Thank you. This is what people with privilege don't get.
There are concentric circles of giving a fuck: first in the center is yourself, then your family, then your friends, then your community, then your city, then your country, then other countries on the planet.
It's impossible to get people to care about the outermost circle when their inner circles are not satisfied, so they won't be happy to see their elected officials being generous to foreigners with their own tax money.
Yet somehow the US is continuing to send tons of expensive military aid to Israel.
Which shows this isn't actually about the cost.
If this had anything to do with money and caring about domestic spending first, then you'd see aid to Israel cut off as well. Funny how that's not happening.
And it’s not lost on me that both Starmer and Macron represent a minority of the electorate in their respective countries—having won due to a deeply fractured electorate.
Well, it seems that at least according to the article, Finland, Scandinavia, the Baltics, Poland etc. weren't even asked for our opinions.
Unfortunately typical that we just get ignored here in the eastern flank. One can only hope that we weren't mentioned because it's obvious that we'd back these operations, since an ascended Russia is an existential threat to everyone here, but alas.
Of course there are ideas like the one from President Stubb, wherein any peace treaty could be dive such that a future attack on Ukraine by Russia world mean Ukraine's automatic ascension to NATO (and/or the EU, depending on just how far America is willing to backstab its allies) and basically having the organisation(s) guarantee Ukraine's independence. Although that would require taking northern and eastern Europeans seriously, and I'm somehow not convinced of that happening.
But yeah, hopefully they get the peacekeepers at the very least.
It occurred to me that backstabbing is a common tactic of war historically, and increasingly of a certain group of power-seeking individuals specifically. A trait that The Apprentice and it's similar ilk of reality TV shows like Survivor invariably promoted.
My comment today on a YT video;
"Trump never apologizes or shows contrition (Roy Cohn's 'always deny' doctrine) as it shows weakness, similar to Putin perceiving appeasement as weakness. He then sets up a scenario (he called it "great television") where he expects Zelenskyy to apologize and say thankyou for the 100th time. He told Zelenskyy he had no cards, so apologizing or showing appreciation-on-demand (for nothing in exchange) would be submitting to being a loser in Trump's own mindset, which is the point of the whole fake deal on offer. No different to the "deal" he made with Afghan government for natural resources, before he sided with the Taliban to withdraw US troops in betrayal of that very agreement. When Zelenskyy pointed out that Putin can't be trusted for any ceasefire, Trump then raised his voice cos his own betrayals (nearly everyone who worked for him that wasn't paid, or went to prison by following instructions, or was summarily fired as per his catchphrase) are viewed as his favorite playing card."
Treachery has been his default modus operandi throughout his personal life (cheating and divorce) as well as in business and politics ("hang Mike Pence"). Reality TV then normalized it to the level of mass-entertainment as he suggested.
> both Starmer and Macron represent a minority of the electorate in their respective countries—having won due to a deeply fractured electorate.
Yet MAGA types keep claiming that Donald Trump supposedly got an "overwhelming mandate" from the American people even though he got just under 50% of the popular vote.
Starmer’s party won the House by a vote share that in the previous election resulted in a landslide loss. Macron’s party came in third and no longer controls their parliament.
Then why did they vote against themselves, family, friends, community, city, country, and other countries? Uneducated people make uneducated votes. Privileged people get it, they just want you to be more educated, but you keep voting against that too.
Regular blue collar working class people from less developed areas don't want to be lectured by privileged big-city people that they're uneducated and only they know better than them what the correct candidate to vote for is.
That patronizing attitude you showed is exactly the one the Democrats had and is exactly what got Trump elected. Until their attitude changes they will keep losing votes out of sheer spite.
Only time will tell if those Trump voters end up being ok with the inevitable cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. If that comes to pass, I expect some bipartisan screeching.
Poor people and working class were gonna be fucked either way no matter the candidate that won, because while America has 2 political parties, it only has one economic party which caters to the wealthy established elite. Do you think Kamala would have done anything more for the poor in practice?
The only savior of the poor and vulnerable would have been Bernie Sanders, that's why the democrats have avoided nominating him, because he's a man of the people, not the man of established corporate interests.
So given two bad options, the poor and working class have picked the candidate not insulting and patronizing them based on gender, race and identity politics, while also being able to form a coherent sentence[1]. Democrats are so high on their own self-righteous elitist farts, they still don't realize why the majority of people hate them.
There are concentric circles of giving a fuck: first in the center is yourself, then your family, then your friends, then your community, then your city, then your country, then other countries on the planet.
It's impossible to get people to care about the outermost circle when their inner circles are not satisfied, so they won't be happy to see their elected officials being generous to foreigners with their own tax money.