Yes and no. West-Germany was not trusted enough to allow them to make nukes or to make a powerful-enough army. For a long time, Germany has pretty much been a vassal state of the US. I cannot see that happening the other way around (given the relative powers of the militaries).
Besides that, living in a neighboring country, the generation of my parents and grandparents had a deeply-rooted aversion towards Germans. They would communicate with Germans politely, but when no German was around, they would often use not-so-nice names or jokes. Luckily that aversion is gone with later generations.
When I was young (early 90ies), we would often go on holiday to Czechoslovakia (before the split) and the Czech Republic. The staff at restaurants and shops would be cold and distant until they discovered that we were not German, then they would be very warm and kind. At some point, we would always start the conversation in English. At the time most staff would only speak German, but we would use it as a signal that we were not from Germany.
This kind of distrust can stretch many decades. I think we have mostly healed as Europeans, but it took a damn long time.
That is a sound point. I don't think your comment should be grey. In practice, I don't think geopolitics is played in the style of "Yurusenai!" that a lot of online commenters make it sound like. The world wasn't in some benevolent kumbaya between the various players involved here.
America perhaps pioneered the mutual-defense agreement as an expansion of de-facto borders. America can attack you if you attack any of its mutual-defense treaty partners - e.g. Japan or NATO. This places an encirclement on other unaligned world powers: Russia and China. Smart, but they picked up on it, which is why mutual-defense agreements with nations near world powers are now fraught with danger.
But Europe is not an innocent led to her subjugation. Europe has always attempted to extract their side of the deal: they will buy American weaponry and host American bases but they will expect America to pick up the defense bill, including for things like access to the Suez Canal which is primarily (though not exclusively) a European risk and concern in that alliance.
Other powers have always used the push and pull of changing demographics and waxing and waning power to jockey for more control or more trade concessions, or lower spending on defense for higher spending on welfare and so on. The reason that Western Europe vacillated on Ukraine isn't that they were unsure who the good guys were. It's that it wasn't clear where the balance of power was and ensuring they were well aligned was their priority. Likewise, the participants who benefited from NS2 going up in bubbles were Ukraine and the US and one or both of them likely did what they needed to.
It is true. Germany did elect Hitler. It is also true that that Germany committed vastly greater crimes than Trump's America has. And it is true that Germany the country is not a civitas non grata (if you will) though one could argue that this was offered at the end of a gun (the persistent US bases). I think this point (delivered tersely and risking Godwin) is actually very strong.
I think Western bloc leaders are well aware of the strength of the Western coalition of Europe and the US. They are also well aware of their waning will to wage war as their population ages. I don't think Trump has a sound head on his shoulders - Americans will probably carry the memory of the danger of aged leaders at least one generation - but it is clear from the texts he has leaked of the other world leaders that they are pragmatic and intend to preserve the most powerful military alliance the world has ever seen, and the resulting prosperity it has endowed its constituents with.
Any pressure will immediately be relieved if no actual irreversible damage (e.g. withdrawal from NATO or Anpo) is done and everyone knows it. But to make sure we get there, everyone has to apply just enough pressure to not break the machine. We can only hope they have the skill at diplomacy.
All this "Americans must realize you are now PARIAHS and will NEVER BE TRUSTED AGAIN" business will seem novel to people today, but this was true when I was younger and America had just invaded Iraq right after Afghanistan. People were talking about how they pretend to be Canadian and so on. America was supposedly a pariah then, which makes any threat of "you are now a pariah" not particularly meaningful.
So long as Europe benefits from America and America benefits from Europe and both can put in changes that cement such commitment in the future, I think we will return to a powerful Western bloc - which I (personally) think is good for all humanity.
1. Suez Canal: UK, France, and Israel attacked Egypt for control of that. This stopped very quickly once the USA threatened to turn off the money, and by some measures marks the point where the British Empire became obviously a paper tiger.
2. Iraq/Afghanistan and Americans pretending to be Canadian: yes, I remember this too, but this time Europe and Canada are worried about taking the role of "target", so it hits harder.
The USA can only be trusted by its allies* once again *when we are confident the USA won't turn against us, your allies*.
* NATO and EU definitely; and I assume similar feelings in Japan, Philippines, Australia, South Korea etc.
> All this "Americans must realize you are now PARIAHS and will NEVER BE TRUSTED AGAIN" business will seem novel to people today, but this was true when I was younger and America had just invaded Iraq right after Afghanistan.
Nobody really cared about Iraq or Afghanistan. Sure, it was fashionable to pretend to care, to get on a high horse and tell the USian rabble how immoral they were. But at the same time, people on their high horses also were glad that there was no Saddam Hussein anymore and that the Taliban were beaten (seemingly, back then).
It's different now because the US threatened to invade the Kingdom of Denmark, a supposedly very close ally. Even the threat of doing that is a red line that will be very very hard to uncross after Trump.
