> thus earning U.S. money and making EU technologically and politically dependent from the U.S.
This came with a responsibility to provide military protection to the US via NATO. Trumps voters don't want America to be an empire, responsible for protecting a bunch of far-away places that don't share their values, that's why they called the movement "America first". Historically speaking being an empire generally turns out to be a terrible deal in the long term, with maintaining the empire eventually becoming too expensive and leading to collapse and reduced living standards back home, like happened to the Roman empire, and the British empire after WW2.
>responsible for protecting a bunch of far-away places that don't share their values
You mean Europe? There's literally not a place in the world (except for Canada and Australia) that shares as many common values with the US as Europe. Unless the very definition of these values suddenly changed for the US with Agent Orange.
As far as "far-away places go", it might take a similar amount of time to get from east to west coast of USA as to fly from one of the US coasts to somewhere in Europe...
Europe has been aligned with US culturally and politically for decades and it helped to promote US interests worldwide and to fight US wars. And when we need you the most for the first time since the 1990 you decided to fuck us. I feel personally betrayed, and I imagine there are many, many more like me. Your decisions will ultimately be bad for us all.
>There's literally not a place in the world (except for Canada and Australia) that shares as many common values with the US as Europe.
I just don't think that's true. Europeans seem much more collectivist, whereas the US is more individualist. That's why Europeans express disdain for US policies around healthcare, guns, etc. Europeans express a tremendous amount of disdain for the US online, calling Americans fat, dumb, neo-imperialist, etc.
That's been going on for ages before Trump. It's done a lot to undermine the transatlantic relationship, in my view. People-to-people connections matter for diplomacy.
How would you feel if an American insulted your leader with a derogatory nickname such as "Agent Orange"? Europeans are so used to expressing disdain for the US that they hardly even notice themselves doing it.
>when we need you the most for the first time since the 1990 you decided to fuck us.
From my perspective, we deterred Russia for 80 years following WW2, and provided almost 50% of the support for Ukraine to date. That's more than enough to account for European support in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The US provided 80% of the muscle for Iraq and Afghanistan. For a fair relationship, Europe should expect to provide 80% of the muscle to deter Russia. A reset to fairness should not feel like betrayal. Europe gets most of the benefit from NATO, therefore Europe should do most of the spending in NATO. Fix this pie chart: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/...
> How would you feel if an American insulted your leader with a derogatory nickname such as "Agent Orange"? Europeans are so used to expressing disdain for the US that they hardly even notice themselves doing it.
This happens literally every day. There's a bunch of xenophobic stereotypes about my country I've only ever heard from Americans, and on average I've received far more vitriol from them than from my fellow Europeans.
Maybe your views are colored by your subjective experiences, without being truly representative of the objective facts? Because I have no idea how else you could have the idea that what you described doesn't happen the other way around.
>This happens literally every day. There's a bunch of xenophobic stereotypes about my country I've only ever heard from Americans, and on average I've received far more vitriol from them than from my fellow Europeans.
So how does it make you feel? Does it make you want to send troops to America's next Iraq?
It honestly doesn't have a bearing on my political leanings regarding America, especially since there are also many nice and wonderful Americans I interact with. My political opinions are instead based on the political positions, trend, instability & recently insanity of America.
If I took personal opinions I'm reading online into consideration, I'd be very open to manipulation by the platforms themselves. Just look at something like Reddit - I'm guessing at least half the comments are AI generated these days, if not more.
>It honestly doesn't have a bearing on my political leanings regarding America, especially since there are also many nice and wonderful Americans I interact with.
OK, well, can you understand if some of your countrymen didn't wish to send troops to America's next Iraq, due to the xenophobia they experienced?
That's just human nature regardless of what country you're from. That's what I've been trying to explain.
You know that in the US, conservatives are over-represented in the military. If the US does fight Russia, they will be the ones dying for you. Driven by a sense of American patriotism that Europe loves to belittle. It just doesn't make any sense.
>If I took personal opinions I'm reading online into consideration, I'd be very open to manipulation by the platforms themselves.
I don't believe it's manipulation. Europeans have been anti-American for as long as I can remember. I don't think it is just an internet thing. But yes, it is ironic that lots of Europeans (in this thread even) post, and vote on comments, in more or less the way they would post if they were being paid by Russia.
In any case, if we're going to disregard the internet, why not disregard my comments too? Maybe I'm an AI bot. Or maybe you'd find me to be nice and wonderful if we were interacting in person :-)
> OK, well, can you understand if some of your countrymen didn't wish to send troops to America's next Iraq, due to the xenophobia they experienced?
Sure! But has this ever not been the case? I think it's reasonable to assume that some level of xenophobia has always existed. So why are you suddenly so hurt about it? Could it be that platforms are deliberately showing you more and more of that, while not showing you positive interactions?
> You know that in the US, conservatives are over-represented in the military. If the US does fight Russia, they will be the ones dying for you. Driven by a sense of American patriotism that Europe loves to belittle. It just doesn't make any sense.
Right now it seems more likely that these same Americans will be fighting with Russia against us, so I hope you can accept that I have very little love left for American "patriotism" right now. Maybe try not threatening allies and dividing the spoils with our shared enemies, that would certainly help.
> I don't believe it's manipulation. Europeans have been anti-American for as long as I can remember. I don't think it is just an internet thing. But yes, it is ironic that lots of Europeans (in this thread even) post, and vote on comments, in more or less the way they would post if they were being paid by Russia.
