Vice President Vance arrived in Europe this week, making his first diplomatic outing on behalf of the new administration. He’s given two speeches: one at the Paris AI Summit on Tuesday, and one at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) last night. Both these speeches – rinsed in arrogance, studded with hypocrisies – have thrown cold water on the hopes of many politicians on this side of the Atlantic: hopes that this Trump administration would only manage to prove as damaging as the last one.
In Paris (full text here via archive.is instead of The Spectator) Vance declared that the US intended to remain the leader in AI technology and, laughably, that the Trump administration plans to invest in education and ensure that AI would always center workers, rather than “automate away our labor force.” Vance spent a great deal of his time wagging his finger at Europeans for having the temerity to regulate AI. He warned that not only did the EU risk strangling innovation in its cradle, but that doing so risked ceding the field to “authoritarian governments.” He actually had the gall to say this:
“Now we’ve also watched as hostile foreign adversaries have weaponised AI software to rewrite history, surveil users, and censor speech . . . some authoritarian regimes have stolen and used AI to strengthen their military intelligence and surveillance capabilities, capture foreign data, and create propaganda to undermine other nations’ national security. I want to be clear. This administration will block such efforts full stop . . . .
“From CCTV to 5G equipment, we’re all familiar with cheap tech in the marketplace that’s been heavily subsidised and exported by authoritarian regimes. But as I know, and I think some of this – some of us in this room have learned from experience, partnering with them means chaining your nation to an authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in, and seize your information infrastructure.”
Yes, Mr. Vice President. The US is very, very familiar with infiltration of its information infrastructure by authoritarians. Especially over the last three weeks.
But it was yesterday’s speech that really got Europeans’ backs up. They were expecting him to present them with the usual Trumpian views about how to handle the Ukraine situation and how Europeans need to contribute more to security spending. That is not what they got. Instead, they were told that European efforts to resist the rise of right-wing populism were attacks on free speech, and that their lax approach to migration suggested they no longer cared about “western values.” From the Guardian:
Vance said of Donald Trump’s re-election: “There is a new sheriff in town.” He said: “Democracy will not survive if their people’s concerns are deemed invalid or even worse not worth being considered.”
The blistering and confrontational remarks were met with shock at the conference and were later condemned by the EU and Germany, while drawing praise from Russian state television. They signalled a deepening of the transatlantic chasm beyond different perceptions of Russia to an even deeper societal rupture about values and the nature of democracy.
Vance said: “If you are afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people … If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor for that matter is there anything you can do for the American people.”
There is nothing America can do for you. This speech was reportedly met with shocked silence by the audience in the hall. Today, however, people are talking, especially after Vance went to meet with leaders of Germany’s hard-right Alternative für Deutschland party yesterday, snubbing other German political leaders in the process.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said that “[The Americans] try to pick a fight with us and we don’t want to a pick a fight with our friends,” but reporting from Reuters indicates that she has called a meeting of EU foreign ministers for Sunday “to share information and take stock of the latest contacts with United States administration representatives and with Ukraine at the Munich Security Conference.”
The president of Switzerland, Karin Keller-Sutter, tried to explain away Vance’s criticism by saying that he had a point if you squinted: “[Vance] also affirmed a very liberal principle that I share: you must not simply share the opinions of others. You must also fight for them to be able to express them.”
Others were more forceful in denouncing Vance’s remarks, particularly the PM of Poland:
This morning, President Zelensky of Ukraine addressed the MSC as well. “Yesterday here in Munich,” he said, “the US vice president made it clear [that] decades of the old relationship between Europe and America are ending. . . . Now we can’t rule out the possibility that America might say no to Europe on an issue that threatens it.” He is proposing a pan-European armed force to preserve the peace. His speech received a standing ovation, though it remains to be seen whether there will be any practical follow up.
Over here in the UK, many commentators in the press are righteously appalled by what Vance had to say. Patrick Wintour of the Guardian called the speech a call to arms to hard-right populists:
Yes, the 22 minutes were full of laughable hypocrisy, distorted portraits of European democracy and insensitivity to Europe’s trauma with fascism, but for what it said about the chasm in values between most in Europe and the Trump administration, it was hard to overlook.
It was not just a collection of cheap shots in a culture war, while a real, life-and-death military war was largely ignored. It was a call to arms for the populist right to be able to seize power in Europe, and a promise that the “new sheriff in town” would help them to do so.
International relations experts, including Phillips O’Brien of the University of St. Andrew’s in Scotland, begged people to wake up:
People who tried to talk around Vance’s speech yesterday are denying the truth. Washington is trying to legitimize right-wing authoritarianism across Europe (think Orbanizing the continent). It would be the end of democracy. I pray Vance’s move backfires.
— Phillips OBrien (@phillipspobrien.bsky.social) February 15, 2025 at 1:44 PM
Alexander Clarkson of Kings College London was even more blunt:
Invoking a “special relationship” with the US that hasn’t been taken seriously by US policymakers for years will do nothing to stop a MAGA US from pulling out of Europe.
An inability to cope with the realities of a post-American global order will undermine the UK’s ability to survive it
— Alexander Clarkson (@aphclarkson.bsky.social) February 15, 2025 at 11:21 AM
It is surreal to watch German and UK commentators discuss the US under Trump a if it is still a coherent geopolitical actor even as the Trump/Musk administration shreds the basics of state capacity from IRS to the nuke program at home or bullies Canada and prepares strikes on targets in Mexico
— Alexander Clarkson (@aphclarkson.bsky.social) February 15, 2025 at 11:27 AM
But what about the people who matter? you ask. What about the actual policymakers in our Labour government?
Take a wild goddamn guess.
That headline is from yesterday. Starmer could take spine-stiffening lessons from Susan Fucking Collins, I swear.
Thanks to Vance’s debut on the world stage, The Horrors are now front and center worldwide. Here’s hoping Europe can pull together.
I’m sure Adam will have a more informed take on all this tonight, but if any of you other expats or commenters from abroad have seen other reactions, feel free to share those below. Otherwise, open thread.
(Confidential to Tony Jay: Good to see you in the overnight thread! Hope you’ll come visit me when they bang me up in the enemy alien internment camp later this decade.)
Steve LaBonne
I wonder how voters in Germany and France will react to VD Jance’s Nazi spew. Let us hope they will react the way Canadians seem to be reacting to Trump’s threats.
Kay
I hope the hard Right, authoritarian turn by US media and Republicans backfires in Europe like it seems to be backfiring in Canada and Mexico.
No one wants to mimic US corruption and the collapse of US institutions. No one aspires to that. We are now a “good, bad example” for the rest of the world – “your country too could be captured by hard Right billionaires and their employees in media and the GOP”
kindness
In jest (kinda) I’m wondering who the first person from Trump II to get shot will be. There’s gotta be a depraved pool somewhere. Lord knows it sure seems like they’re testing us all. It’s all Trump would need to set loose an American Gestapo & Army on the civilian population.
Rose Judson
@Kay: One thing that heartens me is that local fascist Nigel Farage has stopped bragging about how close he is to Musk. He also feebly denounced Trump’s remarks about Ukraine from earlier this week.
Kay
If you watch and read US news and international news you can see a “reality gulf” developing between our billionaire captured media and how US news is reported in the rest of the world. Its frightening to watch – how huge lies just take hold here now and become “truth”.
jonas
@Steve LaBonne: Yeah, making AfD out to be Russian stooges — which they are — is one thing. Making them look like they’re kissing up to Trump/Vance. Well, now, that could just be the thing that gets otherwise quiescent Germans out in the streets to denounce neo-Nazism and defend democracy. My sense is that the feeling among the German public and politicians is that Vance kann sich selbst mit vielerlei verrosteten Handwerkzeugen ficken.
