Hegseth Announces Elon Musk and Newt Gingrich Will Help Lead Military

> Are you also able to speak freely about the leaders of your own country? Because Americans are free to speak ill about theirs (see the comments here), it's only Europeans who have to worry about repercussion on criticizing their leaders, which is why they imagine America must be the same.

You're projecting very hard there.

First on guns: I've looked at US history (not professionally but I am an omni-nerd), and this has never once helped. Armed protesters in the US, left and right, get shut down hard with government support, and so do a nontrivial number of unarmed ones. This includes, you know, the Civil War. Trivial demonstration: if the government had not won every time, the US today would not exist. For example, the Articles of Confederation were updated into the current United States Constitution due to leadership looking at Shays's Rebellion and thinking "we are unstable, we need more power".

The value of the 2nd is an American origin story; everyone has one, that's the American one, but it's like the English talking about 1066 and Magna Carta. It's been obsolete for a long time, and never did what the current mythology around it claims it did.

Now, for freedom of speech:

We're absolutely free to criticise our leaders in the EU and the UK. When an EU nation goes against principles of free speech, as Hungary did for a bit, the EU has limited leverage as states here really are sovereign unlike US states, but it does have some leverage and did apply it.

Here in Germany, my limited grasp of the language means I'm only really going to point at things like magazines dressing up the chancellor in an inflatable penis costume while he shakes hands with Trump. Front cover, normal supermarket magazine stack. Here you go: https://eulenspiegel-zeitschrift.de/wp-content/uploads/2025/...

(Meanwhile in the USA: https://www.courthousenews.com/penis-costume-protester-preva...)

In the UK, where I grew up, there's a long-running show which absolutely goes hard in mocking UK leadership (and the Royals) despite being broadcast on the BBC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_I_Got_News_for_You (Old episodes are on YouTube; don't mix up with the American show of the same name).

To summarise the last 16 years of British politics, here's the UK PMs since 2010 and the general public responses to them:

- David Cameron: ask your AI of choice why he got called "David Hameron"; he left before his term was up

- Theresa May: called an unnecessary new election to consolidate power, lost seats and was mocked for it, managed to produce Brexit plans so unpopular that (almost?) every constituency was against her, was kicked out before her term was up

- Boris Johnson: Partygate, leading to him leaving office first, then later resigning as an MP

- Liz Truss: this specific lettuce was national news: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Truss_lettuce

- Rishi Sunak: also general all-round mockery, generally mediocre performance. Generally low-grade daftness, but the US isn't the only country where being perceived as "not supporting our troops" gets hackles up, so he got a lot of flak when he left early from the 80th anniversary of D-Day to do an interview.

- Keir Starmer: also general all-round mockery, generally mediocre performance, got removed as Prime Minister by lack of confidence

- Andy Burnham: new guy, I've not seen negative headlines yet, but fully expect him to get mocked hard as soon as the winter season of Have I Got News For You starts. Which is tonight.

7 PMs in 16 years. Imagine the US kicking out Presidents every other year just because they were unpopular.

The rest of the free world can do this without needing guns. Hell, large chunks of the fall of the Eastern (Soviet) Block/USSR happened non-violently despite famously extreme state suppression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_Revolution