The Supreme Court just made a US-EU Privacy Shield agreement even harder

On one end of the spectrum, one may imagine Europe allying entirely with Putin's Russia (or with China, or with any other dictatorship). That's obviously bad. You can live like this for a very long time, but that way leads eventual subjugation, through violence or otherwise. That's the choice of countries that join the Silk Road.

On the other end of the spectrum, one may imagine Europe letting the US take all the decisions and being entirely dependent on the US for many critical imports. In other words, becoming a dominion of the US. Certainly better than an invasion, but a far cry from independence.

To illustrate, I have heard it said and repeated that the UK has stopped being independent. That any meaningful choice on British policy is actually taken in Washington. I have no clue whether that is actually true, but let us assume for a second that it is, or may be in the future. If that's the case, this means that voting for anything other than local elections is pointless. That the UK is in a limbo, not a democracy anymore, not really a police state, either.

Again,let me emphasize: I do not claim that this represents reality. I only claim that this something that many countries around the globe fear when they talk about the US. And, let's be frank, many of these countries also fear it when they talk about European countries.

So, if you're a democracy, in Europe or elsewhere, how do you remain independent? Obviously, you want to ally with a strong country (e.g. US) against known predators (e.g. Russia) and suspected predators (e.g. China, Turkey). But you also want to guard against too much dependence on your protector (Russia, China, but also the US and European countries, for instance, have been known to use and abuse leverage for political control). You also want to guard against election interference from the your protector (European countries have been doing this all over Africa, while CIA declassified documents confirm that CIA has been involved in election interference all over Europe since its founding – undoubtedly also true of KGB/FSB, but they don't declassify their documents).

Of course, if you spend too much time looking over your shoulder at your allies because you don't trust them, you risk delivering yourself to your predator.

Remaining independent is a complicated balancing act that most countries, not just Europe, play as well as they can. Germany's recent fumble shows how complicated but not that it's unnecessary.

I'm not going to defend media. I think that most of them are doing a very bad job, whether they're catering to left-wing bubbles or right-wing bubbles. This seems to be worse in the US than in Europe, but we're getting there, too.

Now, I do not know exactly why you and I focus on different things in political figure's speeches, but you seem to be very much more of a (political) believer than anybody I know. While I always vote, and while I grudgingly respect some candidates, I know that I haven't trusted anyone in a while. In particular, whenever I read the written statements of a candidate (and I pretty much always do before voting) or when I listen to their speeches (less often), I always work at decoding them. I listen to what they say, to what they imply, to who they flatter, to what they don't say, to the promises they make because that is what they intend to do and to those they make simply to sow doubt in the opposition. So far, while I can't claim perfection, my decoding of elected officials has proven fairly accurate.

If you're interested in such an exercise, I suggest reading propaganda from other countries (that helps keeping it dispassionate) and/or older historical periods. It's very interesting. For one thing, it's pretty much the same propaganda, repeated all over space-time, just with some name-changing.

> So while you may get that from Umberto Eco's scale, for which I am unfamiliar, I do not see it or accept that conclusion on a layman's view of fascism

That is, of course, your right. But, out of curiosity, how would you detect if a US candidate was actually a fascist? Or, maybe, to keep it more remote and make things a bit less passionate, if an Austrian candidate was actually a fascist?

> Germany would love that, and that is one of the reasons UK left. If it happens the EU needs to reform under a more Federalist model like the US. Its current model it would be a disaster to form a single military

I happen to be in favour of that, so I'm not going to contradict you :)

> Many many many things, on core one was the shipping and outsourcing of middle class jobs via unfavorable trade deals allowed by a government that supported globalism and global corporations over the needs of the citizens. That would be where the issue started. I would say it really kicked off in the 1990's when trade started to ramp way up with China.

Maybe, but I'm fairly certain that I already heard/read such speeches from the 80s. I don't claim that this is when they started but my personal suspicion is that Reagan/Thatcher both giving such speeches and ramped up globalism and that the reason for which they were adopting such language is the oil shock of the mid-70s, which caused stagflation, hence discontent among the lower- and middle-classes.

> But there are other examples, most recently Climate Change is a good example. US has improved and continues to drastically improve its carbon footprint, but no matter what we do it is never enough, no people want us to hamstring our economy, wants us to kill our economic output, and want us to lower our standard of living

I've heard Donald Trump make such claims. I actually have no clue where he gets that from. My suspicion as a cynical middle-aged guy is that this is more part of a strategy to cater to specific groups of voters (e.g. everybody whose living is based on coal, directly or indirectly) and build a shared identity as victims of bad actors than actual fact.

It's interesting, because on the same topic, in Europe, with the exception of far-left and far-right, the overall message is closer to "let's create jobs with green industries". And recently, of course, "let's use green industries to reduce our dependency towards Russia without increasing our dependency towards US".

On the other hand, both far-left and far-right use pretty much the same rhetoric as Trump: "stop annoying us with Climate Change, we're doing so much better than everyone else and you're taking away our jobs".

It's really funny to see European communists and US Republicans saying the same things, just with different names.

> Then of course you have the topic of expecting to be the world police and then called a bully if we take any action, The world wants us there to Stop Russia, but they expect us to do that with out thanks, with out having any input to their actions, their governance, or etc... Hell they want us to thank them for the privilege of being able to send our citizens to die for their nation....

Yes, being world police is a complicated position. For better or worse, no country wants to lose its independence, even to the US. European our South-American citizens, for instance, have never been very happy at US election interference on their territories (some of which is now declassified – of course, the KGB/FSB won't declassify their own election interference). Just as African citizens aren't very happy at European (and Chinese?) election interference on their territories, because let's not forget that European countries haven't entirely stopped played world police and that China has started, too.

On the other hand, it's hard to overstate the kind of power granted by being king of the world, or of a region. Grant it to any country, whether a dictatorship or a democracy, and you can be certain that it will use it for its own gains. European countries did, and still do. The US did and still does.

It's not by accident that China is attempting to grab every bit of soft power that the US is letting go.

Trump-style (or Lindbergh-style, etc.) isolationism is about giving up both the responsibility and the power. It is a valid choice, but it is full of consequences, some of which are hard to fathom.

> I guess that would depend on what you mean by an "ally". If you mean trade partner and willing to come to the EU defense military if needed provided they at least tried to defend themselves... I think the US under Trump would make a fine ally under that definition

Maybe. I don't think that EU leaders saw it that way.

One of the many examples of interesting choices in international relationships during the Trump admin was when, during the same week, Trump was:

- demanding that EU countries ramp up their investment in NATO;

- essentially trying to disentangle the US from NATO;

- mocking EU leadership (I think it was Macron at the time?) for attempting to improve European defenses;

- trying to convince some Eastern European countries (I forget which ones) to leave the EU.

The overall message for this was not that of a potential ally. At best, a competitor probing for weaknesses.