Harris is another childless open borders fanatic like Merkel. Sad that Germans would simp for her instead of Drumpf, who has German heritage. Goebbels would be proud of the German and American corporate media propagandists.
Hear, hear. Europe are like Americas teenagers. Complaining while living under the roof, always knowing better than their parents. It’s all so childish. They never seem to escape high school or the days at Uni, LARPIng as adults.
The US picking up the tab for defense spending is simply the cost of empire. In exchange they got to blow up Nordstream and more.
As much as I’d like to see European nations take charge of their own security in order to assert their own sovereignty and interests, I fully expect our current crop of politicians to simply make us pay for our own subjugation.
Indeed. I don’t think this stops until there’s a fiscal collapse. Just read about another $400 million to Ukraine. It’s Soviet levels of funny-money madness - just riding the bull until it dies.
Can’t imagine media worse that ours, but Germany’s media flat out lies. Consider that fascism is socialist corporatist combined. That describes the Democratic party, and Trump doesn’t touch that form of government. Yes, regardless of his former underling’s opinion. The problem with Kelly is he gave the press no instances that would indicate a fascist leaning.
As Mark Halperin said last week “ If Trump win it will cause a mass mental health crisis, alcoholism, drugs, broken marriages & suicides. “. The crisis will be sustained & hideous. A complete failure to understand how Trump could be elected. The failure is because lefty authoritarian’s are so poorly informed and never leave their bubbles of moral superiority.
Mostly because the corporate media & many public institutions lied so badly about Trump and Biden.
The media’s mass cover-up of Biden’s cognitive decline is unlike any cover-up in history. Biden was talking to a dead woman in a press conference, his cognitive decline was obvious to an 8 year old but not a Columbia J-school grad. The Democrats in Congress all knew about his loss of mental acuity.
At no time in the last 8 years was Biden cognitively capable of being a WH janitor let alone President.
It is incredibly frighting that no corporate media journalist said “hey this guy shouldn’t change the TP roll let alone have the nuclear codes”.
Competency crisis meets growing PMC (authoritarian bureaucrats) = a population of over-educated imbeciles, who are incentivized by status not to think for themselves.
We have seen these lies manifest in polls taken of wealthy, white, highly educated, urban women.
After George Floyd these people watched MSNBC, CNN & read NYT’s. They thought the police shot 10,000 unarmed black men a year (real number was <10).
During Covid a majority of the same cohort thought 50% of people who got Covid were hospitalized (real number 1-2%). They also thought IFR was 10% (real number was 0.15% to 0.25%).
For all the anti-Trump crazies, both here and abroad, I have some bad news. With two weeks to go before the election the polls have swung sharply in Trump's favor - 4 to 6 percentage points in the past two weeks. Harris' flailing campaign will probably make it worse in the next two weeks. Trump is out performing his 2020 poll numbers at this point by 10-12 points. Harris' numbers with minority voters are almost unbelievably bad, but confirmed in several polls - 40% worse with Latino's and 30% worse with Blacks. Looks like a Trump landslide.
Their both childless cat ladies. They are married but having kids VERY much changes you. You start thinking more about the future and your kids and less about yourself. While I won't say a person who's not got kids can't be a good president but it sure does help because you care more about the future and anything happening now that impacts that future where as w/o kids you tend to be concerned with yourself. This of course is "in general" as not every person is like this.
NOTE: Harris has 2 step kids she got when she married but that's NOT the same. The step kids were like 15 and 18 when she came into their lives so there were already almost young adults.
Any parent with grown, successful, mover and shaker children never forgets changing their diapers.
There was a problem with the iconic Iwo Jima picture. They didn't have all the men in the picture properly identified. One man, all you could see was his back--no facial features. He was one of the several that was killed on Iwo. His mother said for years: "I diapered that butt. I recognize it anywhere." She was right.
