• 4 Posts
  • 151 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • They get smaller when less people federate with that clown-shoe of an instance. The idea that the community inertia in those three communities is forcing other instances to remain federated despite wide-spread dislike and disdain for .ml users is absurd. Burn the bridge. The more it gets defederated, the bigger similar communities on less toxic instances can and will grow.

    Could you imagine using that logic in any other context? “I hang out with a community of KKK members because three of their members know a lot about Linux and have a lot of Linux-involved friends.” Give me a break.







  • Daily. And that’s just the hats, not the signs, bumper stickers, shirts, etc. I live in a swing state. That said, over half the voters in the country voted for him, and as a group, they’re very visible in their support, so I would be surprised if you don’t see Trump paraphernalia in almost every area of the country, if you regularly go outside and are around people in places other than work. Big “if” on that last one given this is Lemmy. 😁




  • Well, first, you didn’t ask a question. You made statements that seemed divorced from the geopolitical and military reality of the EU, so I offered some clarity. And no one thinks Trump will arm Russia? I think perhaps you forget how fond of Putin he and much of the party taking power in the US is.

    No one said the EU will need to buy American arms. What I said is, if Trump decides to stop arming Ukraine and demands they end the war, and the EU decides to compensate Ukraine for what is no longer being provided by the United States, it’s quite possible Trump will withdraw the US from NATO. He’s already looking for an excuse.

    If you think you can build a military coalition with 70% of the spend suddenly stopping, by all means. What is more likely, as I said, is the withdrawal of the US from NATO would dramatically hamper its effective strength as a deterrent in the region. You would then need to rely on individual member states to attempt to deter or defend from Russian aggression.

    The US has a unified, centralized military with a clear and consolidated command structure across all of its branches with a military spending allocation 4x greater than the entire EU combined. The EU is a somewhat collaborative collection of nations with widely variant defense policies. Because of that, the EU channels the majority of its defense strategy through NATO, within which the US plays an irrefutably dominant role. Many of its smaller members’ defense strategies, Estonia for instance, amount to “try to die slowly for two weeks until NATO arrives.” Without the US in NATO, nations near Russia like the aforementioned Estonia could be in serious danger.

    The idea that the EU could unilaterally “roll over” Russia if the US leaves NATO is unlikely, and extremely unlikely if it causes the US to start providing military support to Russia. That goes to my final point, which is, if you think you’re right, go ahead and try, and we’ll see how it goes. Fortunately, the leaders of the member countries in NATO are generally not as ignorant as you are, so the likely outcome here is if Trump stops helping Ukraine and tells them to end the war, then Ukraine will end up ceding territory and the war will “end.”

    To be clear, none of these things happening are what I would consider good or positive possibilities. You may not like it, and I certainly don’t, but the idea that the EU will just “go it alone” flies in the face of the political and military reality of the United States and the EU. If you give Trump an excuse to exit NATO, he absolutely will, and the EU will then have serious challenges ahead. The economic impact of attempting to replace even half of the military power that will disappear if the US withdraws would dramatically reshape the EU economy. And not for the better. And that’s not even going into what China would do with the EU if this kind of political and military realignment occurred.

    To be blunt, even as a union, the EU is not a superpower, especially militarily. Its member-states are, obviously, even less so. Its strength is generally in the arena of so-called “soft power.” What I’m discussing here is hard power.


  • The problem isn’t simply the US not sending arms to Ukraine and the the EU compensating for it. Do you really want to get into a military technology pissing match with the United States? Because the problem you have is if the Trump begins sending arms to Russia in response to the EU “prolonging the war” by making up for the US no longer arming Ukraine, you’re going to realize just how weak the NATO military alliance actually is.

    Oh, but what about the US’s NATO obligations, you might say. Well, Trump has long wanted to leave NATO. Trump’s team has already pointed out that there is executive authority over foreign policy, and they will argue Trump therefore has the authority to unilaterally withdraw from NATO. And it’s quite possible he will, especially if NATO countries align to defy his attempt to end the war by increasing the arms they send to Ukraine.

    It’s important to note that without the United States, NATO’s collective defense capability would be crippled. The U.S. accounts for 68% of total NATO defense spending, providing the backbone of the alliance’s military power, advanced technology, and rapid response capabilities. This dominance means that European allies, even collectively, cannot match the U.S. in terms of strategic lift, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, or modern weapons systems, all of which are critical to NATO operations.

    U.S. withdrawal would leave a power vacuum that Europe is neither financially nor militarily equipped to fill, effectively gutting NATO’s ability to deter or respond to threats. Without the U.S., NATO as a credible military alliance would collapse under its own weight, leaving its members exposed and vulnerable to external aggressors. If the EU is worried about Russia continuing to expand its territory through force, the best way to make that happen would be to piss off the United States. Trump wouldn’t even need to do anything except leave. If he’s also arming Russia, say good night.

    The EU is in no position to dictate terms or defy the will of the US in terms of military priorities. If you want to do that, than you need all member countries to dramatically reorganize their federal budgets to significantly amplify military spending. Very few if any EU countries a) have the political will to do this b) have the economy to afford this, and c) have the means to actually accomplish this. If Trump says the war is over, there is very little the EU can realistically do about it without making their situation dramatically worse.

    Sad to say, this is truly a geo-political “fuck around and find out” situation for the EU.



  • What are you even talking about? They’re curating the communities and instances they engage with. That’s literally one of the core functionalities of the fediverse.

    “YOU’RE NOT ENGAGING WITH LITERALLY WHATEVER IS PUT IN FRONT OF YOU. MAYBE YOU SHOULD STOP USING THE INTERNET!”

    Omg I’m dying lol 🤣

    Hey OP, I have a suggestion for someone to block… I’m going to block him as well.