wampus, wampus@lemmy.ca

The US administration quite explicitly leaked, in the chat discussion between Gabbard, Hegseth, Vance etc while they were bombing Yemen last year, that they wanted to exit the middle east. They complained that they were policing the strait to keep it open, while not getting paid appropriate amounts by the Gulf states and by European beneficiaries of that trade route. Some of the moves the US made with regards to transferring missile tech etc to places like Saudi Arabia, are part of this plan to try and pull back from the gulf – they want those local players to take on the burden of maintaining order.

The US’s goal in this conflict hasn’t been to liberate the Iranian people, nor has it been to establish any sort of order/function in that region of the world. Its broader goal was more likely to trigger the exit of US military assets from that area, or to gain significant financial contributions from gulf states to remain, either would likely be acceptable. Their goals generally align with Russia’s view of the world, in which there are like 4 major powers each controlling a region – with the States controlling all of the western hemisphere (the greater technate of America that Hegseth likes to go on about).

The humiliation of US forces in the gulf, will likely result in the states’ administration invading Cuba next, is my guess. Cuba is less likely to be able to defend against US aggression, and proximity makes logistics much simpler. Plus its distance from Europe and other regional powers, makes Cuba a target they can, and have been, bullying with general silence from the international community. If/when NATO nations are appalled by the actions, that’ll give the administration justification to seize part of Greenland from Denmark – “They clearly aren’t our allies anymore”. That’ll potentially set Canada up to be blockaded similar to how Cuba is currently, forcing Canada to capitulate due to economic isolation.

Just a guess, obviously, but I imagine that’s the sort of ‘plan’ they’re aiming for. The USA is overtly hostile to democratic principles, their administration members have literally published and endorsed books/strategic plans that praise fascists/fascism. They see things like the French revolution as a lesson that the rich should make sure the poor are never able to rise up again, even if it means butchering poor people…. “cause that’s what they’d do to us if they could!”. Attempting to parse the USA’s actions based on the ethics/messaging of the “old” USA is misguided. They’ve clearly announced their new motives, the media should be evaluating their ‘war objectives’ based on those new motives, not the US’s motives under past administrations.

Nah, the computers are evolving to become more resistant to meat sack interference.

Likely not, though there are always exceptions.

Friends for sure. The big difference to me, between dating and being friends, is the level of physical intimacy and sexual attraction between the people in the relationship – and ideally, you want that to be a strong enough bond that you can rely on each other for those needs almost exclusively. I can’t realistically picture such a bond with a non binary person, similar to how I don’t think such a bond can be as exclusive/strong with someone who is ‘gender fluid’ (as it’d feel like I’d never live up to the expectations of a partner that wanted to physically/materially play around with both men and women, seeing as I’m just one of the two). I also find myself more attracted to certain generally more feminine characteristics, which would likely not work out well if the other person is non-binary – I wouldn’t want someone I cared about, changing/masking who they are, just for my benefit, so I wouldn’t want to put them into that sort of dilemma by pursuing a relationship.

There’s nothing wrong with being non-binary. There’s also nothing wrong with not being attracted to non-binary people.

Then again, my viewpoint has resulted in me being a single middle aged person with no real immediate family, and few close friends (they tend to go ‘poof’ once they find a wife/husband and start families). So being somewhat mindful of these things, may have negative results in the long run for most cis-folks. May be better to just hook up with anything with a pulse, and try to get some kids/connections by any means, if you don’t want to die alone. Throw every relationship at the wall and see what sticks – any hole’s a goal.

People claiming the US is getting nothing are again ignoring what came out in the Chat leak from last year, involving Hegseth, Gabbard, Vance, and so forth. One of their complaints was that the US was policing the region / ensuring trade routes for EU allies and Gulf states, without getting fully paid for the assets deployed in the region.

If Iran’s plan says the US leaves the region, and/or if the result is that Gulf states/EU take a more active role in the region going forward, and/or it results in those parties paying the US more to maintain a security presence in the area, those are all things that align to the objectives of the current administration. The media really needs to update their expectations / get a better read of what the administration’s objectives are – the right-wing is quite explicitly publishing things like Project 2025 / other ideological books that paint their roadmap in brutally plain terms, it really doesn’t take that much effort to dig up.

