The comparison to the Wordpress drama works surprisingly well for me, complete with vendettas and an overzealous leader, just on an even larger scale and affecting more people.
when putting US foreign policy into perspective over the past 30 (or more depending where you are) years, then aligning with China suddenly looks a lot less awful all of a sudden.
An example; look at what they’ve been doing in the South China Sea, Hong Kong or Xinjiang.
Some instability in the U.S. is definitely uncomfortable but the alternative is not better.
I'm not well informed on the subject and now you've got me really curious.
(Not that trump’s accountability is particularly high… but there’s some hope he’ll be gone in 4 years, whereas the situation is different in china)
And everyone in the US should try to remember, every day, that this is NOT normal, and it should not become the new normal.
I was being provocative a bit, to help remember it CAN get worse and we shouldn’t just ride it out.
- Hong Kong was ceded to the UK after the opium wars in 1842
- The British returned it in 1997, under an agreement that its economic and political systems wouldn't change for 50 years
- starting in the 2010s (less than 20 years later), the PRC has been pressuring the Hong Kong government to drop colonial-era democratic reforms, extradite critics of China, and in general curtail civil liberties.
Presumably OP is referring to the PRCs actions to integrate Hong Kong before 50 years have elapsed. I'm not an expert here, this is just my layman understanding from reading American news
I live in Europe, I am European: we've outsourced our own defense for far too long. It is absurd that a country presenting an existential threat to us has been met with more supplied resistance from a country across the earth than Europe.
It's long past time for Europe to wake up.
1. You have to allocate that budget towards buying from the US defence industry. You are not going to be allowed to spend that internally. Which arguments aside of if that actually makes sense is at least a conflict of interest.
2. We are also threatening to annex territory and rip up the only meaningful alliance that keeps you safe in practice at the same time.
This is all to say nothing about trade wars also happening in the background or that literally the only time Article 5 of the same NATO treaty was invoked it was done by the US and paid for with European lives.
I’m generally pro US alliance but it’s also entirely incompatible with a fascist takeover of their government and they absolutely cannot be trusted again until there is serious reform that honestly doesn’t look particularly realistic any time soon.
I'm hopeful that it will create a more robust governance systems on the local level in the long run, but not without more short term pain (after all, there were a lot of non-stateside mouths being fed who will have to figure out realistic alternatives and face once unpalatable choices that will need to be made out of necessity).
I don’t think a lot of Americans have any concept of exactly how much the rest of the world hates them right now but I promise you that you’re living in a very different world moving forward as is everyone else.
You can’t spend generations telling everyone to depend on you precisely because you are selling stability and predictability and then change your mind overnight. That is going to have large multi generational consequences.
My advice is to get on top of your oligarchy problem sooner rather than later and you had best figure out a way that the fate of the world and your country doesn’t rely on what a bunch of people from Iowa think about “wokeness” every 4 years. That’s not sustainable
If the rest of the world doesn't send munitions on target stateside, Americans wont care. Just like they didn't care for the past 20+ years when DoD was tasked with bombing millions others in far away lands without explicit declaration by congress.
Perhaps those who build their relationships on negotiated reciprocity rather than blind trust will fair better in the coming era.
People are motivated to make sure you feel the pain of this situation moving forward.
Right now, its just a clown show in regards to that.
I genuinely don’t mean to imply this as any kind of threat whatsoever just as a friendly pointer but I don’t think yelling “what are you going to do about it?” In a public forum under an alias attached to your real name is a particularly sensible move at the moment.
Lots of things that might have not been a big deal a week ago I would feel a lot less sure about now personally.
People will have hard choices to be made, doubly so for those who have avoided making them. It's great that you seem to now be questioning things you have thought unquestionable; things unfolding now are no surprise to me, and i expect things to get worse, even beyond the current administration or the next until I see people make hard decisions globally.
"If you can't trust America, who can you trust?"
It is worse. Many don't care. They believe in American exceptionalism.
