I doesn’t look like us Brits can completely break with the US in military or intelligence terms, at least for the time being (if not foreseeable future). But closer military co-operation with the rest of Europe clearly has to happen, assuming maintenance of our nuclear capability isn’t completely reliant upon, or tied up with the US.

Late edit (after a few people upvoted this post) - given the disgraceful way the EU treated the UK during brexit negotiations this sharing of nuclear weapons should come at significant economic cost to EU countries that might want it. I mean, the alternative, a UK aligned to the US and Russia, military bases and nuclear weapons ready, full of US bases, puts the shitty way EU countries were happy to deal with the UK into a bit of perspective.

The Chinese are going to build their biggest embassy in Europe in London about half a mile or so from the US embassy. I’d guess the UK will continue trying to play a mediating role.

I am English.

Most likely you meant to reply to somebody else, but it’s possible you picked up and ran with a response to my question. If that’s the case then thanks for the effort!

What does this mean? People putting on a ‘work voice’ or something?

This is what Canadian and European rivals of the US should have been doing for some time, and should be doing now.

Exactly. I responded to somebody who said twitter was bought not to make money but as a propaganda tool.

Then a sequence of morons ‘attacked’ me. (I put attacked in quotation marks as it hardly counts as any kind of ‘attack’.)

lol

OK, I have read some evidence that shows how when a level of impoverishment is reached, people are too preoccupied with day to day and week to week survival to bother with voting or much of any other civil engagement.

I won’t waste more time on this, I’m not interested in arguing over the definition of ‘disengaged’.

The fact that they voted means they are not disengaged.

Yours might have just been an offhand comment, but as it might be a genuine question I provided a brief answer.

Dunno, I think Musk was forced to buy it, then he suggested it was going to be all sorts of things while massively cutting costs, before pivoting to giving Trump a quarter of a billion in order to get access to government.

I don’t think there was any intention to buy twitter for propaganda, and I haven’t seen any evidence that shows to what degree (if at all) it helped Trump get elected.

And what is an ai trained on reddit going to help with? Misinforming people on specialised topics, or misinforming people on current affairs?

Edit - I suppose you might be able to train an ai not to reply as per replies on reddit, dunno.

I doubt it will be noticeable overnight, but at least some of his supporters will be pushed into a degree of impoverishment that inhibits political engagement.

Reddit is pretty useless for getting any kind of advanced information on any topic. The impression I had of the US election based on it was completely out of line with reality, so in that case it couldn’t be trusted as an accurate source of information on current affairs.

People are addicted to it, but you’d have to be pretty sad to pay for it.

Blocking ads on it is a trivial matter. It never made any money.

The question is why did anyone think it would ever be worth much at all.

Unfortunately I think there is a good chance that history will come to view brexit as a warning shot that was ignored.

Farage was given a decade or more of regular airtime on the bbc despite not having one MP. This is a top-down driven rise to political power. The bbc is a defacto nation state information operation, it primarily serves the interests of the British establishment, of which the very wealthy are a significant part. They prefer the alternative to the red/blue Tories to come from the right, rather than the left.

Young people have and are witnessing their quality of life and future prospects diminish on an ongoing basis. Climate change is the biggest crisis multiplier humankind will ever experience. It isn’t just being ignored by Tories red and blue, protests against government inaction on it are now criminalised, and the surveillance state built to ‘protect’ society has reached a point of extreme data-totalitarianism that will breed extremists. Not to mention what happens when Tommy Robinson, or whoever is Farage’s Musk takes control of that surveillance state apparatus?

All of this has rendered mainstream parties non-credible. It is just more of the same austerity, more economic inequality.

With the best will in the world, the scale of immigration (not far off a London a decade) is not sustainable. It is impacting the unskilled labour markets and ‘benefits’ system many of these potential Reform voting young people are reliant upon. Its use is the easiest of wedges for any politician to use. This immigration is nothing compared to the coming climate change refugee crisis. We haven’t seen anything yet.

The home-owning-electorate’s response: “These people are racist. We should rejoin the EU” (thus completely disenfranchising former brexit, now potential Reform voters) can only make this situation worse, if anything driving those young voters into the hands of worse extremists.

I would guess that European leaders’ first priority is to protect Europe in the short term, which means defending Ukraine, including delaying or minimising any actual fighting for as long as possible in order to build their own defence capability. Similar to how other countries (China) have played the game while building their economic and military capability.

I would guess Russia think Trump has gone too far in terms of provoking a coordinated response from Europe in terms of immediate investment in defence, including a potential proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Then at some point in the future (depending on the actions of the US, the degree to which global politics allows international co-operation, the economic and military capabilities of the various parties, and the ability to purchase oil in currencies other than US dollar) countries globally will sell US debt, most likely bit by bit as all of the above circumstances allow, or potentially all at once - if the US make a less dramatic response impossible, massively raising interest rates for the US/effectively forcing it into bankruptcy > developing world economic status.

Still America at that point will have been made great because they will be cheap enough to manufacture goods again!

What does America think the alternative is? Does it think it can blow hot air and try and bully the world into buying US debt without offering the protection it used to provide in return?!!? That huge military industrial complex spending wasn’t for nothing. It was to protect the dollar’s status, which in turn ultimately meant people everywhere paid America’s debt.

Based on what I have read online (famous last words - especially anywhere near sites such as reddit, and other social media sites over the last twenty years or so) I get a strong impression that this is a dynamic most Americans are not aware of, having been told that it is their exceptionalism that allowed them to accrue such a large portion of unearned global wealth.

I think Americans, over the coming decades are going to learn a new truth - at least those with a flexible enough mind will. Part of that new truth will be that choosing Trump was choosing a much much harder landing than was necessary.

Yeah it is other countries fault, lol.

Another 50% claim to have read a book.

10% have read a book

Do you really want to carry your lifetime supply of honey around with you every time you move apartment?

What other foodstuffs are you going to buy your lifetime supply of? Dried goods? Tins? You could get yourself a winnebago and fill it with all your lifetime’s worth of food or something, which would make lugging it all around with you forever easier. Just hope nobody nicks it.

His name is Trump. Russia completed sidelined America’s military.

MAGA by bringing back US manufacturing, which means creating developing world conditions, thus enabling it to become a sweatshop.