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Comment by HideousKojima | Hacker News Reader

Trump was literally mocked and laughed at by German officials for suggesting such a thing as recently as 2018.

It shows how immature of a world we live in that ideas become automatically discredited at the highest levels depending on who's saying those ideas out loud.

His idea of an alternative was LNG from the US, which was easily twice as expensive - no wonder he wasn't taken seriously at the time.

In hindsight he was right, but by accident.

Putting LNG on ships vs a pipeline is not a real substitute, financially or otherwise. Not for several years and incredibly higher environmental devastation in the process.

It’s an entirely adequate substitute if you don’t base your export dependent economy on cheap Russian gas, and heat your homes with it during winter at the same time, see: East Asia.

Never commit two crimes at the same time.

Or you could just not join in on a US proxy war whose only objective is to weaken Russia. Pretty rich criticizing Europe for relying on cheap Russian gas when the US economy would collapse overnight if OPEC, or even just the Saudis and a few others boycotted it.

If an independent geopolitical position had been charted at quite literally any point over the past however many decades, that may have been an option, yes.

Mexico alone provides more crude oil to the US than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined, it is 2022, not 2001.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...

Neither of those countries pose an existential threat to the North American equivalent of Northern & Eastern Europe (who may take issue with a lack of enthusiasm in weakening Russia) either.

How is making a rational judgement based upon low signal to noise ratios the sign of an immature world?

It is when the reason for deeming an idea foolish is the fact that a specific person said it. Most evident case of this is the lab leak theory, which became a complete taboo after Trump advocated it (though there obviously were other forces at play as well). https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-...

Think about what you are saying when framed in the most cynical fashion. 'How is basing my opinion of an idea, not on what is said but instead on my opinion of the speaker, a sign of immaturity.' The claim to signal to noise is little more than a high brow ad hominem, rather than an actual rationale. And similarly your choice of adjective of "rational", is little more than begging the question.

Of course this is not taking your words in good faith, but it's also not straw manning you.

It wasn't just the German delegation but the entire press establishment as well. All because it was politically convenient at the time.

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