That was like Hitler giving a speech about how not to be antisemitic
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Probably for younger people itâs less of a shock, but I know for most middle aged Western Germans, theyâve always lived in a world where the US and Germany were close allies. Sure, there were disagreements about Vietnam, or Pershing or whatever, but fundamentally they had each otherâs back.
That certainty has disappeared, seemingly, overnight.
I donât think US people understand what that means, or how it feels.
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There is a large demographic of hispanic people who self-identify as white, then you have another subset who are convinced that Democrats are communists.
Thatâs where his votes came from.
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Didnât they play the culture wars card with that demographic too? Trying to convince Latino men that Dems were going to force their children to become Trans or whatever.
To be fair, when you put it like that, they are subject matter experts after all. Just not in the right waysâŚ
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Yeah I forgot to mention the strong evangelical core in a lot of hispanic communities.
End of the day Republicans can use hispanic support to claim they break through to non-white people but that ignores that a lot of hispanic people are naturally aligned with Republican politics.
To put that in context, the only time Germany came anywhere close to that was in 1963, at the height of the cold war, when they were trying to build up their military from nothing. By the 1970s, it had dropped down below 3%, and that was at the time when the West German army made up the backbone of NATO ground forces.
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I donât know, I think a lot of that had already faded for most people quite a long time ago. Itâs more like you think somethingâs bad and then you get the confirmation that itâs even worse. And more stupid.
I think the shock element for many people is less in the abandoning of former allies and more in the open hostility, while playing soft ball with and voicing sympathies for (former?) enemies.
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Thereâs obviously a big East/West divide, but the people I know from the West, grew up with the US as a kind of cool older brother. You had to do what he said, you could take the piss and criticise, but you were family. Now, itâs like a divorce. Not family any more.
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We grew up here gratefully believing that the Americans and the Russians liberated us from the Nazis and fascists. We learned that in school and told it to our children. Itâs pretty shocking when these âfriendsâ suddenly tell you that we should please just vote for these fascists again.
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I think Bush jr did a lot of damage to that. Then Trump 1.0.
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The reversal of things is really amazing when you come to think of it.
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i think weâre talking about different things. Growing up yes, mostly, although there were quite a lof of Antiamerican attitudes in some circles. But I donât think Trump just fell from the sky and it was hunky dory family before.
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Of course not. Biden was already pursuing a more aggressive policy in regards to Europe, and before him and Trump 2016, Obama also asked the Europeans to take in charge their defence. So, there is nothing new in that regard (we should have taken heed of Obamaâs requests at the time. Not doing that is most definitely on Europe).
What is new however, is that the US, which are now ruled by far right extremists, is starting to meddle with politics in Europe, and actively pushing the far right we have here, not only with words, but with money and surely intelligence too. Having such a heavyweight suddenly questioning the roots of how our democracies are built is extremely concerning, especially when you see that the critics are exactly those formulated by Putin since a long time.
Letâs face it, we are now placed between the hammer and the anvil. And both want to work together in order to crush us. The way how the UE (and the UK too btw) responds to that challenge will very much define itâs further fate.
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Oh, no doubt, no disagreement, have you read my posts? 
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That may be true, but I would never have expected them to interfere in our affairs with such rudeness. There was an American base near me and a few Americans have stayed here and married German women, etc. The ones I know are all shocked.
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I ask myself the following these days: as it will take time to build a credible European army, and given the fact that weâll not be able to ride these storm all on our own, what should the EU do until then?
Edit; I can see the following:
- build up with all might a European arms industry. I wouldnât be against 5% of the GDP of every country going to it for a while, if it allows us to dispense ourselves from buying US armament and being thus dependent on them. Also, building up such an industry would create a lot of new jobs.
- we have seen that the US devilize China as much as they can these days. Surely, theyâll be at war with them at some point, and that canât be too far away. That could play out as an advantage for us in the medium term. If the US have their eyes fixed on the far East, they wonât be able at the same time to harm us too much.
- the question is our attitude towards China. They arenât Russiaâs natural ally, neither historically, not culturally, not regarding geostrategic interests. Do we try to get nearer to them in order to reach a newly organised balance of terror?
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This has always been part of the American character. The Americans who found local partners etc have always been there too, but the xenophobic streak and presumption of superiority is a constant. They should hardly be shocked if they are being honest with themselves.
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Yeah, ironically for all their rhetoric of Dems importing voters, Trump actually benefited from a large influx of Venezuelan and Colombia immigrants over the past decade. That has altered the make up of the Hispanic demo with people far more inclined to GOP politics than Mexicans and Puerto Ricans have traditionally been.
But this is not a flash in the pan. There were Dem pollsters who focus on hispanic voters raising alarm bells during the 2020 cycle. For as bad as most peopleâs SM was then, the spanish language channels were even more deranged and politically conspiratorial. The concern wasnât that just that it was pushing the most inflammatory portions of Trumpâs message (with high degree of confidence that Bannon was directly accelerating this) at an astounding volume, but that in this Demo this was largely the exclusive source of information they encountered about politics. It didnât move enough voters in 2020, but sometimes these things take time to show up in the data.
But with all that said, I think the shift is overstated. It does hopefully kill the Demographics is Destiny idea (it wont though - the people who were pushing that are now just no true scotsmaning the situation), but what its done is reminded us that these demos are perfectly willing to vote in this direction, just as they did in very similar numbers for Bush in the 00s
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Geopolitically, of the three other possible poles, China is the least threatening to Europe and economically at least the 2nd most valuable. There is far more basis now for European cooperation with China than with the US.
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