Trump Inauguration

Ironic

 

It is absolutely fascinating watching people behaving the same way as they did in the late 30’s and I’m struggling to tell which ones are enjoying what’s coming and which have genuinely fallen for the tricks. When you read about American attitudes to Germany it was full of let’s leave themselves to themselves and parodies of people “over reacting” to “sensationalism”. A great book is “They Thought They Were Free” by Milton Mayer which gives a factual account of the thought process of those living in the reich soon after the war and the excuses they made and evidenced that those that allowed it to happen weren’t the rabid ideologues but the average person who ignored the evidence of their eyes and enjoyed financial perks like free businesses (don’t ask who they were stolen from).

How you can watch the richest man in the world who had turned a huge social media platform into a right wing cess pit do two nazi salutes and roll your eyes or pretend it’s just a silly thing you can relate back to football I don’t know. Sickening, really.

 

Genuinely did you have an out of body experience when you wrote the message i replied to?

 

Says a hell of a lot about someone when they’re so eager to go out of their way to defend a rapist and a nazi.

 

Europe had been sending out the wrong signals to Putin for years...particularly Germany, the most populous, wealthiest country in Europe decided in 2004 to cut it's military spending , most European countries followed suit to one degree or another.
From Euractiv..
"Finance minister Hans Eichel has already allocated the first billion of 2 billion euros of anticipated cuts, according to German newspaper Die Welt. Defence spending is said to have been cut by around 250 million euros with another 250 million to follow if the second billion euros of cuts are carried out in the same way. This puts a serious dent in defence minister Struck’s original 2005 budget of 24bn euros."
In 2006 NATO held the Riga Summit where Member States unanimously agreed to spend 2% of GDP on defence.
Germany completely ignored their committment and in 2010 announced the biggest defence spending cuts in postwar history, prompting senior German defence figures to write an open letter published in Der Spiegel.
"With its radical reduction plans, Germany is merely reinforcing an unfortunate tendency to shift from one extreme to the next. After Germany's overwhelming military had terrified our neighbors in the last century, we then switched to being a freeloader within the framework of European security. A fundamental restructuring of the Bundeswehr is not something that Germany can pursue alone. We must remain capable of fulfilling our obligations as part of the NATO alliance and the European Union.
Germany, the most populous and prosperous country in Europe, must play an appropriate role in guaranteeing European security within NATO and the EU. It cannot assume that the French, British, Poles and Italians will make up for what Germany no longer wants to do. Why should European countries with less economic power than Germany do more for Europe's security in the long run than we do?"

France, Italy, Spain, Denmark and Belgium.
( amongst others) all cut their militaries and Putin took his chance in 2014 and invaded Crimea and Donbass. By this time Merkel had committed Germany to be dependent on cheap Russian energy, and merely acquiesced.

In 2014 NATO held the Wales Summit, where Cameron and Obama tried to warn Europe it was too weak to resist aggression without the US....but the larger states, with the exception of Poland did nothing...Putin took his cue that he had European energy supplies stitched up and Europe was too weak and had no will to resist. His only miscalculation was that Russian forces were nowhere near as strong as he thought.

 

I think humanity is screwed, truly.

The polarisation of views seems wider than in my lifetime and facts, reason, sense, truth are immaterial to some. And that can be on any side of a debate.

Our planet is tipping into an era, quickly in terms of ecological change because of our actions, that could make our environment difficult to live in. We're reaching tipping points that can't be undone. We're exceeding carbon budgets significantly (as it stands, not on increased activity) and we're eroding our natural world to the point so little is left since the 70s.

We know all this. Yet leaders are being elected on positions of denying this is the case or, saying sod it, lets just make oil companies richer anyway and forget the soon to be felt consequences.

And what's worse is not the people who are elected who only care about themselves, but those that enable it. The cascade from tech billionaires to ignorant voters and beyond.

Voting in people like Trump and the likes of DePfeffel, Meloni and Milei doesn't solve anything. It just erodes democracy, they break structures meant to protect us because they get in the way of their own vanity, hubris, greed and ego.

For anybody who thinks this march beyond populism isn't dangerous or worrying, that's probably because you're enabling it.

 

The military choir singing glory glory hallelujah were superb.

 

Don't forget Starmer in that list.

 

Starmer is not an ideological demagogue. You can place criticism on him for a whole host of things, but a would be fascist, he certainly is not.

 

He probably is, just hasn't revealed that lie yet.

 

He clearly isn't. And it's a shame you can't allow yourself to see that.

 

Can't argue with any of that but Brexit put the icing on the cake for Putin.

 

This ought to be on every Social Media outlet going. Don’t think it would last long on X though

 

Wow, as much as I don’t care too much for Starmer, This is off the scale

 

I'm glad someone is finally focusing on the important bit.

 

Yep, literally nothing to see here.

 

As an aside.... Trump signed so many executive orders yesterday. Did he sign one to get BFC a striker before the deadline?

 

He's just sent the fax for McBurnie.

 

Quite extraordinarily, Sky just called this "an unfortunate gesture."

Support for Tommy Robinson, AfD, Reform and does a nazi salute... Twice. But it's just unfortunate... Apparently.