OostLog

Europe is a vassal. They lack the political will to nuke their welfare state which is a requisite step in building a military sufficient to keep their borders secure. If the U.S. leaves it knows China is the default inheritor of the vassal. Because China is our primary adversary we will not leave Europe intact economically on our way out. We will rip away its access to energy. We will nuke its access to dollar liquidity and throw its existing over-indebted financial system into a tailspin. We will block Europes export access to any country in our sphere. That includes Japan. And most importantly we will fragment Europe on the way out. We will rip it apart from the inside. Not because we hate Europeans. We don’t. Because Europe is a vassal. A resource of empire. And just because it forgot this due to our benevolence doesn’t mean China will view it as anything other than a resource to extract from. And you don’t leave the enemy resources. You blow it the fuck up and leave a pair of star-spangled boxers in the wreckage on the way out. 🫡

Europe's disease is not a disease of America. It is a disease of World War 2. In 1946, after we rescued them from themselves and each other, Europeans crawled out of the rubble they had made of their continent, looked around at their mess, wept for a bit, and then formed the wrong conclusions. They decided that ethnic nations are bad. That patriotism is bad. That supporting your tribe, in preference to random strangers, is bad. They decided that these things had led to the horrors of global war and genocide in Europe itself, and so all vestiges of loyalty to one's own people must be stamped out. Nations were, forever afterward, to be post-ethnic, post-cultural legal and economic units filled with... well, anyone, really. A bunch of people who didn't, in fact shouldn't, share values, goals, morals, customs, or even a common language. Nations were to be mere fiefs, their boundaries determined by which set of political elites controlled them. America, having not been smashed to rubble in WW2, did not share this view. We saw WW2 as an expensive adventure in bailing out Europe, which we spent our treasure and our blood on (including my own grandfather's life, and his chance to ever see his grandson) precisely because we shared cultural and ethical values with the people we were rescuing. But they hate us for it. They see our patriotism as fascism precisely because they see all patriotism as fascism. Psychologists have long understood that humans respond to favors with gratitude only up until those favors become so great that they have no hope of repaying them. At that point, their gratitude turns to resentment. How dare we believe we did them a favor? How dare I believe that my father gave up his father so Europe could be safe, peaceful, and free? Don't we know that, because ${ELABORATE MENTAL GYMNASTICS}, we didn't do them any favors by fighting that war? Don't we know that, because ${ANY PATRIOTISM = HITLER}, our love of our country and favoring of its interests makes us fascist and problematic? Well, no. I don't know that. I don't think any European nation is our ally any more. Certainly, we have shared interests, but how much does that really matter, when they refuse to act in those shared interests, because they have come to believe that acting in your people's interest is bad? They hate us too much to work with us. They resent every ounce of the burden which they are asked to share. Our support has made Europe into a pack of idle welfare recipients, complete with sense of entitlement and self-destructive behavior. But if we didn't defend them... who would? Their native populations have been purged of all patriotism, and who would blame them if they didn't fight for ruling elites that hate them? Their imported third-world barbarians won't fight for them. The very idea is laughable. What's left? And what will make them wake up and think about these questions? Perhaps they need to dig themselves out of the rubble of another war.

Je crois qu'on ne mesure pas ce qu'Elon Musk est en train de construire avec X. Tous les médias de l'histoire ont été couplés à une culture, une langue, une bulle géographique. Le Monde parle aux Français. Le NYT parle aux Américains. NHK parle aux Japonais. Chaque média filtre le réel à travers le prisme de sa culture locale. X est en train de devenir le premier média de l'humanité. Pas d'un pays. De l'espèce. Je le vis en temps réel. Mes posts en français se font RT par des Japonais, répondre par des Brésiliens, citer par des Américains. Des conversations qui n'auraient jamais existé il y a 5 ans. Un libertarien français qui débat avec un ingénieur de Tokyo et un entrepreneur de Sao Paulo sous le même tweet. Pas traduit par un éditeur. Traduit instantanément par l'IA, en un clic. Les bulles de filtre culturelles sont en train d'exploser. Et je pense qu'on sous-estime massivement les effets composés de ça. Quand une idée peut traverser un océan en 3 secondes, quand un argument sourcé posté à Paris peut être vérifié par un économiste à Singapour et amplifié par un développeur à Austin dans la même heure, le coût de propagation d'une bonne idée tend vers zéro. Et c'est catastrophique pour un type d'acteur très précis : les médias qui ont construit leur business model sur le monopole de l'information locale. Ceux qui pouvaient raconter n'importe quoi sur "ce qui se passe ailleurs" parce que personne ne pouvait vérifier. Quand un journaliste français écrit que "le modèle américain ne marche pas", maintenant il y a 50 Américains dans les réponses avec des sources. Quand un éditorialiste dit que "le Danemark prouve que le socialisme fonctionne", il y a un Danois qui explique que le Danemark est 10e en liberté économique mondiale. Le fact-checking n'est plus un département. C'est un effet réseau. Les médias honnêtes n'ont rien à craindre de ça. Les médias qui vendaient une narration protégée par l'ignorance géographique de leur audience vont avoir un problème existentiel. Parce qu'on ne peut plus mentir à l'échelle locale quand le monde entier regarde.

Most Europeans have no idea how absolutely furious with Europe America is. This is not just another disagreement. Betrayal is not something you just let slide. And the mouthy responses from Europeans are pouring gas on that fire. They have misjudged the situation gravely & it will have grave consequences for Europe— economically AND militarily.

How did we get to the point Where so many Americans are rooting against America?

As I said, the 1st U.S. invasion of Iran is designed to fail. That will be the blood sacrifice (excuse) for the transition from a limited operations conflict to all out war against Iran.