I have a USMC Captain grandson. Infantry officer. I chuckle when his mother is fussing over whether he is eating right, getting enough sleep, etc. Often, neither. He may be a tough as nails Marine, but to her he will forever be her little boy
And that is the biological norm. Women are supposed to have that kind of connection to their kids. It worries me greatly to see the damage that feminism has done to society. Today women are very selfish placing their own desires above what's best for the family. They initiate %80+ of divorces in Ame4rica (number goes up for college graduates) and the vast majority vote for a president based first and foremost on his; her stance on abortion. It's not the economy or possible war that is the primary concern its being able to end the life of an unborn child because it's an inconvenience. I'd wager that a larger percentage of woman support aborti0on then do men and that is not normal. Feminism has told women to be selfish and to live life like a man in order to be happy and of course that screws up their chances to be a mother because by the time she's graduated and worked a few years to pay of that massive student loan debt she'll either be at that age or past it where it get's risk to give birth due to age.
Here's a question for anyone. If men are obligated to society to defend and protect, aka the draft, then aren't women also obligated to society to do their part which is being a mother with a husband so babies can be born and we can continue without fear of a societal collapse due to a population collapse.
I (and my wife) are so jealous. You have 6 kids? I KNOW Christmas when your kids are young adults with their own kids, is going to be a very joyful gathering/even for you and your spouse.
I can not agree with that because I recognize biological reality and placing women in combat is an incredibly bad idea. That said you're NOT wrong. In America women have little to no accountability.
They get lighter sentences for the same crime
They get special/preferential treatment in the Family's Courts (divorce, child support, etc.)
Affirmative Action in the Past and DEI now give women preferential treatment over men.
If the women gets pregnant from sex she can get an abortion; the man has no choice or say so in teh matter, he is at her mercy.
Women get sympathy when they face tough times where as men get "Why the hell aren't you picking yourself up and getting back into the fight"
In the west, women literally have rights, like abortion, that men don't and yet the feminists still argue that they are oppressed and not treated equally. Feminism has poisoned the minds of multiple generations of women and currently it is on track to create a record high number of older alone and childless women who will NOT be able to deal with that situation. I think we'll see a spike in suicide of women in the next 10-20 years; a record breaking high.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you either. Just feel that for all of the femminazis insisting on equality and equity, then they can’t just pick and choose which rules they like and which they don’t.
PS: Perhaps it was the remnants of your Ivy League education struggling not to die because obviously no one would otherwise play the ethnic identity game as a reason for voting for anyone.
Harris has no border policy that she has uttered. Should she win, the United States will become the united world, losing its 250 year status as a nation, and onetime world leader.
I think “Der Spiegel” is quite the appropriate name for the mag. They look in the mirror and see their own radical ideas and then claim it’s really the other side. Classic psychological projection.
Exactly, as in their endless Munchian scream that Trump will end Democracy, when, in fact, it is they who are busy developing "end runs" around any traditional, democratic, constitutional impediments to their desire for total control......
Jim Gaffigan joked at the Al Smith dinner that Democrats were so upset at the possibility of Trump destroying democracy that they immediately engineered a coup against their own sitting president.
It should be called Der Spiel. The Yiddish word for a chancer trying to convince an audience. The modern English, it is used colloquially to refer to any rehearsed or repetitive talk, particularly when there’s an element of persuasion or salesmanship involved.
The goal with the political polls is to create the narrative that Kamala is in the lead ... or, if she wins the election, it won't be a surprise ... after all that's what all the pre-election polls said would likely happen.
Thus, (another) presidential election was NOT rigged.
I think the fix is in again ... unless the Trump turnout is too overwhelming for the riggers to overcome.
One reason I think the fix is in is all these polls that, almost overnight, showed Kamala surging into the lead. This operation was a necessary component of the coming (inevitable?) election fraud.
I start with the premise they HAVE to have their designated person in the White House to finish all their unfinished programs (and to prevent any prosecutions for their past mass crimes and frauds). They also KNOW - or think they know - that they can get away with another rigged election. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you've achieved this status, go ahead and use it when you need to.