Another fun side thought, though entirely conjecture, is that the last time there was a major iranian conflict, it triggered significant recessions in many western nations. Canada, for example, had three things in the 80s that triggered interest rates to climb to 20%: Iranian energy crisis, US protectionism hammering the Canadian auto industry, and a softened global Canadian dollar/export problems. Almost seems like America’s attempting to force a similar issue. If their current gong show in the middle east triggers similar issues globally, it’d potentially even serve to help the states with their stated ambition to annex Canada via economic warfare.

To your immediate question – I’m guessing there’s some activity that’s holding you together with these online friends? Difficult to say where to find more tolerable folks without knowing a bit more about how you’ve met these people so far. My assumption would be that it’s a gaming community of some sort, though that’s not always the case these days – if it is though, maybe look for games with less toxic bases. Another thought is that if it is tied to games, many people go there for escapism (even if the idle chatter sometimes veers off-course) – like my weekly gaming night has a general rule of no politics discussions, cause the doom-feeds are depressing enough. Depending on how often you meet with them, I’d possibly suggest working on filtering your comms a smidge – you don’t necessarily need to share every thought/opinion with friends, especially if the friendship is based more on something frivolous in nature. Again, RL friends may be better for that sort of more fulsome rel.

In terms of them getting offended, I think it’s natural that people translate negative discussions about their race from ’others’ as being personal attacks, even if there are attempts to phrase things ‘politely’ (which rarely work, and come off preachy/condescending in most cases). For example, commenting on the history of colonial Canada / the Church’s treatment of FN to a newly immigrated white person, often comes off as essentially accusing that person of having a had a hand in the abuses – FN seem to use ‘colonial’ as a slur about ‘any’ white person, even though many/most of them showed up far later than what’d gone on, and their families/histories have nothing to do with it. I guess it’d be somewhat similar, for comparison, to commenting that when white people showed up, FN on the West Coast were well known slavers, or that they didn’t really have a form of written language, and how that could be construed as impolite/offensive to someone with that heritage if you constantly brought it up to them. Or if you translated things like DEI practices into authoritarian-imposed state charity for personal disabilities/failures – “You get preferential hiring treatment/benefits, because FN are statistically poorer, less educated, less productive than other races on aggregate”. Even if somewhat accurate, it’d be hard to encounter that sort of comment regularly, and not take it personally if you were a part of that demo. I imagine that’s one reason Canada’s spent so much effort trying to frame our DEI stuff in a more positive light, shifting almost all accountability off of individuals and on to ‘systemic’ stuff, heh.

These types of articles are annoying at this point – the sort of appeal to morality things, based on essentially dead ‘world order’ concepts. Even when there was a quasi functional set of agreements in place, America just veto’d any attempt to hold it accountable anyhow. International law, or any law really, is largely based on some sort of ‘force’ that gives it authority – in a country, that force is generally the state/police, and internationally it was generally the US-lead coalition of western nations. That authority died in 2025.

We’ve already seen the USA/Hegseth drag all his generals into a room and tell them to not be ‘burdened by rules of engagement’, encouraging them to commit war crimes openly in order to instill terror in others. Anyone who disagreed with his speech was basically shown the door. This was like a year ago even, it’s not ’new’.

The USA basically shredded any moral dilemmas/debates in the process, and burnt the soft power they’d been cultivating for decades/generations in early 2025. What’s the point of saying it’s wrong based on an old, defunct system that they’ve already abandoned? If anything, the American right wing will likely cheer that they’re getting these sorts of angsty pearl clutching responses from the left / foreign liberal powers. Trump quite literally bragged about America’s war crimes in Venezuela during his state of the union address, cracking jokes to which all the republicans laughed and applauded. Trump’s threats about Iran’s civilian infrastructure, and the bets on whether he’ll drop nukes – these are things that the right wing / Americans want to see happen. They think it’s right to do it.

