America's image is toxic to everyone right now (including its own citizens). But I don't really see that many valid alternatives. It's not like Europe has done much to cultivate any kind of relevant software industry.
But you're kind of showing here why Europe doesn't have the software innovation America does.
Americans are not inherently smarter or more capable of doing innovative things than Europeans. It's just that whenever a European wants to do something interesting, there's a handy European regulation making it harder or less profitable to do it.
If this American administration is the impetus for that to change, that would be good! But I doubt it.
Think technical debt with 0 refactoring ever, because you can't break the existing system, only grow it.
A refactoring, that's how I see what the government is currently doing in the USA.
(I'm French, living in Asia)
Not exactly a healthy refactoring, and it'll take decades to undo the damage if ever possible.
1- I think the previous administration used various agencies to avoid justice quite a lot. Heard of a laptop maybe? If agencies were shields for the last admin’s messes, why assume they’re pure now?
2- I wouldn't say republicans started the cultural wars over progressive ideologies
3- The US still votes, judges rule, hardly a dictatorship. Fascists charm everyone, while Trump and Musk two just piss half off
Seriously? Please read just a little bit of history and civics, and stop making false equivalences.
These moves are straight out of the bog-standard authoritarian playbook.
Under well-functioning democracies, the branches of govt (legislative, executive, judicial), and the branches of society (press, industry, business, academy, religion, sport, social, etc.) are all independent with a relative balance of power
Under fascism, all of these institutions are coerced or corrupted to serve the will of the executive.
Every move already done (not anticipated) is a decapitation or coercion attack on the institutions to force them to serve the will of the executive.
Over seventy moves already done have been challenged in court, and the judiciary, even those appointed by appointed by the same President, in the preliminary rulings have been ruled illegal.
No other administration has ever sued or prosecuted a Press organization or journalist for coverage they didn't like. This one already has in the first few weeks in office. That is not anticipating, that is observing fascist moves in real time.
The administration has already challenged the legitimacy of judges' rulings ("who are they to tell the executive how to rule?") and threatened to not follow judges' rulings. Again, in the first few weeks, and utterly unprecedented.
Russia and Venezuela also "still vote". The Rs have already introduced a bill, the SAVE act, which will disenfranchise most married women (require them to register to vote with a birth cert matching their current driver's license name). And that is only one attempt to disenfranchise anyone not a white male.
>> I wouldn't say republicans started the cultural wars over progressive ideologies
I would say they did. What you call "progressive ideologies" is simply living up to the ideals of the country — equal treatment for everyone. It does not take rights away from anyone, only allows everyone to have the same rights in public spaces, employment, healthcare, etc. It is the right wing who turned it into a culture war. It sure as hell was no one but the right-wingers who politicized and turned simple scientific public health measures like N95 masks and vaccinations into a culture war.
>>Fascists charm everyone
Seriously, the fact that Trump and Musk are not charming is your argument they are not fascist? You seriously think Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pol Pot, Chavez, Maduro, etc. etc., etc. charmed everyone? They managed to create chaos and barely get elected before corrupting their countries into their dictatorships.
Again, please get real, read some actual history, stop posting misleading nonsense and looking like a Useful Idiot (in the specific Vladimir Lenin sense).
The choice is then whether to lead and have an opportunity to influence and benefit, or to follow and have neither.
For independent indexes, Brave’s search came from a German company and Yandex certainly isn’t American.
It's a massive opportunity for European-based companies to compete. I expect a lot more funding to start materialising here as a result.
In other words, Europe's weakness and dividedness is a consequence of the soft power the US used to have. The EU has the capital (human and economic) to be a world power in principle, but never needed to.
This has all changed very suddenly. Whether Europe can rise to the challenge I don't know, but it's the first time in a very long time that there is a possibility of it happening.
I find the game theoretic view quite interesting here. Even if we interpret Trump's action in the best possible light, that he knows what he's doing and playing the madman strategy to get others to comply, the destruction of trust that this strategy causes makes it impossible in the long term to build mutually beneficial cooperative structures.
That is evidently not true. You being unhappy, doesn't make the whole world unhappy too.
Doubt it though