Rayvin

There is a part of me that wonders if this is all supreme mindgames from Trump to get Europe to honour it's NATO commitments.

If it did happen, it'd be interesting if the following US administration stuck to it.

All these idiots voting for him and people like him, just being played by Russia and made into traitors against their own countries...

Farage now calling for elections in Ukraine and simultaneously trying to argue that when Churchill was in power that didn't count because we did have an election once Germany was defeated, but before Japan surrendered Interestingly I think he's losing people over this. Trump may have pushed this too quickly to take people with him, even the ones who theoretically should go with him.

This is the thing though - I don't think that's true. For all I still harp on about centre, left and right, I don't think it comes down to those lines anymore. Hillary wasn't beaten because they called her a communist, she was beaten because they said she was owned by wall street and was an advocate for the status quo - and she absolutely was both of those things. She used to get paid a fortune to give speeches to wall street bankers in the run up to her candidacy. It's now about meaningful change versus a vested interest in keeping things as they are. We keep fighting this with the wrong tools, although it's understandable in a way that we do. The right knows that people want to take a sledgehammer to the system, so they co-opt that anger and try to aim it at the left and woke values - but the right wing were cheering on Mangione when he executed that CEO. The MAGA right are anti-corporation. They see the Democrats as an elite protecting big business, big pharma, and the 'deep state'. I see them as the same with the caveat that the deep state is a nonsense. I've read many analyses on Sanders vs Trump in 2016 and personally I'm convinced that Sanders wins that. His probable voters were better positioned in swing states than Clinton's were for one thing, but ultimately he polled better against Trump than she did consistently. I don't wanna rehash all this because we did it to death, but we have to stop shooting down left wing candidates just on the basis that if the centre can't win, the left can't win. Your thinking here locks us into a binary situation where anyone who wants to radically change the system because it's fucking shit has to vote right wing because there's no other game in town. And yet right and left agree on almost everything economically at the grassroots level - which is why the whole woke culture war bullshit is so crucial to the right. We need to have a singular message now, and that message has to be - Eat the Rich. Republican, Democrat, all of them.

One of the few Democrats actually saying anything. Along with AOC who seems at risk of being arrested. So basically, the actual left wing of the democrats are the only ones prepared to say anything. He attempts to correct every lie here, it's a nice little speech. Why couldn't we have had Bernie as US president..

No they don't, you just think they do because it's what they tell you to keep you on side. They want to further accentuate wealth inequality and privatise more and more of the system so that there is a clear differential between them and us. They tell you that they want to prevent immigration but as you saw from the Tories, they know they can't actually do this without fucking the national economy. All Brexit achieved was changing where the immigrants were coming from - this is because the issue is systemic within capitalism, not some sort of woke culture war. The sooner all of us start fighting this solely on economics, the sooner any of us might get what we want. EDIT - I'll add to this that falling birth rates in the West might be less of an issue if more ordinary people had more money in their pockets day to day. We have immigration in part because the rich have robbed us all.

Eventually the Tories I think are going to have to accept a merger with Reform. The right has been intellectually compromised in full now - whatever the Tories think they once stood for no longer matters. Insanity is the only game in town for the political right. No chance the LDs ever make the coalition mistake again.

Where the fuck are the Democrats man?? Just where? If this was happening in the UK, even in a nation as servile as ours, there'd be fucking hell on.

https://www.euronews.com/2025/02/19/trump-allies-sudden-interest-in-romanian-politics-leaves-romanians-puzzled Trump administration now putting pressure on Romania over them preventing a Moscow funded candidate from becoming President.

Supposedly though I'm only seeing it in select press outlets, such as Ukrainian ones: https://kyivindependent.com/saudi-arabia-wanted-ukraine-represented-at-us-russia-talks-bloomberg-reports/ I'm not familiar with that firm you've mentioned so have no current view. What does it do? On the last bit - we have to pick our battles here, we can't just go in hard on everything. Actually tbh, maybe some people can - but I can't. I'm only able to focus on the really egregious stuff now or I just end up doomscrolling all day.

Fair, and agree on the US view on Europe.

On the first bit.. isn't that exactly what the US did post WW2? Which isn't to say it's right, but just that we accepted it last time around. Saudi handling the talks I'm not too fussed by since apparently they did want Ukraine to attend but were shut down by the other two. I think they're as powerless as the rest of us really.

Someone on reddit made the point that while in terms of principles the EU and China are quite far apart, the one thing China offers that the US doesn't is reliability. China will view us as trading partners and customers, and can therefore be relied upon to treat us... as trading partners and customers. That's a relationship that can be clearly defined and understood. The relationship we have with the US at the moment, is nothing remotely close to being as stable as that.

Aye, strange that isn't it I had a convo with some right wing twat the other day, suggested to him that joining a federal EU was a safer answer in uncertain times than going it alone. He refused point blank because doing so would usher in 'one world government'. Instead, he suggested, we could join the US as a state. Which is apparently completely different.

I'm wondering if we can normalise elsewhere too mind.. China has been throwing out signals to the EU that they're ready to fill the US shaped void in our lives.

I'm starting to see people suggest that Canada joins the EU. Not sure it would ever happen but apparently the US administration has made clear to the Canadians that Trump's threat to make them the 51st(?) state are very real. So yes, agreed - hostile.

Have been mulling all of this over a bit and I state that I've arrived at a change of heart on my position on whether to vote or not vote for Labour in future based on my principles - I think in normal circumstances that's fair enough to do, and I'd stand by it - but given where we are right now, if Farage is on the ticket at our next GE, I'll vote for whoever the fuck is mostly likely to win otherwise, irrespective of what they stand for. I'd say the same should go in all Western countries - we have to defeat this cancer, get to a period of normality, and then put up safeguards. Aside from that, who's up for Germany re-militarising? Assuming they can hold off the AFD. We should just end any significant ties with the US. Traitors and liars. Under Trump they're just another Russia.

So when trump says only he can make a deal, what he means is that only he is a big enough loser to just bend over and get shafted like this. Impressive stuff.

Imagine if anyone on here had responded like this to our defeat at City

Who was the daft cunt meant to be silencing

I haven't played it but if MGS is anything to go by, you're basically better off viewing it as an interactive film

In fairness, I wouldn't blame Gen Z for having been completely failed by everyone who has gone before, and thrashing around looking for answers in a bleak and dark future. That's on the rest of us.

Has she tried listening to intellectuals in order to give them something that they actually can believe in?

Hopefully get our collective fingers out of our asses. It worries me that Macron is the last man standing in terms of 'competent and arguably strong leadership' within the EU though. Especially since he almost certainly loses his Presidency next time out.