Geminid
Nilbilly Elegy.
Kay
@Rose Judson:
Thanks – great news. They’re running away from the US Right in Canada too.
We were too spoiled and soft and coddled to defend our own country but our bad example might save the rest of the world from US-style capture and corruption.
“Leading from behind”, you might say :)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Considering the Chines just realized their version of AI a couple weeks ago. What does Sofa Fucker think Stalin had AI? If he is talking about the CCP, they don’t need AI, they have a population one billion to throw at things like that.
Kay
Europeans should put some new guardrails in to protect independent media and regulate money in politics. Vance is working to spread the rot worldwide. Don’t be complacent and reckless like we were.
Do the opposite of what US media and the US authoritarian regime say. Learn from our tragic errors. Keep your countries safe from the United States.
Doug R
I’m thinking Vance’s speech sounded better in the original German.
Steve LaBonne
@Doug R: Sounded like Russian to me.
Urza
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Pretty sure he was talking about his coworkers. They count as a hostile foreign power given how bought they are and how antithetical to democracy.
trnc
@Steve LaBonne: I wonder when EU countries will say, “Since you’re no longer honoring security commitments, you no longer need military bases here.”
Elizabelle
@Kay: I think SFAW mentioned seeing a chyron on one of the happy talk morning shows (used to be morning news) about “slimsizing” the US government.
Right, corporate overlords.
TBone
I am making hot pickled vichyssoise in hizzhonor today (NotMax’s Pickle Soup recipe wth less pickle and more potato & onion). Less is more SNOW DAY
A little dab’ll DO ya!
themodernnonna.com/creamy-dill-pickle-soup/#wprm-recipe-container-10105
Gotta cook when I can these days time is short, always I’m making dishes that’ll feed us for 3 days into the future with assorted garnishments.
Melancholy Jaques
@Kay:
Similar to what we saw during the Iraq invasion?
Lobo
To cheer me up: I watched an episode of Debby Downer on SNL.(Gallows Humor)
Kay
@Elizabelle:
Remember when they all lockstep started saying “trim” rather than “cut”?
They take language orders from the Right. Elon Musk is their editor.
They all sat down and shut up when the regime banned the Associated Press. Fucking cowards.
Rose Judson
Oh look. While I was writing the post above, there’s been a development: the US says that talks about the fate of Ukraine will involve Russia, the US, and Ukraine. Not Europe.
Steve LaBonne
@trnc: I mean, why would you allow a hostile foreign power to have bases in your country?
Hildebrand
It will be interesting to get the sense of things from England and Europe over the next few months – we start our sabbatical in ten days, and will be starting off with a couple of months in York. It’ll be fascinating to see how this plays out in the news, and in pub conversations.
Steve LaBonne
@Rose Judson: Ukraine should very impolitely decline to participate.
Geminid
@trnc: The Europeans will probably let this administration be the one to make rhat move. I don’t think they’ll write the US off yet. Maybe we Yankees will clean up our mess first.
Leto
Just to post again so everyone can have a copy, from the Internet Archive, Dr. Tim Snyder’s On Tyranny. Figure we could all go through it again just for a refresher.
Lobo
People who tried to talk around … This is the problem right now. Everyone is talking around the situation unable or unwilling to face the truth.
There is no constitutional crisis. That is over.
There has been a coup.
Musk is in control.
Full stop. Until we get out of denial, no progress will be made. Sigh!
Elizabelle
@Kay: We should send them breath mints and lube.
p.a.
@Rose Judson: Wow: Ukraine was invited! //s
scav
@Elizabelle: Oooo, don’t forget the strategic padding and augmentation zones that the overlords find “sexy” in their trophy wives. I’m sure their idealized skeletonized government will nevertheless exhibit its pouty lips, triple D cups and shake its booty for their pleasure alone.
trnc
It’s a great point, but all available evidence makes it clear that Vance and the Trump Administration are not defending freedom of speech for dissenters.
Leto
This Imgur user put up a post about the links between AfD, Nazis, pro-Russia, and Husk. Worth the click.
thruppence
I am almost paralyzed with loathing, but that’s what they want. I’ll be attending the Denver 50501protest on Monday’s NotMyPresident’s Day, we’ll see what I can do after that.
Lily
At CJR:
The Times of San Diego, Stocktonia, (nonprofit in CA’s Central Valley since 2022) and the Santa Barbara News-Press (150 years old, closed in 2023 ) have “donated themselves to Arizona State in exchange for administrative support.”
cjr.org/business_of_news/newswell-local-journalism-newspapers-arizona-state-san-diego-times.php
TBone
@Lobo: ha!
Ella in New Mexico
More and more I am convinced their recklessness, cruelty and arrogance are fueled by the inside knowledge that Musk has and is going to make sure they will not get voted out of power.
I also am convinced they’ve shared this information with Republicans, along with what information Musk has that would destroy them or their families if they fall out of line.
Musk has to be taken down or we have no hope.
Elizabelle
@Leto: There is also a spectacular graphic version of On Tyranny, illustrated by Nora Krug.
Great gift for younger people, and superbly well done.
Thriftbooks link.
Elizabelle
@Ella in New Mexico: I would like to set John Roberts and his corrupt Supreme Court colleagues on fire for this one.
This is what Citizens United and eviscerating the Voting Rights Act has led to. They killed our democracy.
Am quite sure that Roberts, at least, is watching this all with horror. Who gives a fuck what Alito might think.
Captain C
@Elizabelle:
Not that it’ll reverse what he’s done, but I hope he fully understands that he is and forever will be the Angel Hernandez of calling legal balls and strikes.
scav
@Elizabelle: “Am quite sure that Roberts, at least, is watching this all with horror.”
How charitable you are. I think he’s probably counting his quids before they go pro.
trnc
You’re both right.
Elizabelle
@Captain C: Ah yes.
And Roger B. Taney Roberts
I find Mitch McConnell’s recent votes amusing. No atoning for his career, though.
Do wonder if he got some very bad news from his doctors.
trnc
@Steve LaBonne:
Exactly.
TBone
@Leto: thank you, always a good reference guide!
TBone
@trnc: it’s an admirable sentiment while I’m squinting.
I’m switching over to
now.
TBone
@Steve LaBonne: why would we elect it, oh,
riiiiiiiight
Jimi knows
m.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY
Kay
@Elizabelle:
They spent 4 solid years screeching about cancel culture and how younger than middle aged liberals were ruining liberalism and now Musk and Trump suppress speech daily and not a peep out of them.
The NYTimes had like 9 reporters covering “woke” – now they just recite Elon Musk’s lies. They deserve to go out of business. We need braver, better, serious people in that industry.
Shallow, expensively educated stupid people who follow fads and incite moral panics. Bad thinkers.
trnc
Could be, especially since it risks antagonizing the anti-democratic rapists, but seeing the US break it’s own shit and loot their treasury as much as it has in less than one month makes getting through the next 4 years a big roll of the dice.
ETA: Knowing that the US might start actively looking at other places to plunder.
Captain C
@Elizabelle:
And Dred Scott Roberts
To paraphrase a disgraced comedian whom I will not name, “This is not Moscow Mitch. This is an old man who is belatedly trying to get into heaven.”
Kay
@Ella in New Mexico:
Musk is a moron who will crash the economy. His stupidity and arrogance will save us. He’s a stupid person.
Lily
her bluesky bio
Baud
@Kay:
We won’t be saved until we learn to give Dems ample time it fix stuff. Until then, we’ll remain in a Sisyphean cycle.
Elizabelle
@Kay: I hope AG Sulzberger and Joseph Kahn die in a fire. Literally. Or have their own Luigis, studying them even now.
Don’t even read the Vichy Times politics stuff. They are not trustworthy.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Well, that’s not going to happen.