I just watched a stadium full of Canadian hockey fans boo a black woman in a wheelchair singing the national anthem. I’d politely suggest that while that might look like a funny story on the surface is actually very dangerous.
Edit: updated language to not imply poster is American, I didn’t mean anything personal by it at all but better to clarify all the same.
Who thought Canadians booing the US anthem was funny? I saw anger from jingoistic Americans. Sorrow from others.
When the EU tried to set up a small standing armed force in the 90s to serve as an umbrella org in the event of war, the US put pressure on Germany and France not to support it, and it failed.
Now you're seeing the stick. And NATO partners should absolutely up their spending on domestic defense industries. German tanks, Swedish anti-air, Ukrainian drones... you've got more than enough indigenous industry already to not feed the US with your defense dollars.
The impact on commercial, technical, cultural influence of the USA is incredible.
How could we have any insurance that these (personal and professional) US-based infra/tools companies (even AWS, Microsoft, Apple) could be even operating as expected, and in good faith, now that some petulant, inconsequential mixed-business-political leader is able to trigger that level of damage on a whim?
Just for the exercise, imagine Musk taking over Google or Apple: would you then still trust your computer/phone at the same extent as you do today?
Could it be, juuuust maybe, that you're believing what the US's other political side wants you to believe?
Are you so sure? In just a few days you come to that conclusion? What's certain is the damage that the US is self-inducing. The reaction from abroad, whatever form it may take, has not had the time to take shape yet.
> Culturally you will still be writing on this platform in 5 years (because, put simply...)
The more I read here, the more I realise how both part of the audience, and part of the hosting, is veeeeery skewed to some peculiar mindset I could not imagine in the past 10 years. Let's say that it is a good continuous learning experience.
> no critical mass is leaving twitter/x (because...)
[independant citation needed]. I found most of my active communities back on Bluesky and Mastodon, as they have gone almost extinct on X/Twitter. While I see a significant surge of bots (not hard to spot) both in comments, posts and follows. The mass may stay the same, to call it critical is a bit of a flex to me.
> and technically you very likely will be using an american made co-pilot (...).
I feel it's a bit early to say "likely". As it's a bit early to say that it may still be relevant to use it at all in a few years.
> Could it be, juuuust maybe, that you're believing what the US's other political side wants you to believe?
And that would be?
1/ it’s an open protocol, 2/ if anything it’s an excellent intermediary step towards something different, 3/ it feels like the caring Twitter from 2010 already, and that’s amazing a relief.
From America to Zimbabwe, have fun trying to find a country where X is not in the top three tier: https://appfigures.com/top-apps/ios-app-store/germany/iphone...
> Are you so sure? In just a few days you come to that conclusion?
So are you saying, that your currently unverifiable thing in the future (has not had the time to take shape yet) has to stand against the actual happenings of Canada and Mexico agreeing to Trump's terms within a day?
> Let's say that it is a good continuous learning experience
I don't know what you try to say here. Rest assure my standpoint is the minority here. Like another commentator said "Every single IT board" will be filled with the same arguments as are expressed in this threat here (ie. that we're basically witnessing Kristallnacht 2.0).
Because obviously, the numbers of 25Q1 matter? or the trend where alternative platforms are exploding and migration initiatives are organising? We might be settle this not before coming December, but even then, will this matter.
> has to stand against the actual happenings of Canada and Mexico agreeing to Trump's terms within a day?
You might want to dive a bit more in depth into what actually happened there: did they agree, or did they present what they are already doing as something new? The PR win is still for Trump because he looks like a strong boy, but...
Moreover, you know how governments really react. It takes weeks, if not months.
> Like another commentator said "Every single IT board" will be filled with the same arguments as are expressed in this threat here (ie. that we're basically witnessing Kristallnacht 2.0).
If you want to draw that sort of parallels, it ~looks more like January 1933, pre-Reichstag fire. But that's not really the parallel that makes things concerning. It's what's actually happening in 2025.