Agree completely, except for 'finish all their unfinished programs'. I don't think government programs are ever finished, they just become self-sustaining behemoths ;)
I believe Bill was referring to the programs we aren't aware of b/c their money laundering and/or sex trafficking; things that even those with $$$ can't buy their way out off once exposed.
It's not just power and/or money but most of the scum and villainy in DC are tied up/involved in so many illegal and corrupt actions that they can't allow a non-establishment controlled president into the White House; it's way too risky.
Yes. In several key states Trump was substantially ahead. At midnight counting stopped for mysterious reasons, people were kicked out of the counting areas, viewing into the room was blocked, and mysteriously again, at 2 or 3 in the morning Biden had surged ahead. The cheating was laughably obvious to anyone with a brain who observed all this. Biden didn't actually win by a lot of votes in those key states....I've heard the number 40,000.
The Democrats in 2022 retained the governorships in all battleground states. "Miraculously", in the case of Arizona. So, everything is in place for another outrage.
This is not even remotely true. Ohio is a battleground state and it has a Republican governor. Georgia is another battleground state with a Republican governor. The governor of Nevada is also a Republican in a battleground state. One can quibble whether or not Ohio is still a battleground state since it has been turning more red recently.
Have you not seen several high profile Republicans go to the DNC convention and support Harris? Just because the person is a Republican that doesn't mean you can trust them. The Republican party has a number of sell-outs as well as RINOs
I find it hilarious that the "evil war monger" (according to Democrats all though his tenure in government) Dick Cheney and his spawn Liz Cheney are now supporting Harris and being warmly embraced by the Democrats. Such a joke! What this really means is that the neocon traitor Republicans who went to the dark side of the Democrats were really one and the same in terms of what they wanted to accomplish. This supports the idea of a "uniparty" control group that is behind the military industrial complex, among other industrial complexes we all know about.
Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona are battleground states...and they all went blue. Ohio is not a battleground state. Kemp of GA is a typical, harmless regime Republican.
I think maybe the worst thing the US does is to interfere in almost every other country’s election (and governance), and then turn around and complain about minor, sometimes unverified, interference from other countries.
Now there’s a new twist: reports of Brits and others, coming here to campaign for Dems; I wonder if Germans are helping too.
It's interesting that the voting "irregularities" occur only in battleground states. In California, for example, the state has been completely taken over by Democrats to the extent that any opposition will never again reach an equal footing or have any chance of dominating again. We know that due to the sheer numbers of Democrats in this state (plus all the illegals who vote), we who are not Democrats have a meaningless vote for the positions that make a difference, we cannot get our people elected. Since we already know it's a done deal that Harris will get the popular vote here and thus get California's 55 electors, nobody needs to bother cheating, it's a waste of time.
That looks HIGHLY suspect but it's also a small enough overage that it can be explained away as some count error possibly with both the post cleanup count and the actual count of registered voters. What you need to force an investigation is a significant overage. I'm not sure what that number is but %10 or higher is probably a good number. IN Michigan registered voters to voting-age residents is at %102. If that were %110 or higher I believe we'd see Michigan being forced to investigate even if it require taking the state to SCOTUS to judicially slap the Governor into action
I heard that it was 500K. I had a lot of difficulty getting my name removed after I moved out of state. Twice I tried by using the official website of the SoS, but my name remained. I had to contact my township clerk directly to finally accomplish the task.
Did you know that their trying to shut down the betting markets that take bets on election turnouts because it's a threat to their control of perception as it has a far more accurate take on who is really in ty he lead.
The cheat margin is what Trump has to beat. He has to get enough votes that they can't offset that with mail-in ballots DNC operatives creative using names of illegals and dead people (this is why they are fighting in court against any state cleaning up it's voter rolls; they need those names. Last time it was (rounding) 80 and 81 for Trump and Biden. If there are 200 million registered voters and Trump get's 110 million and Harris gets 70 million that would require creating more than 40 million mail-in ballots. They can't do that because the total number of votes would then exceed (by a lot) the total number of registered voters and that would raise a lot of red flags. Trump has to beat Harris and in a way that they can't just create mail-in ballots for Harris to offset.