We could be moving forward with Harris and Walz. I am sick about it every day. I wish I could stop thinking about what could have been.
Professor Bigfoot
@Elizabelle: Thank you, ordered.
Kay
People who are in states that are less corrupt than mine should also lobby to regulate AI. The tech authoritarians are going to use it to determine guilt or innocence in judicial proceedings. They’re already promoting that use in Mexico, India, Panama and Brazil. Only two US states have expressly banned it – Delaware and Utah.
Unless you want Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos and Cook replacing judges and juries with their bespoke far Right AI, you better start lobbying your state legislature. They’ll imprison dissenters.
AWOL
@Elizabelle: Roberts has his lurid dick in his hand and is wanking to the misery and chaos he has helped create, which was/is his job.
Juju
Rose, tell Starmer for me that he has my permission to poke the bear, and he should poke the bear as hard as he wants. If he wants to poke the bear with a sharpened flag pole with the Union Jack hanging from it, do it. I won’t be offended. I’d even pay to watch.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Yeah, I don’t know. We may need a generational turnover or two to get a group of voters who have the better mindset.
Professor Bigfoot
Because clarity.
Ksmiami
@Elizabelle: I want to burn them all to the fucking ground.
Kay
@Baud:
Well, purging disloyal Democrats isn’t going to get you there. This is a fundamental strategy disagreement and I think you’re wrong and I’m right. I’m not going to be persuaded that the approach should be scolding voters into compliance. It doesn’t work. It has never worked. Democrats love it but it’s a complete failure.
We’ll have to agree to disagree. I think a Democrat who dissents vote counts the same as a Blue MAGA vote. It’s all 1 vote.
Steve LaBonne
@Professor Bigfoot: Also too, only white people have the power to defeat voter suppression by ceasing to vote the way Republicans expect.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Urza: Then you need to read stop projecting what you would do and go read what Vance said again; he is basically trying to claim that any American who argues against him was fooled by Deepsix. and apparently decided Deepsix has been out for decades and more advanced than any domestic AI in a modern version of the Bomber Gap. Remember this is all being driven by Shadow Stoner President Elon Musk, for whom the Ketamine Faerie has whispered “Bet it all Musk on AI! Bet it all!” So Musk is desperate to flog his shit AI and destroy all others.
Juju
@Rose Judson: Europe and Ukraine should ignore Trump and Putin and anything that might come out of those negotiations.
Josie
@Kay: As long as a person votes the Democratic ticket, I don’t care what they call themselves or what arguments they have with leaders. Like Pelosi said, “Just win.”
Baud
@Kay:
I don’t have the power to purge anybody. If people walk away from the US because they don’t like my opinion, they’ll probably find some other reason even if I stayed quiet. I’m not holding myself responsible for other people’s moral or civic choices.
TBone
@Juju: good using your words today hahahaha!
Any excuse will do for me today 🎶 grannies bravely shouting is fine by me (for now)…
m.youtube.com/watch?v=E8cJ1Wa6U3o
Kay
“We don’t need union voters, we don’t need young voters, we don’t need pro Palestinian voters. So disloyal! We, the most loyal and compliant voters are all we need!”
Except for, you know, counting. 35% of white men is a minority of white men but it’s a fuck ton of voters. We need every single one of our voters, even the voters we may not like. We need the 57% of union voters, and the 90% of Black womenvoters, and the 55% of Latino voters and whichever voters carried Elissa Slotkin over the top in Michigan. They’re ALL essential. I know we don’t like that but it is a fact.
Leto
@Elizabelle: we bought that, and it’s amazing; def recommend that for a physical copy.
TBone
@TBone: just because music for happiness
m.youtube.com/watch?v=r8J7PAUbvCI
zhena gogolia
@Kay: I’m loyal to the United States of America. In the 2024 election, that meant getting up and going to the voting booth (and as a white person, there were no obstacles to my doing so), to avert certain disaster for the United States of America. So if I failed to do that, yes, I was unforgivably disloyal to the United States of America.
AM in NC
Here was today’s message to my 2 asshole Senators:
I am a NC voter and a loyal and patriotic American, and it made me physically ill to hear the Republican Vice President JD Vance tell our European allies to embrace a literal Neo-Nazi party in Germany. Literal Neo-Nazis.
You know who was thrilled with the speech? Russian State TV, which immediately praised Vance for his embrace of rising authoritarianism.
It put me in mind of being in middle school when we all read Diary of Anne Frank and all played the game where we wondered what would WE have done: hide Anne or feed her into the Nazi maw. Well we now know what you would have done: feed Anne into the Nazi gas chambers as soon as look at her, because you remain silent and complicit in the face of rising authoritarianism
Shame on you. Shame on each and every one of you for your silence and complicity when each of us was faced with this same choice. Your children and grandchildren will remember your shame. And so will decent American patriots.
Warblewarble
SLIMESIZING.
Kay
And we don’t have to like them. I’m on the Left side of the Party and I hold a county Party position in a county with very Right wing Democrats. If I can put up with that you can put up with Democrats you don’t agree with too. It’s a big tent and we’re all stuck with one another.
Juju
@AM in NC: That’s perfect. I’ve called the NC senatorial useless duo a few times, but I may have to borrow what you said and call again.
Kay
@zhena gogolia:
You’re not going to win by telling voters how bad they are. You may do it, maybe it makes you feel better, but I want to win. This whole stab in the back betrayal theme is just bulllshit.It goes nowhere
“Sigh, I just WISH people were as GOOD as us!”
It’s insufferable, it isn’t going to work and that’s not a party I want to be in anyway.
Professor Bigfoot
@Kay: “We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression, in the denial of my humanity and my right to exist.”
There are things on which we dare not “agree to disagree.”
If winning requires that we dismiss our own basic principles of equality and humanity and the rights of “some” humans to exist, then fuck it, we lose.
Baud
@Kay:
Agree. I’ll henceforth no longer criticize centrists or billionaires or suburbanites or people worried about rampant crime or people who think Elon Musk is making government more efficient or people who are scared of impending socialism. All are welcome into our big tent.
Miss Bianca
@Elizabelle: I’m not so sure about that. I don’t think Roberts has a care in his fucking head for anything he did that enabled the destruction of our democracy.
If he cares at all for anything, it will be the damage to his reputation. Meanies saying mean things about him. While we’re still allowed to say them, of course. That will be it.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud: I’ve followed you long enough to see the implied “/s,” but see my reply at 77.
Baud
Trans man tortured.
Related
Baud
Other MJS
Uh-huh.
Kay
@zhena gogolia:
I don’t mean to pick on you, I meant to.pick on Baud, I just think we have been trying this approach since Trump appeared in 2012, with mostly bad results.
I would like to try something else. Anything else.
Kay
@zhena gogolia:
I know you’re heartbroken. I am too. I just can’t stay heartbroken. I want to fight this and to do that we have to project strength.
Matt
The only correct response to this is “NAZI LIVES DON’T MATTER”
Sadly there are way too many self-proclaimed “centrists” who agree with Vance on this, so now we’re here.
Baud
@Kay:
Do what you want? I’m out of the game. I’m no longer going door to door condemning people for how the voted. The field is open to those who want to try something different.
I suggest constantly reminding people that Democrats are not good enough for us. That’s never been tried before. I think it’ll take the Internet by storm.
Rose Judson
@Other MJS: Right? It’s just such obvious bullshit.
Rose Judson
@AM in NC: Thank you for this. Well said.
TBone
Watching Mr. Roberts on TCM and whistling past this whatchamacallit except to say Professor Bigfoot is correct.
Double lucky number too.
Quiltingfool
@AM in NC: I copied this, and changed it a bit to send to my traitor Senators. I didn’t ask permission, so I’m asking for forgiveness for my plagiarism!