First, any attempt of geopolitical decoupling will be stymied by the likely outlook of an imminent 180 as soon as the beloved progressives are back in charge – as well as the ridiculousness of how that 180 would look.
Secondly, its not a coincidence that the American Empire (aka the West) consists of exactly one import based market surrounded by export based markets which need their trading surplusses to run their welfare programs. Unless the hegemon's subjects are suddenly switching to join BRICS all the grandstanding posture will be water under the bridge, eventually.
Thirdly, "Every single IT board" is exactly what made Trump and other populists elsewhere succeed in the first place.
The damage is done already. It's not because of the Republicans or the dummies they chose to follow that we would decouple, or because of the Democrats that we wouldn't. It's because of the whole, unpredictable thing that it's become.
Politically, business-wise, trade-wise, the trust is shattered. How could it be otherwise, if a handful of men have the power to disrupt so much the news, the administration, the businesses? How couldn't we expect much worse in the future?
There be a 180 or not, _the damage is done_. To reinstate trust will take decades. The best we can do now, it to handle you as an unreliable, dangerous hegemon, indeed. Was that what you wanted? You're losing at this game, because you might be big and strong, you're not the only boy in town.
So, second, yes, not a surprise. But you would be aware that climate change is already shuffling the cards there for everyone, deep and strong. Whatever happens, the "American Empire" will have a hard time maintaining its might and reach in the coming 20/30 years without cooperation, because the resources each zone will need to devote to its own survival and order will massively surpass those required to maintain abroad influence.
Why claim to take over Groenland, Panama and Canada, if not to tighten control over water trade routes? That at least, is rational in some way, and also revealing.
It's not certain how federations and markets will organise themselves in those conditions. What is obvious is that Europe, among others, needs to decouple quite a bit from the USA, while keeping ties in the hope they come back to their senses. IT is the easy part, however hard it's going to be. The USA give us really no choice there.
Oh, by the way, look at the sales and prospects for Tesla in Europe.
Like the whole USAID debacle, this is the kind of task and budget that is set by the legislative branch, and the president can and should be held to account if he refuses to execute on that task.
You can argue that far more appalling things happen in places like Russia or China, sure. But this doesn't feel like a controlled assumption of power. It doesn't even feel like Trump is personally in control - let alone his "shadow president". It feels more like a chaotic romp through the federal government, disrupting operations and vital functions with little care or planning, then quickly dispatching a crowd of untrained, unqualified interns to put up scaffolding for something new and more aligned with whatever political goals may have inspired this.
Not just the FBI, not just the onslaught of EOs that seem to be more designed to test the limits of power by defying well-established constitutional and legal limits, not just the inconsistent threats of tariffs either. But also random acts like dumping water reserves ahead of summer for no clear benefit other than spite.
It's all very unpredictable - not Trump personally but the entire organism that surrounds him in this presidential term. I think this may be because of the many conflicting interests at play. You have Trump himself, the MAGA cult, the Evangelicals and hardline conservatives who supported him, the various interest groups within the GOP and so, so many billionaires trying to get a piece of the pie. I don't think he actually has much control over this. It's not just ideologically incoherent, it seemingly lacks direction.
I wonder what it will look like once the dust settles and the momentum has died down. As much as libertarians like to talk about running the government like a business, if the USG were a business right now I would expect it to be on its way to being shut down and sold for scrap like e.g. Toys'R'Us.
It was always strange to me when the far-right, and then mainstream republicans, started really leaning into this "Deep State" conspiracy theory--not liking the others politics is not reason to believe it was ever a thing on either side. Not in the way it was meant, there was no "shadow government".
At some point during Trumps first term something about that idea started to seem like they knew what they were talking about--and not talking about their projection of it onto the "other side". Now, if there was anything that has actually resembled this "deep state", it's what is being put on full display: our emperor got new clothes[0] and we're only at the stage of everyone frozen in cringe.