All the Left wing polls are moving to the right to avoid embarrassment for missing the outcome so badly that their reputation is left in tatters. I don't doubt that the fix is in, merely that it may not work this time.
The "it's a toss up" is the new "he is sharp as a tack". Unfortunately for the media, that narrative is also rapidly collapsing. The latest polling shows unambiguously that Harris's support is collapsing and virtually all the undecideds are going with Trump.
As I type this I'm watching Trump's live press conference in Swannanoa NC with local and state officials and local business owners etc. I heard the tremble in grown men's voices as they described what their community is suffering and how grateful they are that Trump has come to see the situation right there, right now. I didn't over-mind when one guy asked to offer a prayer and then prayed for Trump to succeed in regaining the Presidency. There's a verse from one of the scriptures of one of the three Middle Eastern blood sacrifice cults surviving into modernity, and I'll paraphrase from the translation I like because people will start screaming if I don't: "Hold fast, all of you, to the rope God extends to you..." and in desperate times people must grab onto comfort where they can and I think an exhortation like that includes anyone in need anywhere.
So--Trump with all his flaws and idiocies and un-mastery of self is there, and grown men are comforted and relieved to see him, and Kamala is off shouting somewhere--far far from where people are desperate to the point of tears, even big manly men, because things continue to be really awful for them and their community right now--to prove she got the right stuff because shouting always shows strength, right?
Maybe your compatriots without the provision I'm sure you're making in your own home right now need to have a real hard winter themselves to understand a little more viscerally why Kamala ain't such a great choice in the real world out here, there and everywhere.
Somehow your comment reminds me of what we used to say when we lived in Tehran, in reference to the terrible driving habits there. "Me first, you never!" And so it is with what we designate the "elites". Everything is about THEM and what benefits THEM. Everyone else? Maybe they'll throw us some crumbs here and there, but basically it's NEVER for the rest of us.
American politics are a huge theme of press coverage here – second only to German politics. We read more about them than we do about the politics of our immediate neighbours like France or Italy.
They'd better worry about the US's presidential race. The neocons currently pulling the strings in Washington are determined to foment a war between the West and Russia. And NATO is the stalking horse for that war (the US is NOT about to do it alone). Say what you will about Trump, he has promised to stop the US involvement in the Ukraine-Russia conflict on Day 1 of his administration, should he be elected. I don't know how the rank-and-file Germans feel, but I can assure you that there is NOT ONE parent of a military-service age child in the US that wants to see their child die for a nation as corrupt as Ukraine. Nobody (except the neocons) on the western side of the Atlantic have a dog in that fight.
I'm going to leave you with a quotation that is more relevant today than it was when it was originally spoken:
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war ... after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along ... the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
I'll forego telling you who said that. But I'll entertain guesses ... :-) (Then I'll tell you!!)
The vassal always has to worry about its mother country. The modern German ruling class is proud to be subservient to the Empire and wants everyone in the Imperial capitals to know how loyal and obedient they are—they are like a kid in the front row of class hoping to be recognized as teacher's pet.
As Churchill said: “The Hun is always either at your throat or your feet.”
These modern Huns are always at some set of feet or other.
I was working in Iran and then Saudi Arabia for Reagan's entire time in office, so what I read about him was the obviously slanted press opinions, mostly from the foreign press outlets. I couldn't watch American TV or news or read the newspapers. I'm no dummy, so I knew what I was reading was incredibly slanted against him, but it was hard to find out what the truth really was.
In Norway the situation is more or less identical. A recent poll showed 84 % of the population would vote for babbling Kamala. This is imo primarily a measure of the dominance of libtard media propaganda.
We have a state-owned media network - NRK, which is like a norwegian BBC - where absolutely all of the abundant coverage of US politics, is drenched in TDS. No pundit supports Trump in public, and hardly anyone even bothers an attempt at understanding his popularity, beyond vectors like «hate» and the «rise of fascism».