Here is what I sent:
I am a Missouri voter and a loyal and patriotic American, and it made me physically ill to hear the Republican Vice President JD Vance tell our European allies to embrace a literal Neo-Nazi party in Germany. Literal Neo-Nazis.
You know who was thrilled with the speech? Russian State TV, which immediately praised Vance for his embrace of rising authoritarianism.
My 10th grade Social Studies teacher showed us a film, made by Nazis, of what they did in the death camps. Footage of their victims, their skeletal frames barely covered with rags, or they were naked, right before entering the gas chambers. Then there was footage of a bulldozer pushing a 20 foot high mound of bodies into a pit. I will never forget that, and I saw this film over 50 years ago.
I worked for a very prominent KC attorney- two of his clients had the number tattoo on their forearms. First time I saw that – I felt anger that these two decent men went through the horrors they did when they were young, and joy that they were alive.
Vance supports the people who want to resurrect the vile, inhumane practices of the Third Reich. I have to suspect you support Nazis, too, or if you really don’t, you are too cowardly to speak out.
Shame on you. Shame on each and every one of you for your silence and complicity when each of us was faced with this same choice. Your children and grandchildren will remember your shame. And so will decent American patriots.
Baud
@Quiltingfool:
wenchacha
Leaving Europe out of peace talks just lets Trump and Putin gang up on Ukraine.
AM in NC
@Quiltingfool: No need to apologize, Everything I post here is free to grab and copy all day long. It’s part of working together to try to craft effective messages.
I remember seeing the films you describe in your email. They haunt me still as well. And these fatherfuckers are actively working toward that world again.
Captain C
@Baud: FTFNYT Pitchbot Pitch: “Emergency” European Summit: Why Europe is Hysterically Overreacting* and We Are Always Right and Objective”
*First edition was “Hysterical like a Girl” but they got so much pushback that their servers went down and they had to change it for the sake of their advertisers who didn’t want to pay for no eyeballs
tam1MI
@Kay: They deserve to go out of business.
On that, we agree. The Washington Post and the New York Times can’t go under fast enough.
tam1MI
@Baud: Agree. I’ll henceforth no longer criticize centrists or billionaires or suburbanites or people worried about rampant crime or people who think Elon Musk is making government more efficient or people who are scared of impending socialism. All are welcome into our big tent.
“Except for people who think that anti-Semitism is bad. They can fuck right off.’. Our new welcoming and inclusive Democratic party!
Eolirin
@Baud: It’ll really be something if Trump’s bullshit blustering and stumbling about results in a new security arrangement that provides direct boots on the ground military support for Ukraine from places like Poland, Lithuania and France
I still don’t see how any of this ends without the US effectively ceding all of its global influence. Though the oncoming economic depression here will likely cause a bunch of global problems.
Hopefully much of the rest of the world will end up taking a Canada like response, and we’ll have galvanized a bunch of countries into moving away from their far right and predisposed then for enduring increased hardship purely out of spite for how the US is treating them.
kalakal
@wenchacha:
Trump – The cheeseburger eating surrender monkey
Kay
@tam1MI:
I just think its nuts to portray elected Democrats as the victims of their base. I don’t know what to do with that. It’s like sending Bill Clinton to Michigan to tell voters how great he is and how much they suck – its insufferable and it also doesn’t work.
Elissa Slotkin won and the national ticket lost. A political analysis on that might be fruitful. Or we could just wag our finger at pro Palestinian voters and tell them how bad they are and how good we are. Slotkin didn’t do that. She won.
pajaro
@Miss Bianca:
I think Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts cares a good deal about whether the orders of his court, and of the lower federal courts, are obeyed. In his disgusting immunity decision, he very specifically wrote that it was the job of the courts to determine the scope of Presidential Immunity (In other words, that Trump didn’t get to say what the law was). I doubt a great deal whether he was pleased when Vance started suggesting that court orders not be followed. In this sense, I think he’s different than Republicans in Congress, who are fine giving up their power for their maximum leader. Roberts want the court to continue to call some of the shots. Roberts is, of course, responsible in multiple ways for letting things get to where they are, so he deserves no sympathy whatsoever. (We, however, deserve whatever sympathy we can get right now).
Betty
I see J. D. insulted the Scots and they are all over social media with derogatory names for him. I like Bawbag. Anyone know what he said to get them so riled up?
Kay
@tam1MI:
Lets ask Elissa Slotkin and Cory Booker how to talk to Arab American voters in MI and PA and NJ. They win them. Or we could just tell ourselves we don’t need those voters – too disloyal.
Ruckus
@Steve LaBonne:
Go a bit farther back in time. Not a lot more, just in the lifetime of many still around today. Now if you don’t go back to a bit farther then sure, this works.
zhena gogolia
@Kay: I’m afraid my strength has been sapped.
zhena gogolia
@Quiltingfool: I wanted to tell you that I gave my Patron quilt square to a student from Ukraine, and she is so thrilled with it! I hated to part with it, but she needs it more.
Captain C
@Betty: Perhaps “Y’all are just a bunch of Englishmen with bad accents who are responsible for my degenerate neighbors growing up.”?
Kay
@Betty:
The far Right hate Scottish people because they don’t fall for bullshit like Brexit.
I am pleased as punch that the US regime is pushing other countries away from the Right. They’re so hateful and nasty they can’t even spread their shitty belief system past our borders.
Ruckus
@Betty:
He opened his mouth, what good comes out of that?
Hildebrand
@Kay: The problem is that too many chose not to be in that big tent. They decided that their purity, or their bigotry, was more important, and they walked out. They weren’t pushed, they went of their own free will.
And those very same folks, the ones you want us to never shame, never fail to shame everyone and anyone that doesn’t meet their definition of perfection.
Kay
@zhena gogolia:
I’m sorry I jumped on you. You can be tired. We all are.
zhena gogolia
@Kay: Okay!
pajaro
@Kay:
Kay, in the Michigan races that you’ve talked about Harris and Slotkin got about the same number of votes. But Trump got more than 100,000 votes more than the Michigan Senatorial candidate Make of that whatever you will, I’ve got nothing.
tobie
I just had a great phonebanking session for the WI Supreme Court race. No one talked about factions in the party. Voters were aware of the stakes of this election: loss of reproductive freedom and voting rights and the return of highly partisan gerrymandering. People expressed their disgust with Trump and the Republican party. I didn’t hear any complaints about Democrats. The closest thing to a complaint came from a person who asked me to alert the state party that older voters are not connected to social media, so local Dem clubs with listservs needed to be informed about statewide events. There’s a lot of energy out there. Don’t get discouraged.
tobie
@pajaro: Thanks for looking up the figures. I suspected that more people voted in the Presidential race than in the Senate race. That would explain why Harris lost and Slotkin won in MI.
Kay
@Hildebrand:
They’re in and out though. 57% of union households is a great number! Especially considering that probably a quarter of union households are law enforcement and far Right.
So NON police and security union members are probably close to 70% D. I want to keep them. We need them.
We will not win without our 35% of white men. That isn’t me worrying about them. Its a number. Its 35%, sure, but its 35% of 100 million.
We will not win without each and every group.
TBone
@TBone: spoiler:
Someone named Roberts dies at the end. Yes, I am wishcasting.
Eolirin
@Kay: None of the party is doing that. No elected official is doing that.
The voters are in fact the problem, but no politician is ever going to say that.
We can do that here because no one is going to read this except the members of this community. We are not making this a canvassing pitch.
The reason why things are not going to get better quickly, the reason why we will continue to lose when we really need not to, is precisely because there’s no way to persuade people that what they’re doing is bad without pointing out that what they’re doing is bad and pointing that out loses them to you. It’s fine to be pissed off about it though.
