
The way I see the Euro/Canadian threats to cozy up to China is that if they are still truly Western countries, they are probably bluffing. What European nation would willingly submit to Ottoman or Mongol hegemony just to spite the Pope? Overtures, sure, symbolic gestures and treaties maybe, but never submission. If the enlightenment "globohomo" religion has mutated and innovated to such a degree that it is no longer recognizably a strain of Christianity (the soil of western civilization) but some new thing that sees both the Western Christian nation state and the Chinese civilization state as equally alien and thus roughly equivalent, then, well, the threats are probably genuine and there is probably no way to stop the break up of what was once called "western civilization."
I'm seeing two types of responses from "our American friends" on Greenland. One is just the ugliest bullying, the joy in humiliating us for no reason, who they equate, in their mind, to the hated blue tribe.
And the other is total complacency; as if ignoring trump's constant threats, insults, and outrageous declarations that one or both allies will not defend the other, was the only option for america's (at this point, nominal) allies, indefinitely. Just pretend it's not happening, quietly absorb any pain that comes your way, and hope that things will go back to the way they were; "Nostalgia as a strategy", as Carney put it. I'm questioning whether war for Greenland or Canada would even wake these people up, or if they'd just act like the Japanese government over manchuria initially: "disregard that, it's just our army, we have nothing to do with that". "Shoot back? C'mon, we're both of christian culture, where's your loyalty to western civ?".
You only have to wait out Trump. The sneering at America from the general direction of Europe isn't going to stop, ever. Yeah, you have to put up with Trump doing his Sam Kinneson act in your general direction for a while. In the overall scheme of things, it really is no big deal.
There's talk, and there's what trump is doing. Those aren't jokes, or some trash-talk at the ballgame. When he says he doubts we will come to america's aid, insult aside, that means america possibly won't come to ours. So our alliance is worthless, and we need to make new arrangements immediately.
If he attacks greenland or canada like he threatens, it's even simpler: we'll just shoot, and people will die - maybe even a real war like russia-ukraine. It's not like Ukraine's weakness stopped ukraine from shooting back, like many thought. Or the fundamental stupidity of the operation stopped Putin from attacking.
This is reality. Trump is dispensing with some of the polite fictions because they are distorting peoples' perception of actual reality. In reality, there are not many scenarios where Europe can possibly come to America's aid in any substantive way other than moral support, regardless of treaty obligations. That's Europe's choice, and for better or worse it makes them a much less valuable ally.
So I interpreted it correctly. Let's just wind this thing down. I am honestly tired of explaining the value of an alliance with a bloc with a huge economy and population and very similar interests. I can't do it anymore, despite being an Americanophile through and through. We are too far apart on what we think the other brings to the table. Or maybe we hate each other like an old couple.
I want merz and everyone to tell trump to fuck off in no uncertain terms and stop giving him face-saving exits. Full tariffs, leave ramstein, etc. It's headed towards it anyway. They are slowly learning to deal with Trump's trick of defect defect defect until he finds resistance.
Why would you suppose we have very similar interests?
What sort of American?
There's a considerable number of Americans who would welcome this, I'd imagine.
I don't want to live in Europe. I don't want to live anywhere like Europe. I don't want where I live to become more like Europe, even marginally. I would prefer actual war against the authorities to this happening. Your entire social consensus is inimical to what I view as fundamental human rights and basic principles of liberty. We are not friends in any meaningful sense; you are allied with my tribal enemies, and will be for the foreseeable future.
Again, Carney says it best:
I perceive integration with Europe one of the major sources of my subordination.
oh generally, if you can like people in general. It's ideological convergence mostly: individualism, freedom (especially speech), plus a certain "moral affinity for the strong". I think american hegemony was largely beneficial.
You: have a pathological hatred of the blue tribe, which you transfer onto europeans. One day, frustrated in your attempts to provoke a civil war at home, you'll charge naked at Greenland or Vancouver. Decoupling from such volatile and extreme polarization makes sense, of course.
I do not recognize a shared understanding of "freedom" or "free speech". European governments have expended considerable effort to curtail both my freedoms generally and especially my ability to speak. They have publicly discussed why doing so is a priority to them and strategized on how to do it better.
Hatred, certainly. Sinful, certainly. Pathological... Less so.
You are supporting a tribe that does not believe I should have a career or even a job. You are supporting a tribe that wants to destroy the economies of any place where legible concentrations of people like me live. That openly supports mobs beating people like me in the street. That does not believe people like me deserve equal protection under the law, and has been working for decades to deny it to us. That openly celebrates the murder of people like me, and the death of children like mine.
You are supporting a tribe that has, in my view, proved itself fundamentally hostile to every facet of my existence.
This might be workable if people like me were some vanishing, abnormal minority. In the real world, there are several dozen millions of us, and we retain considerable political, economic, and physical power, and we are currently negotiating a consensus on how to use that power to handle the above problems. Electing Trump was an interim product of that negotiation, but if and when he is expended, we will make additional attempts until we perceive the problem to be solved or until we are destroyed.
You are wrong that I am attempting to provoke a civil war in my home. You are wrong that those who are attempting to provoke a civil war in my home are having their efforts "frustrated". You are certainly wrong that the end result of this process is going to be crazy people charging naked into Greenland or Vancouver.
Dase is correct that this Greenland affair is downstream of the culture war. He is incorrect that the Culture War has been won in any meaningful sense by the election of Donald Trump to a second presidential term. The richest, most powerful country in the world cannot reach consensus on what its laws mean or how to enforce them. Its population has lost any semblance of values-coherence, and increasingly considers fellow countrymen an existential threat. For the last decade, people here have been treating this all as some sort of elaborate silly-goosery, but our actual inability to reach agreement on extremely fundamental questions of basic coexistence is a very big problem for people like yourself, who have offloaded most of the practicalities of your physical security to our military. Most of you seem to be handling this problem by hoping it goes away, that this is all a weird, momentary aberration, and that we will go back to presenting congenial Blueness into the future. I do not think that is going to happen, but you pays your money and you takes your chance.
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