So really, the article shouldn’t be about “Oh No!! International Law may be violated!”, but rather, “Why should people care about international law being violated, when they’ve already asserted that they disagree with that law and its results?”. Like if/when Trump drops nukes on Irans civilian power plants/water desalination plants etc…. what then? Is there some sort of accountability that’s gonna suddenly show up? Prolly not.

Heh, anyone pointing out the Trump’s are birthright citizens seems to’ve missed the Trump gold card citizenship racket that’s paired with anything related to citizenship revocation. If they change the law, rich people just pay some money to buy a gold citizenship card. Trump’s family would likely get theirs paid for by tech bros, wouldn’t even need to pay out of pocket.

While white nationalist racists are a part of Trump’s base, and are likely in favour of this law getting changed, thinking it’ll help their agenda… it’s really just another attack on poor/middle class people.

At this point, as a non-American, I’m fine with them disenfranchising most of their population and declaring them non-citizens. For regulated industries, it’d make things like FATCA reporting much simpler, and it’s not as though those ‘citizens’ deserve any respect/special consideration – look at the guy they elected as their leader. Who they still follow. Even as he openly makes moves to strip them of their rights.

It’s impractical/implausible that we could at this stage. Even after the elbows up stuff, our government hasn’t pulled back its entanglement with US tech giants – if anything, it’s gone further on that front, considerably. Things like our financial regulators, banks and basic government services all run off of Microsoft365. Microsoft365 is a ‘subscription’ services that can be cancelled / impacted by US govt trade dictates. The US can literally ‘shut off’ Canada’s government, or at least many of its functional/operational wings.

The US listing Canada’s push for data sovereignty as a trade irritant, as well as Rubio’s memo last year noting foreign countries seeking data sovereignty equated to a national security risk for the USA, basically confirms that they’re misusing/misappropriating the data held at US companies for things like AI and their authoritarian surveillance programs. Even the mention of a country pulling back from this sort of dangerous entanglement, gets the US trade teams up in arms / ready to heavily sanction former allies. Carney and crowd will almost definitely cave. He’s an ex-bank regulator type, and the banking sector has been one of those most heavily pushed into using US tech giants, essentially by regulatory decree – he’s not just drunk the koolaid, he was the guy serving it up.

Point being, that even if by some bizarre situation Canada went that way while somehow avoiding getting attacked as a result, it’d still be an absolutely catastrophic hit on things like productivity and basic government function.

I dunno, with the AI surveillance state “improving” the kill chain in US wars (you all can bomb school children super effectively now, since AI tells you to! Can’t hold AI accountable!), and the arrest chain of “terrorist” protestors, I imagine that the cell phone location data from these protests could lead directly to certain changes in the USA. Certain changes that will help to populate all those new concentration camps with cheap prisoner labour to replace all the immigrants on the farms etc.

I agree to some extent – I kind of look at the socialist democracies that’re around and think of them as a step in the direction of having a ‘functional’ version of a “libertarian socialist” setup. However we’re also witnessing these fail almost in real time as a result of the global turmoil currently on-going, with rights erosion and increase in authoritarian tendencies on both the political left and right.

I do think there’s a fundamental issue that is a nearly impossible hurdle for ‘proper’ anarchist states of any meaningful size to arise, which is somewhat exemplified in that Spain example. In order for a ‘state’ to exist, it basically needs to have a “force” component. People don’t always want to accept it, and it’s often an open debate on what level of force and how that force is structured in democratic setups. In Anarchist setups, it’s nearly impossible to implement, as there’ll always be dissenters from any use of force, which pretty well blocks that whole function of the government in a consensus based decision model. There also needs to be a method to incentivize/organize large groups of people to complete increasingly complex tasks the larger and more complicated/advanced the tech level of the country may be. Anarchism, from what I’ve read at least, tends to work better in smaller community setups, because there’s less need for either of these things, based on those small community goals. Sorta like the old (and horribly flawed) Marxist refrain of apple farmers and orange farmers swapping produce in a system without capital, it doesn’t really translate to something like making computer chips for advanced tech, or trading direct unskilled labour for something like a surgeon’s services.