American voters just did an incredibly stupid and self destructive thing that’s literally going to kill at minimum thousands of people globally, and upwards of millions if another COVID like pandemic hits, in ways that were entirely predictable before the election.
If we’re ever going to get out of the back and forth seesaw of Republicans breaking everything and Democrats getting one or two cycles to attempt to make fixes, at some point there needs to be a cultural shift that starts telling people no it really isn’t okay to behave like this. That this is a really stupid and dangerous and ignorant way to act and those choices you’re making they do have real consequences and they matter, not just for yourselves but for others and getting it right is important.
But that shift isn’t going to come from the Democratic party. They have to go along to get along in order to win elections.
Again, assuming electoral politics still even matter. If it doesn’t, a bunch of people who are some mixture of really stupid, out touch, racist, cyncial, ignorant, misogynistic and outright clueless have decided running the risk of destroying the fundamental fabric of our society was more important than turning out to vote or educating themselves on how anything actually works, and they lost that bet.
Voters need to be held accountable to having standards when it comes to being adequately informed and educated about how the systems they live in work or you cannot have a functional society. Democracy is not a popularity contest or a spectator sport, it’s a fundamental civic responsibility. We’ve lost sight of that, and it isn’t sustainable
Someone has to remind people that they can be better than they are, and that they need to be better than they are, or we’re never going to improve. That’s not going to come from here. But it needs to come from somewhere.
And acting like the electorate is blameless when it has most of the agency? Just no.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: You know what – fuck this hobby horse of yours. Yes, the Biden administration’s response to Gaza was fucked up. Just as US policy towards Israel and Palestine has been fucked up *ever since Israel’s founding and before*. And yes, it was wrong, and yes, people were right to be pissed about that. So far, we agree.
But any American of Palestinian descent who could look at Trump – with his history – and say, “oh, he’s going to be better for Palestine!” and *voted for him on that basis* was not only delusional, they actively chose to throw every other vulnerable, marginalized group in America under the bus. Same with macho minority men, same with white women who voted for the fucker. They voted for the bus that’s going to run them over too, eventually.
That’s what people here are pissed about. Stop acting as if that’s somehow invalid.
Kay
@pajaro:
Thanks. Slotkin was the first Democrat to say we were in trouble in Michigan. We shouldn’t have ignored her. None of these issues are going away. Pennsylvania has the fastest growing Muslim population in the country. We can’t just write off whole groups of people because we’re offended they rejected us. If we can’t get 70% shoot for 60%. But we can’t win with just Black people and 50% of college educated white people. Its not enough.
Sister Golden Bear
@Hildebrand:
THIS.
They’re also extremely quick to throw minorities under the bus. Ask trans people how we know. I and many others fucking pleaded with them to hold their noses and vote for the “lesser evil” because heightening the contradictions would end up with — at best — an ethnic cleansing of trans people. Now that it’s actually happening, I’ve heard nary a peep from them about it.
We definitely need big tents and alliances, and that means allying with people who interests may not align with our, and may at times be opposed to ours. But playing nice with people who actively shivved us and are unrepentant about it…. well for me that ain’t happening.
The Thin Black Duke
@Hildebrand: I’ll be damned if black people are supposed to shut up and let white people scold us because we refuse to let “bygones be bygones” and not be pissed off by the white people who betrayed us. Again.
Kay
@Miss Bianca:
Arab Americans and Muslims don’t have a political party. Both parties treat them like shit. They’ve swung Left and Right every couple of years for decades because….they dont have a political party.
I don’t blame them at all for not supporting Democrats in 2024. We treated them like shit because Gaza was politically inconvenient for liberals and they didnt want to talk about it.
I think we probably end up with 50% of them, so like Latinos. They’ll be as disloyal as Latinos. Should we purge them too?
Hildebrand
@Kay: Slotkin won because she downplayed unions and reproductive rights. She won because she overperformed in rural counties all across the state, compared to Harris/Walz (especially in the northern mitten and UP) precisely because she is a centrist and a hawk.
Look at the maps – Slotkin won because she didn’t lose as badly in rural areas. That’s it. Her victory had nothing to do with Dearborn and Hamtramck.
apnews.com/projects/election-results-2024/michigan/?r=0
Captain C
@Sister Golden Bear:
People who use that phrase unironically never seem to want to heighten the contradictions on themselves.
Kay
@The Thin Black Duke:
I’m not telling you not to do it. I just don’t think it wins elections. Do you?
tam1MI
Slotkin got funds from AIPAC. She is also Jewish. She didn’t get those extra votes from pro Palestinian voters. Far more likely she got those extra votes from Jewish voters who were one of the big two demographics who stuck with the Democrats and saved what seats could be saved in 2024. Politics 101 says you build out from your base. Jewish people are a big part of our base. Throwing a demographic who turned out to vote for us through thick and thin under the bus to chase after a demographic that won’t is political madness. Let the Gazassholes stay in the political No-Man’s-Land they cast themselves into by their actions. It’s not like they are a big demographic that can decisively swing elections anyway – they couldn’t even do that in Michigan.
pajaro
@Kay:
I’ll elaborate on what I said above. Kamala Harris got a few thousand more votes in Michigan than Elissa Slotkin in the 2024 election. The difference in result is due to the fact that Donald Trump got more than 100,000 more votes for President than the Republican candidate for Senate. I believe that it’s hard to argue that Slotkin’s differences with Harris (there weren’t any, Slotkin was fully on board with Biden’s policy) caused the difference in result.
The Thin Black Duke
@Kay: Every black person in America knew how important this presidential election was.
We knew resurrecting Jim Crow was on Project 2025’s agenda. The white and brown people who didn’t vote for Harris/Walz told us to get fucked because black lives didn’t matter.
I don’t think you realize how catastrophic this is. A lot of black people are saying fuck this and choosing not to be cannon fodder in the next culture war. I’m not saying it’s the right decision. But I understand.
Hildebrand
@The Thin Black Duke: It’s amazing to me how folks will bend over backwards to avoid admitting that bigotry played a key role in Harris losing. Those same people will then scream themselves hoarse that ‘of course racism had nothing to do with her losing.’ They will hit the trifecta by culminating with the claim that Black people are the problem because they keep telling folks that the problem is that white america is still deeply racist.
Kay
@Hildebrand:
Well then you dont need the disloyal pro Palestinian people, right?
So why all this daily rage at them? If they dont matter then they didnt lose Michigan and we can continue to ignore them. I’m baffled how subtraction leads to victory (!) but I suppose we can formally renounce them or something. Then what?
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@Kay:
I wonder. While there’s a big block of voters who feel no shame and are unreachable, there’s probably a sizeable contingent that are just weather vanes: always turning into the stronger breeze. The hip new thing. (Some of the Obama → Trump voters?)
These voters might be susceptible to shaming, or framing voting for the right as stupid, uncool or unfashionable; the kind of thing only suckers do. In which case, to snag their attention, our most viable course of action could be push harder on the shame, not less.
Hildebrand
@tam1MI: Look at the site I linked to – Slotkin won by doing better in the rural counties. She benefited from more centrist views and being white.
Eolirin
@Kay: Cool. So, what, throw trans people under the bus, throw Jews under the bus? How do we get those voters without losing some other part of our coalition? What’s your strategy for how we expand our appeal?
Dems aren’t trying to isolate any of the gettable groups. We’re mostly losing rural and uneducated whites, and I have no idea how we even begin to appeal to them when they mostly seem to be responding to xenophobic appeals to make other people’s lives worse.
If it’s not enough to run on making people’s lives better and trying to forge forward through compromise and consensus to the benefit of a diverse and pluralistic group of people, even if that means things can’t play out the way anyone individually wants, we cannot win.
