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> thus earning U.S. money and making EU technologically and politically dependent from the U.S. This came with a responsibility to provide military protection

> thus earning U.S. money and making EU technologically and politically dependent from the U.S. This came with a responsibility to provide military protection to the US via NATO. Trumps voters don't want America to be an empire, responsible for protecting a bunch of far-away places that don't share their values, that's why they called the movement "America first". Historically speaking being an empire generally turns out to be a terrible deal in the long term, with maintaining the empire eventually becoming too expensive and leading to collapse and reduced living standards back home, like happened to the Roman empire, and the British empire after WW2.

iammjm 2y ago
>responsible for protecting a bunch of far-away places that don't share their values You mean Europe? There's literally not a place in the world (except for Canada and Australia) that shares as many common values with the US as Europe. Unless the very definition of these values suddenly changed for the US with Agent Orange. As far as "far-away places go", it might take a similar amount of time to get from east to west coast of USA as to fly from one of the US coasts to somewhere in Europe... Europe has been aligned with US culturally and politically for decades and it helped to promote US interests worldwide and to fight US wars. And when we need you the most for the first time since the 1990 you decided to fuck us. I feel personally betrayed, and I imagine there are many, many more like me. Your decisions will ultimately be bad for us all.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
  >There's literally not a place in the world (except for Canada and Australia) that shares as many common values with the US as Europe. I just don't think that's true. Europeans seem much more collectivist, whereas the US is more individualist. That's why Europeans express disdain for US policies around healthcare, guns, etc. Europeans express a tremendous amount of disdain for the US online, calling Americans fat, dumb, neo-imperialist, etc. That's been going on for ages before Trump. It's done a lot to undermine the transatlantic relationship, in my view. People-to-people connections matter for diplomacy. How would you feel if an American insulted your leader with a derogatory nickname such as "Agent Orange"? Europeans are so used to expressing disdain for the US that they hardly even notice themselves doing it. >when we need you the most for the first time since the 1990 you decided to fuck us. From my perspective, we deterred Russia for 80 years following WW2, and provided almost 50% of the support for Ukraine to date. That's more than enough to account for European support in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US provided 80% of the muscle for Iraq and Afghanistan. For a fair relationship, Europe should expect to provide 80% of the muscle to deter Russia. A reset to fairness should not feel like betrayal. Europe gets most of the benefit from NATO, therefore Europe should do most of the spending in NATO. Fix this pie chart: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Nato-Defense-Spending_Site.jpg https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/...
  - Timon3 2y ago
    > How would you feel if an American insulted your leader with a derogatory nickname such as "Agent Orange"? Europeans are so used to expressing disdain for the US that they hardly even notice themselves doing it. This happens literally every day. There's a bunch of xenophobic stereotypes about my country I've only ever heard from Americans, and on average I've received far more vitriol from them than from my fellow Europeans. Maybe your views are colored by your subjective experiences, without being truly representative of the objective facts? Because I have no idea how else you could have the idea that what you described doesn't happen the other way around.
    - 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
      >This happens literally every day. There's a bunch of xenophobic stereotypes about my country I've only ever heard from Americans, and on average I've received far more vitriol from them than from my fellow Europeans. So how does it make you feel? Does it make you want to send troops to America's next Iraq?
      - Timon3 2y ago
        It honestly doesn't have a bearing on my political leanings regarding America, especially since there are also many nice and wonderful Americans I interact with. My political opinions are instead based on the political positions, trend, instability & recently insanity of America. If I took personal opinions I'm reading online into consideration, I'd be very open to manipulation by the platforms themselves. Just look at something like Reddit - I'm guessing at least half the comments are AI generated these days, if not more.
        0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
        >It honestly doesn't have a bearing on my political leanings regarding America, especially since there are also many nice and wonderful Americans I interact with. OK, well, can you understand if some of your countrymen didn't wish to send troops to America's next Iraq, due to the xenophobia they experienced? That's just human nature regardless of what country you're from. That's what I've been trying to explain. You know that in the US, conservatives are over-represented in the military. If the US does fight Russia, they will be the ones dying for you. Driven by a sense of American patriotism that Europe loves to belittle. It just doesn't make any sense. >If I took personal opinions I'm reading online into consideration, I'd be very open to manipulation by the platforms themselves. I don't believe it's manipulation. Europeans have been anti-American for as long as I can remember. I don't think it is just an internet thing. But yes, it is ironic that lots of Europeans (in this thread even) post, and vote on comments, in more or less the way they would post if they were being paid by Russia. In any case, if we're going to disregard the internet, why not disregard my comments too? Maybe I'm an AI bot. Or maybe you'd find me to be nice and wonderful if we were interacting in person :-)
rfrey 2y ago
> Thumps voters don't want America to be an empire Why the leadup (complete with de-humanization of citizens!) to annexation of Canada, then? Why normalization of invading parts of Europe (Greenland)? Why talk about taking over Panama? Trump is 100% pro-empire, he's just too thick to understand that America already had empire without having Google Maps have everything the same colour.
xorcist 2y ago
> Trumps voters don't want America to be an empire, responsible for protecting a bunch of far-away Then why did they elect an imperialist? The current president has already announced the possibility of military interventions against Canada and Denmark in order to expand US territory. That's a kind of imperalism not seen since the middle of last century, when most empires started to proritize soft power over territory as the military and economic powers started to unite. It was easier to secure cheap natural resources than to secure the resources themselves. > that's why they called the movement "America first" We should always listen to action, not words. Rhetoric is cheap. The actions tells us that the US deficit will continue to grow. It is not clear yet how much, but everything points to an increase in military spending. Other parts of the state will have to be cut back.