Like for the force thing – take something like minority rights. Say some minorities decide to protest in a way that shuts down major streets in a city, demanding special treatment. In a democracy, they get given some media attention, can schedule marches etc, but they can’t illegally shut down businesses / regular day to day life, without running the risk of having the state apply force for their illegal behaviour – cops should show up and force a resolution. If those cops could only show up after a consensus is reached by all parties, including the protesting minorities, then a group like MAGA could basically sit there not compromising on their demands, and inflicting pain on their neighbors/others without a care in the world. Spain’s inability to mount a defense against fascists in the 1930s, was basically the result of them not being able to get a consensus in this sort of regard – you couldn’t get them to all agree to defend the country against franco/hitlers invading force, because some were in favour of it, so no action was taken (except by Durruti’s militia). (and yes, that sort of thing clearly happens in failed democracies like the USA still to some extent, so it’s a problem that goes beyond ‘just’ anarchist decision models – but it’s yet to hit them in an existential way)

Yeah – though in all fairness, we haven’t seen too many larger implementations of its principles. Some other guy was whining that I’d missed some regional sub-states/failed revolution attempts for example, but that’s the best he could find to counter my ’only spain so far has tried it’ note. The sample size is stupid small, so it’s a bit dicey to draw definitive conclusions.

I guess you could argue that things like Durruti’s struggle to get support qualifies as an internal problem – like a government/large group, making decisions on consensus, is much more difficult to motivate in any particular direction even when existentially threatened by an outside force. But ultimately, without that outside force, the CNT likely would’ve continued to meet the basic needs of people in the country in line with the anarchist principles it was based on. Bit of a mixed bag.

Afaik, Ukraine was a failed attempt to setup an Anarchist government. Rojava and Chiapas are not realistically established enough to qualify as a case study so much, they’re also not countries, but general regions/states within countries. As sub-regions protected within and by a state, they benefit from the state while putting on airs of being anti-state: much like a parents-basement dwelling neckbeard sort, who rants online against capitalism, while enjoying the benefits provided by their parents participating in that system, and who’s lifestyle is wholly dependent on the system they oppose. Anarchist principles often function ’ok’ for smaller communities, but they struggle/fail once attempted as a full government of a country – Spains the only example I know of in that regard.

Spains attempt lasted ‘roughly’ 30 years, with the movement starting in the 1870s, the CNT coming in sometime around 1905 or so, and Franco fucking it all up around 1936-1939, give or take?

I worked in an anarchist bookstore for a few years after uni, where I read books about anarchist history, and the Spanish attempt. That’s what I base my comments on. And, yea, Rojava and Chiapas are so ’new’ that no one had bothered to write about them at that time. So really, they don’t seem like examples worth mentioning, other than to be a little shite online.

Read up on Spain pre-Franco, which was the only time that an Anarcho-state was seriously attempted. It basically coagulated into an Anarcho-syndicate, but failed miserably at getting many traditional ‘state’ responsibilities covered. When Franco rolled in with the backing of Hitler, Durruti was the only guy that tried to mount a defense, because the “government” couldn’t come to a consensus on whether to defend themselves or not. Durruti had to literally raid government weapons stocks to arm a militia to try and fight back, but that totally failed and then they ended up as a fascist steel production center feeding arms to Nazi germany.

So that’s about how it goes in practice. It’s a style of government that’s good in theory, but it fails when implemented, generally due to ever present outside influences. It’s on the same sort of pedestal as communism really, in that lots of folks look at it on paper and think it sounds great, but reality’s a bitch.

So a strange anecdote related to this story – I’ve worked for a small company before where there was a husband/wife employee couple, which had DV issues. The female-dominant senior managers, very quietly, would send the man on leave while looking for excuses to fire him each time there was an event. The wife refused to press charges, because she was seemingly the one starting the physical fights, she just lost cause she was weaker – the guy wasn’t a big dude though, so it’s not like he could easily just ‘restrain’ her, hence some visible physical injuries. So the company couldn’t use something like a criminal record to justify dismissal. But they still tried to find ways to fire the man, without really caring about who was instigating / innocent until proven guilty, or anything. It’s just “Man hits a woman for any reason? Women band together to cast out the man”.