Once we gettison one vulnerable minority to win over more whites, we lose all the rest in quick order because those whites will demand that. And then we still lose because Republicans will go further and be crueller.
And because we’re ignoring that the problem is not with outreach, but that too large a percentage of the electorate is cruel, or at least okay with cruelty to others if it makes them better off or elevates their social standing, we never grapple with the actual problem.
And it’ll kill us just as surely in the end as it may have already. White people need to make the choice to live. It cannot be made for them. Democrats do not have agency here, only the voters. The pitch being made is not a bad one, but it’s one that requires that white people share. And clearly not enough of them are willing to do that.
Hildebrand
@Kay: You really don’t want to see it, do you? You don’t want to acknowledge that Harris lost because she’s a black woman.
Because if you acknowledge that, then you have to acknowledge that being nice to bigots isn’t really a great long term strategy, unless you are saying that as Democrats we will never run a person of color ever again.
Kay
@The Thin Black Duke:
Oh I agree. I completely get why Black people would be tired of saving this country and just protect their own.
But I’m talking about trying to win. I don’t know what else to do but work. Its the only thing I’m good at. If its over then its over and trying g to win is stupid because of racism and sexism and media and all the rest. But I dont know what else to do. I imagine Ill try until I’m dead.
Another Scott
@Eolirin: Of course, for 47 and his minions, all that is features not bugs.
47 and his hangers-on hate multilateral agreements and organizations. They want everything to be bilateral. That way they can punch down on weaker powers and 47 can get the proper respect and fealty he thinks he deserves. There’s no such thing as win-win for them. Every interaction, in 47’s world, is a competition. If you’re winning too, then he’s losing and he does not like to lose.
Something something divide and conquer is their mantra.
TheEconomist (via archive.is) (from April 2024):
47 and his minions have no understanding of history or of how we got here. These alliances and systems were built up over decades because the previous ways didn’t work. We tried things like not having a strong federal government, not having an income tax, not having an educated population, not having strong public health systems, not having a non-political civil service. Not having allies.
They don’t care. They want what they want and they expect the rest of us to suffer – gladly – so that they can get what they want.
We need to disabuse them of those thoughts as soon as practicable.
Grr…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
The Thin Black Duke
@Eolirin: A lot of white people need to die before they get their reality check because a lot of white people won’t understand how bad it is until it impacts them personally. I don’t make the rules, but that’s how it is.
Sister Golden Bear
@Kay: You’re the one who constantly keeps flogging a horse that been long dead, resurrected and then flogged to death again, ad nauseam so many times that the necromancers are exhausted. Seemingly every damn thread.
Honestly I don’t even think about the Michigan Palestinian voters and haven’t for a long time, I’m too busy trying not to be eradicated because I’m trans. You’re the one who keeps bringing them up.
It may not be what you’re intending to say/mean, but it’s definitely been coming across as STFU, for weeks, if not months.
Maybe it’s time to take a little bit of your own advice about how to build alliances and not automatically shitting on anyone who disagrees with your POV. Read the fucking room.
pajaro
@Kay:
I fully agree with your general point on the need to attempt to appeal to as many voters as possible. For whatever it’s worth, I also have more empathy for Palestinian -American voters who might not have been able to bring themselves to vote for Biden, as a result of his Administration’s actions during the war, than many others (I’m Jewish, for whatever that is worth). I can’t imagine seeing members of my family wiped out and being asked to support the reelection of the people who were supplying the weapons that were being dropped on my family members. What Biden and Bibi were doing was a fact–what Trump might do, for better or likely for worse, was a prediction.
Kay
@Hildebrand:
Well then there’s no point, right? If a voting majority are bigots and persuasion and outreach don’t work then “politics” is pretty much over and all we’re doing here is watching people we dislike – a majority- act and waiting for them to fail.
Eolirin
@The Thin Black Duke: It really sucks that white people who need the wakeup the most tend to go last on the getting run over front.
tam1MI
They’re too busy harassing people who just want to go see a fucking movie.
The Thin Black Duke
@Kay: As complicated as Life is, some choices are binary.
Trump and Harris were the only choices available. Bullshit alibis like “both parties are the same” or “heightening the contradictions” or punishing Biden and the Democrats for the atrocities in Gaza wasn’t a rational response to the problem.
Racism in White America is a problem only white people in America can solve and ignoring it doesn’t work, we have historical precedent that proves that.
Kay
@pajaro:
Thanks. I felt like it was an outrageous ask – one that would not have been made with any other minority group. Of course they couldn’t vote for him. The comparisons – Trump will be worse! – were just tone deaf. All they did was rub salt in the wound. You can’t use the word “worse” in the midst of 55k civilian dead. Its an insult.
Sister Golden Bear
@The Thin Black Duke: A-fucking-men.
Quiltingfool
@zhena gogolia: So maybe I should make you another Patron? I still have your address, I think!
Thank you for giving your student the quilt block. If it gives her a tiny bit of joy or comfort, then it went where it was most needed.
Seriously, I will make you a Patron. You need a bit of joy, don’t you? Making a Patron block brings me a bit of joy, too.
Barry
@Elizabelle: “Am quite sure that Roberts, at least, is watching this all with horror. Who gives a fuck what Alito might think.”
I’m willing to bet that:
Kay
@Sister Golden Bear:
Again, that’s fine. But you are not going to win with the most loyal group. Ever. You will never win. Swing voters swing every year and no one purges them. Every fucking cycle we jettison some liberal policy priority for the idiot swing voters and you’re not raling against them.
Everyone doesn’t love us as much as we love us. Our superiority is not, in fact, self evident.
zhena gogolia
@Quiltingfool: Oh, you are too sweet. I wasn’t fishing for that!
The Thin Black Duke
Yeah, black people don’t know anything about racist genocidal policies.
Black people have often held our noses and voted for the “lesser” evil because we live in the real world, not a Sorkinesque Hollywood universe. Pragmatism is a well-used tool in our toolbox.
pajaro
@Hildebrand:
Elissa Slotkin got slightly over 2,712,000 votes.
Kamala Harris got slightly over 2,736,000.
Yes, Harris got more votes than Slotkin in the 2024 election.
Another Scott
@Kay: No.
Less than 64% of eligible voters turned out in 2024.
50.3% in Hawaii.
76.6% in Wisconsin.
We need to figure out why so many good people who voted for Biden and Democrats in 2020 didn’t in 2024. And we need to get more people to turn out and vote (by, among other things, continuing to remove barriers to voting).
I don’t know when we’ll have a woman as POTUS. I do know, though, that there are still far too many barriers to fair voting. You cannot look at the close results in 2024 (and 2016) and say that American voters never want a woman or black woman to be POTUS, because too many couldn’t or didn’t vote.
We’re not doomed. We need to keep working.
My $0.02.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Hildebrand
@Kay: Of course it has to be about persuasion, we need to persuade white folks (men especially) not to be wretched bigots. That’s it – that’s the list. Denying this is the problem only exacerbates the problem.
My hope is that smarter, and more tactful, people than me can sort out how to do that – because all I’ve got left is telling fellow white folks to pull their heads out and stop being such corrosive bigots.
Sister Golden Bear
@Kay:
FFS Kay….
LGBTQ+ people have been
askedtoldordered repeatedly over the decades to not fight for our rights so that Dems could win. Don’t demand marriage equality, don’t demand the ability to serve in the military, don’t demand protections from job discrimination, don’t be too visible… don’t rock the boat in any way that might disturb the delicate fee-fees of Reagan Democrats we need to win because Bush, Dole, Shrub, McCain, Romney, Trump, Clinton, Trump would be worst.The Thin Black Duke
@Sister Golden Bear: This.
The Thin Black Duke
Time to go down in the basement and practice. Seeya later.
