I am English.

Most likely you meant to reply to somebody else, but it’s possible you picked up and ran with a response to my question. If that’s the case then thanks for the effort!

https://www.msn.com/en-sg/news/other/eutelsat-in-talks-to-increase-satellite-terminals-in-ukraine-amid-starlink-service-concern/ar-AA1ArMhG

What does this mean? People putting on a ‘work voice’ or something?

This is what Canadian and European rivals of the US should have been doing for some time, and should be doing now.

OK, I have read some evidence that shows how when a level of impoverishment is reached, people are too preoccupied with day to day and week to week survival to bother with voting or much of any other civil engagement.

I won’t waste more time on this, I’m not interested in arguing over the definition of ‘disengaged’.

The fact that they voted means they are not disengaged.

Yours might have just been an offhand comment, but as it might be a genuine question I provided a brief answer.

I doubt it will be noticeable overnight, but at least some of his supporters will be pushed into a degree of impoverishment that inhibits political engagement.

Unfortunately I think there is a good chance that history will come to view brexit as a warning shot that was ignored.

Farage was given a decade or more of regular airtime on the bbc despite not having one MP. This is a top-down driven rise to political power. The bbc is a defacto nation state information operation, it primarily serves the interests of the British establishment, of which the very wealthy are a significant part. They prefer the alternative to the red/blue Tories to come from the right, rather than the left.

Young people have and are witnessing their quality of life and future prospects diminish on an ongoing basis. Climate change is the biggest crisis multiplier humankind will ever experience. It isn’t just being ignored by Tories red and blue, protests against government inaction on it are now criminalised, and the surveillance state built to ‘protect’ society has reached a point of extreme data-totalitarianism that will breed extremists. Not to mention what happens when Tommy Robinson, or whoever is Farage’s Musk takes control of that surveillance state apparatus?

All of this has rendered mainstream parties non-credible. It is just more of the same austerity, more economic inequality.

With the best will in the world, the scale of immigration (not far off a London a decade) is not sustainable. It is impacting the unskilled labour markets and ‘benefits’ system many of these potential Reform voting young people are reliant upon. Its use is the easiest of wedges for any politician to use. This immigration is nothing compared to the coming climate change refugee crisis. We haven’t seen anything yet.

The home-owning-electorate’s response: “These people are racist. We should rejoin the EU” (thus completely disenfranchising former brexit, now potential Reform voters) can only make this situation worse, if anything driving those young voters into the hands of worse extremists.

I would guess that European leaders’ first priority is to protect Europe in the short term, which means defending Ukraine, including delaying or minimising any actual fighting for as long as possible in order to build their own defence capability. Similar to how other countries (China) have played the game while building their economic and military capability.

I would guess Russia think Trump has gone too far in terms of provoking a coordinated response from Europe in terms of immediate investment in defence, including a potential proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Then at some point in the future (depending on the actions of the US, the degree to which global politics allows international co-operation, the economic and military capabilities of the various parties, and the ability to purchase oil in currencies other than US dollar) countries globally will sell US debt, most likely bit by bit as all of the above circumstances allow, or potentially all at once - if the US make a less dramatic response impossible, massively raising interest rates for the US/effectively forcing it into bankruptcy > developing world economic status.

Still America at that point will have been made great because they will be cheap enough to manufacture goods again!

What does America think the alternative is? Does it think it can blow hot air and try and bully the world into buying US debt without offering the protection it used to provide in return?!!? That huge military industrial complex spending wasn’t for nothing. It was to protect the dollar’s status, which in turn ultimately meant people everywhere paid America’s debt.

Based on what I have read online (famous last words - especially anywhere near sites such as reddit, and other social media sites over the last twenty years or so) I get a strong impression that this is a dynamic most Americans are not aware of, having been told that it is their exceptionalism that allowed them to accrue such a large portion of unearned global wealth.

I think Americans, over the coming decades are going to learn a new truth - at least those with a flexible enough mind will. Part of that new truth will be that choosing Trump was choosing a much much harder landing than was necessary.

Yeah it is other countries fault, lol.

Another 50% claim to have read a book.

10% have read a book

Do you really want to carry your lifetime supply of honey around with you every time you move apartment?

What other foodstuffs are you going to buy your lifetime supply of? Dried goods? Tins? You could get yourself a winnebago and fill it with all your lifetime’s worth of food or something, which would make lugging it all around with you forever easier. Just hope nobody nicks it.

His name is Trump. Russia completed sidelined America’s military.

MAGA by bringing back US manufacturing, which means creating developing world conditions, thus enabling it to become a sweatshop.

And I guess these four supreme justices think the world should continue to buy US debt lol. You reap what you sow.

pretty on track

lol. SpaceX are destroying Artemis as we type - and America’s prestige as a space-faring nation - and are not going to Mars on any timeline, as Musk well knows. Musk doesn’t care at all, it is helping him get to trillionaire status.

Yeah I said in another post that the Americans I have known irl have been great. I love America’s contribution to stuff like music and literature, and the arts generally. And I take your point it is a minority.

But this oligarchy has taken a while to build but it wasn’t stopped. And I do think this is a watershed moment for the US and Europe, BRICS and the dollar. I think we are entering a global economy that reflects the multi-polar world we actually have.

As a Brit, whose economy is 50 - 100 years past being the global reserve currency, I think the people most likely to suffer over the long term are Americans, after everyone suffers the coming short-term instability.

This total breakdown in cooperation happening just as we roll straight past climate change’s last chance saloon (to butcher a couple of metaphors) is an even bigger disaster. Some of us ‘doomers’ are being proven right. I’d rather not be.

I know that eminent computer scientists wrote to I think Harris a couple of years back voicing their concerns over the security of voting machines.

I think the Democrats are as done as a credible political force as the Republicans are.

America you have switched sides. Expect a European pivot towards China, provided China maintains some degree of pragmatic neutrality.