These two people stayed together for decades like this, with mgmt periodically going through those motions apparently. Think they’re still together. Had like 3 or 4 kids.

The way I look at it is that cryptocurrency is basically a security with no real use, but it can store ‘value’ in the same way those NFT things stored value for a while. There are more bullshitters for crypto, so they’ll keep that hype train going longer, and you can semi work it to get some profit by buying the security low, and selling it high.

There was a post a while ago about how around something like 2020 or whatever, with billions invested in it, and with huge amounts of power/electricity going towards it, bitcoin had something like less than 10 transactions per minute globally. Like it’s absolute dogshit when ti comes to transactions, in part because it’s not a currency despite its name.

Currencies need to depreciate in value via inflation – crypto tends to just store value and go up / down solely on its isolated demand as a nebulous concept. In fact, one of the bragging points from cryptobros is often this misguided notion that crypto is a hedge against inflation – as that ‘benefit’ basically disqualifies it as a proper currency. If you get $1000, and that $1000 is able to buy you some quantity of goods, you need that money to be able to buy less of those goods in the future in order to encourage people to actually use the fucking thing. If you had $1000, but were almost assured that it would be able to buy twice as many goods in the future if you just held on to it for a bit under your mattress, you wouldn’t spend the money… ever. Sorta like those crazy early crypto experiments where uni students were given like 25 bitcoin to see how they’d spend it – and a bunch did exactly what you said in your opening bit, bought pizzas (you could at the time). Bet they would’ve preferred to buy a bunch of houses and sports cars later on, if they’d realised how popular the fad would get. Bitcoin only tends to go ‘down’ in value when people completely exit the currency, so it’s not a valid currency.

I think you’re generally right in your note about it needing to be exchanged. The whole point of currencies is that you don’t want them to sit idle under someone’s bed. Banks/Credit Unions provide savings accounts that pay interest, though typically slightly less than inflation. This is basically a function where because of inflation, you don’t want to have your money just sit under your bed, you want to invest it in at least a savings account/term deposit – but what’s actually happening there, is that you’re committing your money to the financial institution for a fixed period, and they’re subsequently loaning that out to someone so that person can buy a house (typically) – and then their payments on that house, is what generates your interest earnings (and the banks profits). The house itself is a security, with a general stable/safe valuation, so if that person can’t make their payments on the house, the bank can foreclose, sell it, and still pay you your interest. So your savings are generally very safe – especially, frankly, with simple/smaller financial institutions that aren’t trying to do fancy bullshit / aren’t doing any higher risk wealth management type back end tricks. Main point being though, that because of inflation, even people who have ‘too much’ capital, put it into the market, and it generates economic activity as a result.

Crypto, being a security, doesn’t behave too well in this situation either – in that you can’t realistically hold a security and pay interest on it based on being able to use that security to fund other economic activity. Sorta like if someone hands you 10 shares of a stock (which has a variable price), and you’ve gotta figure out a way to pay that person back 12 shares of stock in a year, buy giving those 10 shares to someone else. What if they don’t want shares of that stock? What if the stock price goes down, or up, significantly? There’s just an absurd amount of risk, that would be considered wildly untenable for something like a person’s core savings vehicle. There are some “interest paying” crypto type accounts these days, but that’s a whole shitload of financial shenanigans and cryptobro bullshit. Cryptocurrencies are basically an economic blackhole.

And speaking of governments, anyone saying that crypto is useful because you can send money globally, is a moron. Banks/Financial institutions have the ability to do global money transfers with ease. The reason they can’t/don’t, is because of LEGAL reasons and regulatory restrictions from governments - it’s not some technical restriction that crypto magically solves. Laws like “You can’t let people fund terrorist groups”. Crypto being able to do those sorts of things quickly is just a matter of them not obeying any of the laws or regulations from governments. That’s not a ‘good’ thing in general. Many of the recent pushes from crypto sorts to get places like the States to recognize them, are basically resulting in banks getting less restrictions – which really isn’t a win. Crypto shows up and is like “We like sending money to north korea, so you gotta remove or neuter that whole know your customer thing for fintechs. Here Mr USA administration, we can pay you by buying millions of dollars of your personal ‘crypto currency’ to help with signing the bill. See, isn’t it so much better to have no regulations/oversight on transactions?! It’s win win!”

