So when Trump decides to go get Greenland he’s just going to fly in and kidnap our prime minister.

[luhmann@hachyderm.io]

So when Trump decides to go get Greenland he’s just going to fly in and kidnap our prime minister. Great. You have a unscrupulous and clinically insane idiot elected as your president and he wants to own the world. I have absolutely no trust in any of you Americans whether you are pronounced MAGA or if you “didn’t vote for the guy”: Your elected president is a megalomaniac dictator and it’s your fucking responsibility to stop him.

[codebyjeff@hachyderm.io]

@luhmann I'm sure the outrage in Denmark and the rest of Europe will be swift and total

Expecting to wake up to Russian-level sanctions against the US

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I know this will make me sound like some MAGA fuck, since you don't know me, but...

This is what Europe gets for spending the last 50 years complaining about the US dominance in everything instead of planning & spending their own money on defense in anticipation of Trump

The US defense policy has been that we would have to fight a two-front war, on our own. That's left us in a rather dominant position.

Europe's position has been "the US has our backs"

[lemmus@social.vivaldi.net]

@codebyjeff @luhmann Must be nice to be able to ignore post-WWII history and political realities when pontificating.

First of all, the US has opposed Europe duplicating NATO (i.e. US) capabilities, don't want the vassal states to get ideas. Also, several of the states involved still dreamed of empire. This meant building a coordinated European defense independent of the US has been impossible.

Second, you're talking as if it's a free ride. The US has milked its political and military might for what it's been worth at every single turn in international politics.

Third, in the aftermath of WWII there was no “Europe”, there were exhausted states who hated eachother's guts. The US and Russia were the ones with factories.

Fourth, the idea of a common Europe standing up for itself as an achievable political goal is still pretty new. Europe has a long history of hating eachother's guts and making war. The EU is something fundamentally new, and has no military arm (hello, US), which also is because many states didn't like the idea of federation.

Fifth, after the cold war ended, many Europeans actually thought we could lower our shoulders regarding Russia. This was wrong, but the optimism and euphoria of the 1990s cast long shadows.

I'm running up to the character limit here, but:

tl;dr: The world is complicated.