Quiltingfool
@zhena gogolia: I know you weren’t fishing! I’m just “paying it forward,” so to speak!
It is never an imposition to be kind to each other. We need that right now.
Sister Golden Bear
@Kay: Stop putting words in my mouth, as you’ve often done before. In fact, you’re pretty much claiming I said exact the opposite of what I actually wrote and meant. This is what I said:
Does this sound like winning by only including our loyalest voters?
You wanna have a debate, have an honest debate. Until then, fuck off.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Other MJS:
What, exactly, do they expect people to do if that’s the end goal, especially if they’re not going to do something like UBI? Combined with easy access to firearms, that’s a bad combination that’s not going to end well for anyone
Kay
@The Thin Black Duke:
We were literally dropping bombs on their heads. They were losing hundreds every day. So we thought telling them something would be worse than the current tragedy we were inflicting on them was a good argument? All it did was further convince them no one gave a shit and we just wanted them to shut up and sit down.
As I said they’ll probably end up 50% D. So the same percentage as Latinos. As it turns out Black Muslims are much more D than Muslims who are not Black, hence Cory Bookers warm relationship with that group in NJ and his passionate advocacy on their behalf.
Kay
@The Thin Black Duke:
But to your larger point- agree. If 85% of this country is not Black then it is up to 85% of this country to save it. Not Black people. Who have saved it enough.
tam1MI
Reaching out to Latinos doesn’t involve throwing a vital part of our base under the bus. We can build out to get them.
The bunt answer to this is “Yes, we don’t need them”. Oh believe me, I’d love to be able to pin all the blame on the Gazassholes for the disaster that occurred in November. I’d love to round on them the way the party rounded on the Nader voters and cast them out into the political wilderness the way the Nader voters were cast out. I still remember the newspaper story about the Nader lobbyist in 2001 who relayed, in shocked tones, how every time he tried to call a Democrat’s office he got hung up on as soon as he identified himself as such. Complete shutout at all levels. I’d love for that to happen to the Gaza crowd. (As it turns out, the Dems didn’t have to do that to them. They did it to themselves).
But the numbers just don’t support the assertion that the Gaza crowd, on their own, swung the election. They don’t even support the assertion the the Gaza vote was a key component of what caused the loss. Indeed, given the way Jewish voters stood strong for the Democratic Party, it’s arguable that Biden’s Israel policy shored up what parts of the vote could be shored up, and saved seats. As it is, even in Michigan, they proved to be utterly irrelevant to the end result.
Look, it’s not hard to figure out where the whole “Uncommitted” tactic idea came from. The people pushing that saw how the Bernie voters threw the election to Trump in 2016 and got welcomed back and given key positions in the party in 2020. They figured they could do the same. But the success of the Bernie voters rested on two key factors: 1.) They showed they were a big enough voting bloc to swing elections on their own, and 2.) Joe Biden, who besides having no personal animosity towards Bernie, was a coalition builder by nature. Neither of these factors hold for the Gaza crowd. (It’s telling that the push to defenestrate Biden came from the Right of the party. Elected Dems who leaned to the Left knew how good they had it under him and steered well clear of that disaster). But the paucity of the Uncommitted vote in Michigan (well within normal parameters) should have caused a course correct and been a bright flashing red light warning that the tactic wasn’t working. The Gazassholes doubled down on it anyway. Now they find themselves in the worst of all possible worlds for a voting bloc – too weak to be feared, too hateful to be liked. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
Then we might actually be able to win some elections.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
I’m probably going to regret this, but I’ve linked this Guardian piece here before, from June, 2023.
‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags
The current mayor of Hamtramck mentioned in that article even endorsed Trump in the 2024 election, saying he was a man of principle or some such bullshit.
There’s other evidence that many Arab-American voters were wooed by the GOP’s anti-CRT, anti-woke crap in the past few years, pre-I/P.
I’m convinced that for many Arab-American voters, the I/P war was just an excuse they used to vote for Trump and Trumpism, because they liked the bigotry against LGBTQ+ people and the misogyny. They’re a big diverse group, just like Hispanics. I see it in the same vein as Hipanics not seeing themselves as one group and thus do not see themselves sharing interests with more recent arrivals from different nationalities from Central America, for example.
I have sympathy for the Palestinians in Palestine, and for Palestinian-Americans with family back in Palestine. I disagreed with how the Biden administration handled the war, but I don’t have much sympathy for the others
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Specifically, I don’t have much sympathy for the ones who decided voting for Trump, an open white supremacist, was just a dandy idea
schrodingers_cat
@The Thin Black Duke: Some people are beyond reason and persuasion, its best to ignore them.
Eduardo
@zhena gogolia: Lovely reading about a caring gesture.
Being Trump, Musk and Vance who they are I expected their betrayal of Ukraine but still has hit me very hard.
I was planning leaving the US in June 2026. I am not sure I can take this much longer.
I am going to check if my public library has Stefan Zweig‘s “The World of Yesterday”. I am mourning already the post-1991 world. A wonderful world that overfed, over pampered people just threw away with this vulgar, obscene revolution.
Professor Bigfoot
@Kay: How do you plan to win elections against the party of straight white Christian male domination without abandoning the rights of everyone who is not straight and white and Christian?
The Thin Black Duke
@Professor Bigfoot: You can’t.
But keep fucking that [white] chicken.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Thin Black Duke: Absofuckin’lutely.
Eduardo
@Quiltingfool: 😢❤️
Glory b
@The Thin Black Duke: Yep. I couldn’t say it better.
Folks talking about percentages of white males this and pro Palestinian that seem like they’re assuming black people told by pro Gaza & white union supporters that we black people have to suck up to them and they’re taking our votes for granted.
I think many of them have been whistling past all the posts from black women saying THEY’RE OUT.
Professor Bigfoot
@The Thin Black Duke: A lot of Kay’s analysis is spot on, but she has this enormous blind spot around whiteness and its role in everyday life.
But then, that’s true for a few white people on this blog.
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Why would you regret it? So some Muslims are conservative. So are some of every other group. This is always raised to me as “see? Bad voters!” But Democrats lose some percentage of every group and no one says “see? Bad voters!”
It’s just weird to have this repeated, specific venting of anger at these people when no other group comes in for this. It’s also nonsensical. On the one hand you all work hard to show me how they don’t matter then insist they lost the election. If they don’t matter then they didn’t lose the election so the BJ bashing of them in every fucking thread, over and over, for months is kind of ODD, no?
It doesn’t matter. I’m not a theorist. I’m not interested in the endless rehashing and culling of bad Democrats. It’s not “politics” – we’re just talking to ourselves.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Glory b:
I don’t think that’s wise and frankly that sounds like those are Russian/right-wing bots
schrodingers_cat
@Professor Bigfoot: She is a card-carrying member of #notaallwhiteomen
Kay
@Professor Bigfoot:
I told you I accept the role of racism. I just don’t know what to do with your analysis. I’m not interested in the self satisfied “sigh – I just WISH other white people were as advanced as ME!”” we do on this blog. I won’t play. I think it’s self satisfied, self aggrandizing bullshit.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
Hey, I’m mad at all sorts of people who voted to fuck me over and who should have known better.
It’s not also not about “bad voters” or whatever you want to reduce this down to. That quote by Majewski in the Guardian article encapsulates my feelings perfectly:
That can apply to the Hispanic men who voted for Trump, too. Yes, even the ones whose families have lived in the US for generations and are US citizens. It won’t matter to the jackboots how long you or your family lived here or that you immigrated the “right way”. You’ll never be white to them, after you’ve outlived your usefulness.
A bunch of them that voted for Trump didn’t give one fuck about what reelecting Trump would mean for LGBTQ+ people, or anybody else for that matter; they thought they were white enough, so it wouldn’t matter. It’s a fundamental betrayal and shooting themselves in the foot.