And the last negative I’ll note, from my pov at least, is that the core mechanics of most crypto currencies is obfuscated and controlled by cryptobros. Financial industry people make money, but they don’t make the sort of explosive, concentrated wealth that you see occur in crypto for the people who maintain those systems. That’s partly because the financial industry is larger, and involves government components – while crypto currencies are often just some techbro goin “let’s fork bitcoin and stick a dog face on it and sell it to morons for big $$$$ then we can FTX it up fuckin in the bahamas with uggos!”. It’s the sort of obvious conflict of interest that they all try and bullshit their way out of – one that typically doesn’t exist in fiat setups, due to the multiple layers, and the role most govs fill in regulating things.

The note at the end of the article doesn’t get enough discussion: a cnn poll showing 100% of MAGA people polled approve of Trump. Including people outside of MAGA, he’s got the worst approval rating ever. But MAGA is all that matters to the administration, they view the rest as terrorists/enemies anyhow – just like how they view other western democracies as enemies these days. CNN may as well say that his approval rating is negative in the IRGC, for all the administration cares.

Also jacking up the value of their recently pirated venezuelan oil win – blowing up those fishermen is a lot more profitable when you throw a couple extra foreigners on the fire.

I imagine a system where the government just prints cash, would have a whole slew of other problems and issues, and would likely be less stable/viable than the current mess. The current approach has flaws, but if managed properly, remains viable for a long time – most of the flaws that become existential threats, only show up after years of neglect or willful corruption, such as in the USA.

The Reuters article isn’t doing this justice in my view – in part because they’re still measuring the conflict by past US administration standards, not the new reality.

Last year, Hegseth and Gabbards chat leak, while they were bombing Yemen I believe, included negative remarks about Europe, and what they felt was the unfair role of ‘world police’ that the USA had in keeping the SoH open. Even back then, they wanted to pull back, to force Europe to pay more to maintain that trade route, to force gulf states to pay more for protection, etc. Their animosity/aggression towards Europe has not been subtle, they openly make claims that Europe faces civilization collapse as a result of ‘too much multiculturalism’ and so on. The US relaxing Russian oil sanctions, was done intentionally as part of the USA’s open hostility and aggression towards the EU, and wanting to splinter the EU block. The US isn’t just “not much of an ally” anymore, they’re an active threat against western democracies.

Like Hegseth literally dragged all the generals into a meeting last year, and did a speech telling them to commit war crimes, not to be ‘bound by rules of engagement’. Anyone who didn’t like it, was fired. He likely setup a war crime tracker to measure as a KPI for the military – blow up a girls school, sow terror, get a bonus. Hell, they blow up fishing boats in Venezuela, and joke/laugh about that war crime at the state of the union. This is America now.

So in terms of conflict goals – destabilizing Europe has been pretty successful so far, though it is a long game. The US is also using the conflict to extort gulf nations for large sums of money to continue protecting assets, so they’re getting paid more for their presence in the region – another win, based off that leaked chat. The wars also quieted Trumps Epstein stuff domestically, so it’s succeeded in his personal reason for the timing. Israel’s using the cover to conduct even more brutal campaigns in places like Lebanon and the West Bank; the USA is using the cover from the conflict to try and pull a Gaza on Cuba. All progressing well, by the new American calculus. Media needs to revamp their scorecards, still measuring success by antiquated things like humanitarian relief/improving peoples lives etc. Pain and suffering for Iranians, Europeans, and anyone that’s not a Republican elite, is likely one of the measures by which they deem the operation a success.

