What a silly “analysis.”

You could look to Italy, Israel, Austria, the Netherlands etc for examples of the Far right not only flourishing but running government in PR systems without a majority of the votes.

The more you read about those or the AFD the more you’ll see how much of their rise has in large part been because of ineffective/unwieldy coalitions. (It’s worth reading about the contortions Germany is trying just to keep the AFD out of government.

The notion that it is somehow inevitable that the Far Right will infect every mainstream party in a fptp system is ridiculous. (And why wouldn’t it happen with the Far Left, which presumably we would cheer?)

Hell, you know why thr Far Right isn’t running France? Right, because Fptp enabled the Left, Centre and moderate Right to stop them.

I get the appeal but goddamn, the more you read about how PR is actually playing out, the scarier it gets. Cherrypicking an example is the absolute worst way to make a point and a great way to demonstrate you don’t know what you are talking about.

I think they were those friends you teased but still had each other’s backs.

Now… They cannot and should not be trusted.

Good point on firefox/Opera, didn’t know about the chromium. I like open source, I just saw that the Mozilla foundation has 400 mill in revenue a year and is headquartered in America, so I figured Opera was a slightly better choice. But I don’t disagree with you, open source is still a good thing to support.

I’ll take a look at Zen, thanks for the recommendation!

My suggestions have mostly been more on the attacking the American market side of things, so:

1. Switching browsers, or barring that, the search function from Google to DuckDuckGo (and the browser to Opera if they’re ready for that step.)

2. Leaving facebook/insta, but if that’s not an option, following John Oliver’s advice for making themselves less valuable: https://www.johnoliverwantsyourraterotica.com/

3. For skincare etc, Deciem/The Ordinary. For bulk stuff like deodorant, soap etc, looking for Unilever instead of one of the American conglomerates like Proctor and Gamble etc.

Oh absolutely, thank heavens trump is cartoonishly cruel and selfish, it’s quickly united everyone else. A clever, subtle and patient trump would’ve been much more dangerous.

I just fully disagree with the earlier comment that this is a one off trump only aberration.

I’ve really liked Deciem/The Ordinary for skincare.

Just, thank you. That’s super touching. Times lile these it really brightens the heart to see the support from our friends across the world.

Can anyone recommend some fun spirits? Looking to scratch that bourbon itch…

I love this thread, there’s a huge hole in my cancon podcasts!

An index doesn’t necessarily mean it’s “what percentage of the economy is affected by trade.” But without the source, it’s hard to say what exactly it is a percentage of.

What? Ukraine was first invaded before trump and then again without him there. In both cases, the security provided was less than what was originally guaranteed. Ukraine got screwed by believing America.

It’s not just trump, there’s a whole Senate and Congress cheering him on. I would not gamble our future by relying on it to only be a trump phenomenon. If Americans had elected him once and horrified of their mistake, never came close again, that’d be one thing. But we has elected with a plurarlity of votes.

America has proven an untrustworthy ally and that thwir promises aren’t worth the paper their written in.

I don’t think Canada’s security should be “well, let’s just hope they don’t do it yet again!”

Lifetime warranty AND Canadian? Amazing! The ones I really like are sold out but I think I’ll be placing an order for when they’re ready!

If our European friends want to start a made in Europe defense plan, ordering a boatload of next generation fighter jets from them seems helpful…

It’s wild how many of trump’s decisions are exactly what Putin wants.

Totally fair, but maybe we advocate for pirating it? I agree with you it’s important to know what the enemy is thinking etc (also, in less apocalyptic terms, I agree with JSM “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”) but I don’t wouldn’t advocate people pay and support those American companies.

Yeah, they’ve pretty strongly turned from recent history though. No one in NATO believes the US could be trusted to uphold article 5 anymore. That’s the whole issue.

Hell, why doesn’t Ukraine have the nuclear deterrnet that it had after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Because they foolishly believed American security promises, which were given in exchange for them releasing their nukes.

Man, Ukraine needs to stop goading Russia by having so many innocent civilians.

/s just in case I guess?

In a geopolitical sense, they are more useful to us right now for two reasons:

1. Any shot that hits Tesla hits America incredibly effectively as Tesla is one of the Magnificent 7, which means it has an outsized effect on the American markets/economy.

2. Showing America that the world is ready to decouple from it and support to its rival over this nonsense is a powerful signal/threat.

No. There’s no telling what comes after these 4 years. The US has proven that they aren’t an ally worth relying on, we should look to more reliable partners and building them up and vice versa. Any concession or help offered by the next administration isn’t worth the paper it’s written on (just look at trump ripping up his own trade agreement for this nonsense.)

We need allies not a neighbour that on a whim might try to throw us into a recession.