Yes, and I'm sure that the next time the US does something against European interests it will again be the case that the last time was just pretense but this time is real. The thing with terminal declarations is that there is no pathway back. If the US was never to be trusted again after the Iraq War, we are never to be trusted again now, so telling us that we are never to be trusted now is not of any significance. We're now post that declaration. That's what the word 'never' means.
The US-Europe military-economic bloc is a strong structure, but of the two Europe is weaker and the participants in Europe stand and fall according to weak ties. Without NATO, it isn't even clear if Poland will have allies. Each of the constituent countries have leaders aware of this. And I'm sure they'll attempt to keep the structure intact. If they fail, they fail but all these dramatic declarations won't have been significant either way. The declarations themselves are just emotional outbursts without even the semblance of even self-interest.
I mean, think about it. If the US has no pathway back to normalcy in relations ("never be trusted") then the cost for all future Presidents to militarily intervene is low. After all, trust is at its minimum value and guaranteed not to rise. If Greenland is core to US interests and Denmark has decided there is no pathway back to normalcy, invasion is on the table for all Presidents, Democratic Party or Republican Party.
Essentially, once you decide that you will never normalize relations, then you're just an adversary: not even a potential future ally. And those who pitch themselves as guaranteed adversaries had better find allies quick.
Just think of the relations the US has with the British. Back in the day, after the independence war, I'm quite sure that there were quite a few people in the US who said something like "never will we have cordial relations with the Kingdom of Britain"...
I guess that's just the usual hyperbole in these kinds of heated talks. I mean, it is basically the same as all those instances of TACO: Propose something outrageous, outlandish and absolute, later compromise to do something lesser.
> So long as Europe benefits from America and America benefits from Europe and both can put in changes that cement such commitment in the future, I think we will return to a powerful Western bloc - which I (personally) think is good for all humanity.
Problem is, right now America is the biggest threat to Europe. And there is no way to cement the commitment you talk about with America as is - regardless of whether Trump goes. Without Trump, you still have one major party actively hostile to Europe.
Trumps policies are not some kind of aberration, they are exactly what conservatives worked for. Republican party clapped threats to annex Greenland. Without trump project 2025 will be updated to project 2029 or whatever, with more lobbying and "lessons learned" strategy. The threat of this happening again, but this time causing even more harm will be there for foreseeable future.
Preface: Trump's idiocy with Greenland is inexcusable and nonsensical, with NATO already having access to build bases all over that island with barely more paperwork than building them in Alaska. So don't read this as a defense of that BS.
1. Greenland isn't even in Europe and America has no designs on colonizing actual Europe
2. Even Trump in his syphilis-addled head knows that the moment he rolls tanks into a territory with basically no military and a peaceful non-threatening citizenry, his credibility. And this sure isn't Venezuela, where the Nobel Peace Prize winner thanked him for removing the criminal Maduro from his post. He let his dumb mouth get ahead of him when he didn't rule out force, and he was forced to walk that back, a remarkable thing considering his pride. Now, even if he does want to try to use more dumb tariffs, those will hurt the US as much as it does Europe. I wouldn't say these are any major threat to Europe.
On the other hand, Putin would very much like to expand a couple countries over, and geopolitically anyone will tell you that Russia "needs" that in order to have a defensible frontier. America is not a threat to Europe the place. Trump wants to cosplay as a threat to Europe the technical political entity, mainly because our map projections make Greenland look so big that he thinks it will make him a "hero President" in the history books forever, but even most Republicans know this is a stupid and pointless ambition.
The Republicans who make up a lot of the party are not interested in Greenland being US territory, they don't even give a shit about territories we already have like Puerto Rico. They just hate the DNC, whose idea of campaigning is saying that everyone who disagrees with them is a bigot.
Who was the moderate candidate? We had Trump and a candidate who wanted to continue the open borders policy and racial quota system in hiring and university admissions.
Moderate/smoderate. There was an insane choice, which people chose to vote to the detriment of most, and a sane candidate, which people rejected due to misinformation and bigotry.
No, they lost because much of the population is bigoted and did fall for misinformation. People started sharing the nonsense about Haitians eating cats and dogs, they fell for the transpanic ads...and many were still not comfortable with a woman in charge. Misinformation and bigotry, and it's not out of touch to recognize that.
The problem is with the people more than the party, and fighting that so we can actually progress the country out of the dark ages is an uphill battle.
No, it seriously was not that. We didn't refuse to vote for Harris because of the idiotic cats nonsense. It was in large part her and the whole DNC's explicit embrace of DEI (note: "i don't like DEI" isn't anti-minority. Plenty of minorities also want to get jobs and admitted to schools because they qualify for and earn those things and not as a free handout because of their skin).
Not 20 years ago, like 90% of Americans would have agreed that it's insane to use racial quotas and different standards of qualification for different groups. Today, the 20% or so who disagree with me on that have dragged the DNC into this unpopular position, abandoning a lot of their previous voters. This has consequences.