And Trump’s broadcast repeatedly, clearly, that he doesn’t respect military personnel. If you die in the Iranian conflict, you’re basically a loser in Trump’s view, just like POWs he’s made similar statements to in the past. He doesn’t give a shit if troops die, or are wasted, so long as they secure more money for oligarchs from rich gulf nations etc.

Hell, even something like the fluctuating oil prices – a win for American oligarchs, given they just beat the shit out of Venezuela and are now pilfering their oil. “We secured a new source of oil by committing war crimes in South America, so now us Americans are ready to fuckup the oil trade in the middle east, as it’ll mostly impact those stupid Europeans that we hate”. Another “success”.

Building on US tech means the US generally has control over whether you can deploy your military assets, and gives a foreign, militaristic/fascist trending power, deep insights into your military operations. Pretending like these risks are not greater than, or at the very least on par with, “its hard to integrate systems/build our own” is silly.

It’s sorta like Canada’s former liberal leadership hopeful Chrystia Freeland acting like China’s the biggest threat to Canada. While the US administration is actively and openly trying to dismantle Canada using economic warfare, is ignoring former international conventions like those pesky ‘human rights’, and so on. Like there’s this old joke about Canada being in bed with a sleeping elephant given the disproportionate sizes and risk of that elephant rolling over and accidentally squishing you. Except the elephant woke up now, and is actively trying to harm you. Meanwhile idiots like Freeland go on about some Chinese Bear that’s a threat primarily on the other side of the world, ignoring the elephant in the room.

The USA is a threat. They are actively attacking anyone they feel like. They are actively antagonistic towards their “allies” and neutral nations. Their tech oligarchs actively talk about setting up their own baronies, aka “Freedom cities” in the hollowed out carcasses of what remains of nations. Their state department actively opposes foreign nations pursuing data sovereignty, because the USA doesn’t care about privacy, especially not for non-republicans – they want that data to target “terrorists” (non-republicans) more easily with the use of AI. Their leadership quite literally called all their Generals in to a room last year, said “We expect you to commit war crimes, cause we want the world to fear you” and fired anyone that objected. The USA isn’t just a ‘risk’ of being a threat, they are an active threat undermining western democratic nations. Why anyone would think there’s a greater risk ’not’ to give these folks more power/control over you, is beyond my understanding. My closest approximate comparison on a day-to-day relatable level would likely be something like an abusive relationship, where the victim rationalizes staying in the relationship because “If I left, they’d outright kill me”. That ain’t healthy, nor a desirable position for a military.

Like even the Iran / Hormuz stuff, is basically intentional pain inflicted on the EU. Last year, as part of their chat leak during their strikes on yemen – the chat that leaked on whatsapp or whatever – Hegseth, Gabbard and them were complaining about how they felt they were policing the area, even though all the benefit went to Europe in the form of open trade routes. They wanted Europe to be more actively involved. Trumps made clear references of a similar nature, with his regular bravado/crassness, in his recent “we probably shouldn’t even be there” comments.

The current US administration also has a focus on isolating opponents (which they tend to talk about as ‘containment’ in their ideological writings if I remember right). It’s what underpins things like what they’re doing to democrats in places like Minnesota, and building concentration camps for “illegals” (non-republicans, and non-whites) – they want enemies isolated, cut off from outside aid. Even more, they want those people to suffer, and make noise as they suffer, as it helps to keep other blue states in line and lets them point at the suffering to appease their base. A similar approach underpins much of their international relations, cutting off nations from trade opportunities to weaken “opponents” (non-nuclear / smaller nations) – see Cuba as an easy example currently, or the ongoing attack on international trade norms. Attacking Iran cuts the EUs oil supply (among other trade gaps), exposing a strategic weakness and providing greater opportunities for the US to sow discord amongst EU block members: enter the relaxing of Russian sanctions to further sow animosity, as some EU nations are pressured to resume Russian trade. Trying to distract from his Epstein atrocities is part of the reason Trump may’ve agreed to the plan and rushed the timing a bit, but pretending like it’s the only reason for the current shit going on is naive – there’s a whole fascist administration, full of out and proud Christian white nationalists, backing the actions of Trump, and using his antics to distract from their goals.