iammjm 2y ago

>responsible for protecting a bunch of far-away places that don't share their values You mean Europe? There's literally not a place in the world (except for Canada and Australia) that shares as many common values with the US as Europe. Unless the very definition of these values suddenly changed for the US with Agent Orange. As far as "far-away places go", it might take a similar amount of time to get from east to west coast of USA as to fly from one of the US coasts to somewhere in Europe... Europe has been aligned with US culturally and politically for decades and it helped to promote US interests worldwide and to fight US wars. And when we need you the most for the first time since the 1990 you decided to fuck us. I feel personally betrayed, and I imagine there are many, many more like me. Your decisions will ultimately be bad for us all.

0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
>There's literally not a place in the world (except for Canada and Australia) that shares as many common values with the US as Europe. I just don't think that's true. Europeans seem much more collectivist, whereas the US is more individualist. That's why Europeans express disdain for US policies around healthcare, guns, etc. Europeans express a tremendous amount of disdain for the US online, calling Americans fat, dumb, neo-imperialist, etc. That's been going on for ages before Trump. It's done a lot to undermine the transatlantic relationship, in my view. People-to-people connections matter for diplomacy. How would you feel if an American insulted your leader with a derogatory nickname such as "Agent Orange"? Europeans are so used to expressing disdain for the US that they hardly even notice themselves doing it. >when we need you the most for the first time since the 1990 you decided to fuck us. From my perspective, we deterred Russia for 80 years following WW2, and provided almost 50% of the support for Ukraine to date. That's more than enough to account for European support in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US provided 80% of the muscle for Iraq and Afghanistan. For a fair relationship, Europe should expect to provide 80% of the muscle to deter Russia. A reset to fairness should not feel like betrayal. Europe gets most of the benefit from NATO, therefore Europe should do most of the spending in NATO. Fix this pie chart: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Nato-Defense-Spending_Site.jpg https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/...
- Timon3 2y ago
  > How would you feel if an American insulted your leader with a derogatory nickname such as "Agent Orange"? Europeans are so used to expressing disdain for the US that they hardly even notice themselves doing it. This happens literally every day. There's a bunch of xenophobic stereotypes about my country I've only ever heard from Americans, and on average I've received far more vitriol from them than from my fellow Europeans. Maybe your views are colored by your subjective experiences, without being truly representative of the objective facts? Because I have no idea how else you could have the idea that what you described doesn't happen the other way around.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
    >This happens literally every day. There's a bunch of xenophobic stereotypes about my country I've only ever heard from Americans, and on average I've received far more vitriol from them than from my fellow Europeans. So how does it make you feel? Does it make you want to send troops to America's next Iraq?
    - Timon3 2y ago
      It honestly doesn't have a bearing on my political leanings regarding America, especially since there are also many nice and wonderful Americans I interact with. My political opinions are instead based on the political positions, trend, instability & recently insanity of America. If I took personal opinions I'm reading online into consideration, I'd be very open to manipulation by the platforms themselves. Just look at something like Reddit - I'm guessing at least half the comments are AI generated these days, if not more.
      - 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
        >It honestly doesn't have a bearing on my political leanings regarding America, especially since there are also many nice and wonderful Americans I interact with. OK, well, can you understand if some of your countrymen didn't wish to send troops to America's next Iraq, due to the xenophobia they experienced? That's just human nature regardless of what country you're from. That's what I've been trying to explain. You know that in the US, conservatives are over-represented in the military. If the US does fight Russia, they will be the ones dying for you. Driven by a sense of American patriotism that Europe loves to belittle. It just doesn't make any sense. >If I took personal opinions I'm reading online into consideration, I'd be very open to manipulation by the platforms themselves. I don't believe it's manipulation. Europeans have been anti-American for as long as I can remember. I don't think it is just an internet thing. But yes, it is ironic that lots of Europeans (in this thread even) post, and vote on comments, in more or less the way they would post if they were being paid by Russia. In any case, if we're going to disregard the internet, why not disregard my comments too? Maybe I'm an AI bot. Or maybe you'd find me to be nice and wonderful if we were interacting in person :-)

rfrey 2y ago

> Thumps voters don't want America to be an empire Why the leadup (complete with de-humanization of citizens!) to annexation of Canada, then? Why normalization of invading parts of Europe (Greenland)? Why talk about taking over Panama? Trump is 100% pro-empire, he's just too thick to understand that America already had empire without having Google Maps have everything the same colour.

xorcist 2y ago

> Trumps voters don't want America to be an empire, responsible for protecting a bunch of far-away Then why did they elect an imperialist? The current president has already announced the possibility of military interventions against Canada and Denmark in order to expand US territory. That's a kind of imperalism not seen since the middle of last century, when most empires started to proritize soft power over territory as the military and economic powers started to unite. It was easier to secure cheap natural resources than to secure the resources themselves. > that's why they called the movement "America first" We should always listen to action, not words. Rhetoric is cheap. The actions tells us that the US deficit will continue to grow. It is not clear yet how much, but everything points to an increase in military spending. Other parts of the state will have to be cut back.