And for that you threw the entire country away? Based on mostly fear and misunderstanding? There was another user I saw on here who defended voting for T because, despite apparently having always voted D in the past, he "could not look his white teenage sons in the eye and tell them he voted for people that would make them the enemy" - what absolute nonsense.
DEI may have gone too far in some areas, but that would largely be corporations trying to cash in, not anything planned by the possible Harris administration, and nothing demonstrable by the Biden administration.
DEI went too far the second it violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which explicitly bans all discrimination based on race in hiring. It doesn't matter if Biden or Harris or any other democrat leader didn't explicitly initiate any of these policies. Their failure to prosecute for these obvious (and sometimes even publicly bragged about by the companies) violations of civil rights law that is supposed to protect me is more than enough to lose any chance of getting my vote. I am willing to watch quite a lot of things burn if the alternative is a racist regime against me.
The fact that you are white and claiming to be a victim of racism because minorities are getting more opportunities is laughable, but also absolutely means you were part of the problem.
The only way for the US is to progress is to eliminate the electoral college so views such as yours count for as little as they should.
Yeah you're right, I'm gonna be a big problem for you because I'm going to keep voting for Republicans no matter how much I hate some of the stuff they do. And the more cruelty towards progressives the better because I have nothing but contempt and malice for the people who want to institute racism against.
> Yeah you're right, I'm gonna be a big problem for you because I'm going to keep voting for Republicans no matter how much I hate some of the stuff they do.
You obviously don't hate it that much lol, you clearly want white people to keep the unfair advantages they have had for most of modern history.
They wrote a book about people with you views: 'White Fragility' - you should check it out.
> And the more cruelty towards progressives the better because I have nothing but contempt and malice for the people who want to institute racism against.
Giving oppressed people equal opportunities isn't racism. We'll get rid of the EC eventually, and the votes of people like you simply won't matter.
Sure, go ahead and keep telling yourself that comforting myth that it was all because of lies and dirty tricks. But according to polls the general public, even during the chaos today, supports the Republicans over the Democrats on most of the major political issues: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/poll-americans-trust-rep...
It was absolutely due to lies and dirty tricks at least in part - I'm sure I can find objective analysis of people who said they voted because they believed various lies and disinformation if you like?
But, let's say you're right to an extent, that's just incredibly depressing and shows that the problem ultimately lies with the people.
Listen, Trump won almost every single demographic. His numbers increased % wise among them vs 2016. To claim it was all lies, racism and sexism is just wrong.
Now you can claim that Trump is bad, we'd agree with you. We're saying it's VERY dangerous to state why people voted for him because it enables it to happen again!
DO not double down on the mistakes of the Harris campaign again and then put fingers in your ears and blame the voters for being misinformed, please.
> Listen, Trump won almost every single demographic. His numbers increased % wise among them vs 2016. To claim it was all lies, racism and sexism is just wrong.
I'm not claiming it was all that. For example, some people are single issue voters on abortion, so of course they are going to vote R. But a lot of people bought into the trans panic ads, the xenophobia, etc.
> DO not double down on the mistakes of the Harris campaign again and then put fingers in your ears and blame the voters for being misinformed, please.
The voters were misinformed, though. Without a doubt the last election showed the people are much more of a problem than any party.
Neither did Biden, and he won. Neither did Clinton and she didn't, but still got more votes than Trump. And the Republicans are leading on the issues: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/poll-americans-trust-rep.... In an election between a boring Republican and a boring Democrat, the Republican probably wins.
Palantir will never be prosecuted because they don't actually engage in any violations of privacy themselves or take possession of any data. They just sell software that enables it. And their main customer is the people who do the prosecuting. For the government prosecuting Palantir would be an admission of guilt, so it will never happen.
They most likely do engage. And they are not going to be prosecuted just because they are useful for government - and until this status quo persists, palantir can do whatever they like.
For the same reasons banks rarely get any sensible fines/lawsuits.
This just doesn't make sense when the government is the customer. If you have a problem with what Palantir does, then your real problem is with the government because that's who is actually putting the tool to use. Why would you go after the vendor instead of the government who will just keep doing the same thing if you go after Palantir?
The people of Florida and Texas do not have the right to say who gets to live in Minnesota, but neither do the people of Minnesota. The federal government has sole authority over immigration (but not to murder people while enforcing, obviously). The alternative is ridiculous and incompatible with freedom of movement within the country.
What do you mean by "went to the streets?" If it's just show up at a protest and wave a sign on Saturday and Sunday, and go back to work on Monday, that's not enough. That's not civil resistance. People seriously underestimate the commitment levels necessary to actually matter.
They aren't trying to keep hidden. They are trying to avoid their murders from being filmed by drones with cameras. Jamming is perfectly compatible with this goal.
The preachers lost control of the Republican party in 2016. And if me from 10 years ago could hear me from today saying that I wish they were still in control, he would have a stroke, but I do.
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