Okay, but why is this suddenly such a big deal? You're apparently not perturbed by American xenophobia against us, why did you suddenly become so sensitive?
>Could it be that platforms are deliberately showing you more and more of that, while not showing you positive interactions?
Doubtful. The platforms I'm talking about are mostly HN and /r/worldnews. There's no recommendation engine for either of those. And I don't see other Europeans arguing against this stuff, either.
>Right now it seems more likely that these same Americans will be fighting with Russia against us, so I hope you can accept that I have very little love left for American "patriotism" right now. Maybe try not threatening allies and dividing the spoils with our shared enemies, that would certainly help.
I certainly wouldn't want the US fight with Russia against Europe. I highly doubt that will happen. But if you like, you can view my "American patriotism that Europe loves to belittle" comment as an explanation of how we got to this situation.
>Okay, but why is this suddenly such a big deal? You're apparently not perturbed by American xenophobia against us, why did you suddenly become so sensitive?
I am perturbed. But to be honest, I'm skeptical that you received much American xenophobia, especially compared to the oceans of anti-Americanism that have been washing across the internet for ages. If you want to show me an example, maybe that will help me understand.
In any case, it's not the anti-Americanism that gets to me so much as the ingratitude. The US has been one of Ukraine's biggest supporters. Yet even when Biden was president, there was a lot of anti-US sentiment in Ukraine discussions, because they wanted even more. They never mentioned countries such as Brazil which gave hardly anything. The US was probably their #2 most hated country after Russia.
I'm arguing for the principle that people who do good things should be appreciated rather than disdained. I see that as a prerequisite for any sort of prosocial society, or a prosocial world order. That's much more important to me than anti-Americanism. In cases where I believe anti-Americanism is justified, it doesn't bother me nearly as much.
So many of these US policies like supporting NATO were justified on the basis of gaining "soft power". The reality is that soft power isn't worth very much, and in the modern world, trying to do good things actually reduces American soft power, not increases it.
I go directly to /r/worldnews and look at the top posts. Oftentimes I'm not even logged in.
BTW, if you disagree with other Europeans in this thread, why are you arguing with me instead of them?
You mostly don't seem to be stating points of disagreement with them, or points of agreement with me. I can infer a lot from that :-)
Anyways, if you truly think there is a serious risk that the US sides with Russia, then hopefully we at least agree that the US should pull all its troops out of Europe. That should reduce the risk to you guys.
> Europeans seem much more collectivist, whereas the US is more individualist. That's why Europeans express disdain for US policies around healthcare, guns, etc.
The US is plenty collectivist. Patriots who put country first and would die for it? That's collectivism. Someone who puts their family ahead of themselves? Also collectivism.
One should disdain the US healthcare system not because it isn't "collectivist" (there's nothing particularly individualistic about insurance), but because it's horrifically inefficient. The US government spends more money on healthcare per capita than anywhere in Europe (or Canada or any developed country), yet only manages to cover half the population leaving the other half to spend even more money for private insurance.
>The US is plenty collectivist. Patriots who put country first and would die for it? That's collectivism. Someone who puts their family ahead of themselves? Also collectivism.
Our discussion is on the topic of whether the US and Europe have common values. You can call this stuff "collectivism" if you want. But ironically I think it still indicates some deep US/Europe value differences.
No one in the US believes people should be obligated to serve in the military. It's considered an honor which receives societal support and recognition. This feels more like voluntary altruism. The US has a similar approach with charitable giving -- last I checked its charitable donations are among the highest in the world. In Europe, by contrast, things are organized along obligations. Europeans don't give to charity as much; rather, they're forced to pay taxes so the government can hand out money. And they take that same mentality to the transatlantic alliance, implying that the US should be obligated to defend them. It's quite jarring to me when here in the US we celebrate the voluntary sacrifices of our service members, whereas Europeans take our service members as a given, and complain when we discuss withdrawal. You should celebrate more when another country chooses to defend you, not less.
> Thumps voters don't want America to be an empire
Why the leadup (complete with de-humanization of citizens!) to annexation of Canada, then? Why normalization of invading parts of Europe (Greenland)? Why talk about taking over Panama?
Trump is 100% pro-empire, he's just too thick to understand that America already had empire without having Google Maps have everything the same colour.
> Trumps voters don't want America to be an empire, responsible for protecting a bunch of far-away
Then why did they elect an imperialist? The current president has already announced the possibility of military interventions against Canada and Denmark in order to expand US territory.
That's a kind of imperalism not seen since the middle of last century, when most empires started to proritize soft power over territory as the military and economic powers started to unite. It was easier to secure cheap natural resources than to secure the resources themselves.
> that's why they called the movement "America first"
We should always listen to action, not words. Rhetoric is cheap.
The actions tells us that the US deficit will continue to grow. It is not clear yet how much, but everything points to an increase in military spending. Other parts of the state will have to be cut back.
This came with a responsibility to provide military protection to the US via NATO. Trumps voters don't want America to be an empire, responsible for protecting a bunch of far-away places that don't share their values, that's why they called the movement "America first". Historically speaking being an empire generally turns out to be a terrible deal in the long term, with maintaining the empire eventually becoming too expensive and leading to collapse and reduced living standards back home, like happened to the Roman empire, and the British empire after WW2.