ETA: Despite all this, I’m not averse to working with then in the future if they realize they were wrong and want to try to get this country back on track if that’s what it takes
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
It may not matter anyway. One win was never going to stop a worldwide far Right movement – we would have held it for one cycle and they’d come roaring back.
Other MJS
@kalakal:
There’s a phrase I’d forgotten and will be using (although I think it’s simply “cheese-eating”).
kalakal
@Other MJS:
It was originally “cheese-eating”. Dubya used it against the French when they, knowing stupidity when they see it, politely declined to join in on Gulf War2
Remember “Freedom Fries?”, another of his anti French displays of statesmanship.
I changed it to cheeseburger as that fits Tmurp better
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@kalakal:
I think that was congressional Republicans renaming French Fries, “Freedom” Fries in the Congressional cafeteria or something back in like 2003 or 2004.
It was pathetic pandering to jingoism then, though it had antecedents in the past
Glory b
@Kay: Yes you can, it turns out we were right.
But they wanted to pull down the entire edifice, so they got that.
I’m reminded of a Tik Tok that Too Raw 2 real put up, of a Muslim man saying he’d vote for Satan himself to keep “that bitch” out of the White House and make sure as many Dems lose as possible.
They guy’s next Tik Tok has him asking for a multi racial coalition to help hinder as many Trump actions as possible.
I’m guessing you can imagine the responses from black people.
planetjanet
@Kay: Have you ever thought about trying to combat the bigotry? Not just concede and throw up your hands at it? We need to fix this in our culture. It will be the work of a generation, but all of us need to try. Yes, racism and bigotry was a major factor in the election and the driving motivation of the authoritarians in power. It is in our faces. So maybe think of ways to persuade those in our personal worlds to see the problem as well.
The Thin Black Duke
No, Kay can’t. Otherwise she wouldn’t be saying irresponsible nonsense like it was sorta kinda reasonable maybe that voters outraged about the nightmare in Gaza who chose not to vote for Biden sorta kinda maybe had a point but black people are expected to get over it. That’s an unspoken assumption in White America: black people will always forgive white people (or brown people who want to be white), no matter what they do. Always.
Professor Bigfoot
@Kay: Welp, since y’all can’t come up with anything other than “sell the marginalized down the river if you want to get more white votes…” here we are.
Because as a Black man, I have neither any influence over that demographic nor any deep understanding of it beyond it’s pathological need for power, domination and control.
If YOU can’t come up with anything other than tolerate their intolerance, what are the rest of us to do?
Best days
@jonas: Germans have not been quiet especially compared to US citizens, there have been many demonstrations against the AfD
Other MJS
@kalakal: Ah, I should have figured that out.
Citizen Alan
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I imagine the endgame calls for AIs to run the factories that make the drones and AIs to pilot the drones that will be used to kill protestors demanding UBI.
Gvg
@Kay: there was no solution.
the democrats are still not in a position to do much about Palestinian because of Israeli postitions which are not much better than their leaders and American majority ignorance and habitual favoring of Israel. Remember Hamas did start this current war with deliberate atrocities knowing it would result in lots of casualties of their “own” people which they saw as increasing their support and recruitment. They needed Israeli overreaction apparently. I guess peace would cause them to wither away.
So most non involved Americans would see cutting support to Israel as abandoning them to be murdered. There were a lot more votes to be lost than won by any action other than what Biden did by any politician of either party. The Palestinian related voters in Michigan had no leverage in spite of being needed.
if there had been something that could have worked, it might have been different, but Joe couldn’t fix the situation, nor do I see how anyone could yet. Both Netanyahu and Hamas want a continuing war. The israelii’s need to solve Netanyahu hopefully with someone less corrupt. The Palestinians also need something other than Hamas which tends to murder alternatives I understand, so that is a real problem.
Gvg
@The Thin Black Duke: it’s apparently not just a white people problem. That was one of the surprised of this election that we should have seen coming. As America becomes more “brown” and less white, the prejudices of other groups besides whites has an impact on elections.
This time we found that some Hispanic populations were not inclined to vote for a black woman, that she lost support from Biden’s numbers in other groups, even some in Native American groups, and black men. Some because she is a woman, some because she is black.
There also seems to be some racism that doesn’t recognize that the Maga racism is dangerous to them and will turn on others later. Really odd to us.
As to white racism, well it wasn’t news to anyone here so we haven’t got anything new to say about it. I will say that the relatives I have that used to vote republican gun nut have been turning against them starting at the Iraq war and right now Trumps attacks are really making them sound like democrats. I didn’t do it, didn’t have the words. It happened.
Gloria DryGarden
@Gvg: this is such a fair assessment. Thank you. While we were busy blaming Biden for not solving a no win situation that the platers didn’t want solved, we turned over our country to a strange presidency and all this ( waves hands).
Gloria DryGarden
its a bewildering mystery to those of us not interested in all that. For sure.
no ideas; asking my goddess for help; no idea what to ask for. Kindness, fairness, equality , diversity, inclusion. Enough for everyone. I’m not intending to be naive, I’m too old for idealism. But those are my preferences.
Gloria DryGarden
Rose, I know I’m v late, but thank you for your post about these appalling developments in Europe.
It
ishas been an outrage, and I’m glad to see countries over there meeting and deepening their strategies and alliances.Just when it
hitshas hit another deep garbage low, wegohave gone lower. I’m going to stop asking how can it get any worse? Or how can they still spin this to convince the public they’re saving money and cutting waste? Those p 2025 folks have been deep into asking that, and proceeding, breakneck into ways to create more enemies.im going to start asking,
how does it get any better?
And if I catch myself describing this shit they’re doing in present tense, I’ll change it all to past tense, as soon as I catch it. Just to use my language to take aim at a better situation. I find it makes a difference.
I recommend this to all; to try it like an experiment.
What else is possible?
YY_Sima Qian
@Gvg: Wait a minute. Who are these “Israel Right or Wrong” single issue voters that Biden/Harris would have lost if they did anything at all less accommodating of Israel than they actually were?
If it was an act of severe self-harm for Muslim/Arab Americans to vote R or not vote because of their understandable disgust at US policy toward Israel-Palestine, which is objectively incontrovertible, why would it not be an equally severe act of self-harm for voters to vote R or not vote if Biden/Harris was willing to publicly twist Bibi’s arms & try to avoid US complicity in Israeli war crimes & crimes against humanity in Gaza? Why must a left-liberal-progressive anti-Fascist coalition accommodate voters who are single issue on enabling plausible genocide being carried out by a religio-/ethno-nationalist regime led by such a character as Bibi?! If Muslim/Arab Americans who did not vote or voted R sold out the interests of the vulnerable & the marginalized, & one can credibly make that case, aren’t those who threatened to do the same if Biden/Harris was tougher on Israel doing exactly the same? Yet, the “mainstream discourse” on the Dem side is far more ready to take the former to task than the latter, despite the latter demonstrably having greater power & influence (after all, the Biden Administration was unmoved by the former). Isn’t this a case of kicking down?
Lest we forget, Israel is by far the more powerful party in the long running Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which did not start w/ the Israeli war of vengeance against Gaza or Hamas/PIJ’s pogroms in Oct. ‘23. Israel helped to create Hamas to undermine Fatah, & Bibi continued to finance Hamas in the years leading up to Oct. ‘23 precisely to forestall the formation of a unified Palestinian front that might press harder for statehood. Even if one can justify Israeli war crimes & crimes against humanity in Gaza w/ atrocities committed by Hamas, which one cannot, what is the justification for the continued brutalization & slow motion ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians of the WB, despite having a relatively pliant regime there in the form of the PA?
Israel also has nukes, nobody is capable of pushing “the Jews to the sea”.