Just today there was a programme on the «intellectual» public radio channel, titled «Can Trump win by hating?». This is the level of analysis almost always.
Non-state media is basically the same, where all newspapers denounce Trump as a hateful nazi and celebrate Gamala as an exciting girl boss sent to save freedom and democracy.
It is exhausting but also fascinating. None of them bother to ask a question like how they would judge any other nation with an 84 % consensus in a democratic election. They just take this as a natural fact.
It is of course indicative of the political and journalistic consensus that exists also domestically, where there is no room for any opinion that deviates from leftist euro dogma.
The 2016 Peasants' Rebellions (Brexit and Trump) engendered a massive total hysterical response in the owners and operators of the global American Empire, one part of which was the transformation of any member of a Western liberal class from journalist to professor to actor etc into a single unified PR propaganda dept.
From coastal California to Berlin our educated cosmopolitan Anywhere class have the same beliefs, ideas, habits, concerns etc—number one being their total commitment to the Social Justice ideology, which means permanent rule by our global-corporate managerial class (who currently own and operate Social Justice), with the concomitant burning hatred for anyone who threatens their power, who then becomes Emmanuel Goldstein before receiving an obligatory Hitler stache.
'The 2016 Peasants' Rebellions (Brexit and Trump) engendered a massive total hysterical response in the owners and operators of the global American Empire, one part of which was the transformation of any member of a Western liberal class from journalist to professor to actor etc into a single unified PR propaganda dept.'
exactly. this is why they put so much emphasis on "consensus", lest the proles figure out "martyrdom" is possible in room 101. they will not be satisfied until there is no possible symbol of a rebel.
their indifference to objective facts verges on contempt. this seems to be the common trait amongst the "sophisticated" these days. and they can get away with it because most people are gullible and confuse incomprehensibility (gobbledygook) as profundity.
They don't know how right they are, Ryan, in emphasising "consensus".
If you break down the etymology of "consensus" you find that the latin root means "feel together/feel the same". As in, sharing emotional response to something makes it right.
The meaning "general accord/agreement on an issue" is a modern (well, late 1800s) interpretation of the original sense.
You're welcome - it's a "work related injury" for me to look up words.
A modern deconstruction of the word [Consensus] would yield:
Con; to decieve, to defraud, to fool.
Sens; meaning, also something relating to the senses
Us; we, any group speaking with itself, alt;
US; the United States.
Works, don't you think? And universities all over the West are full of hundreds of thousands of students and tenured tutors of any title, all thinking that the above vivisection of a word actually carries some objective truth or deep insight.
Bedtime for this Bozo now - hope you rode out the hurricanes alright!
You can take Hagen's text about Norway and replace all references to Norway with Sweden, Finland or Denmark. I suspect it is the same with the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, France, Austria and Italy and Greece too.
I.e. all of the EU nations where media is owned and/or under the control of the same handful of media corporations/families.
And it's been ongoing since the 1970s, the center and the right steadily inching ever leftwards, while the left has also inched leftward.
It escalated in the past decade, as it seems to have done all over the west. But similarly to how eugyppius describes the situation in Germany, norwegian media have historically been completely biased in favor of the Democrats. Republicans have always been viewed as some form of extremists – a combination of heartless capitalists, deranged militarists or religious fanatics, which to be fair is not way off the mark in regards to old school GOP.
But something strange and crazy has developed since Trump was first elected. But again this is not particular for Norway. And the similarity to german media just confirms that this is a phenomenon of all western elites, that originates in, or is dispersed by, american legacy media. Indeed much of norwegian media coverage is basically just copies of narratives from the NY Times and the likes - sometimes to the point of plagiarism. And there is no right wing media at all, apart from a few "alternative media" sites which cater to perhaps 10 % of the population.
If anything is specific for Norway in this regard, it's just how widespread the opposition to Trump is. Although I might be wrong, again since Germany seems to be equally tilted. But here even amongst those who vote for the populist right party, only 30 % said they'd support Trump. This is partly due to support for Ukraine being strong also on the right wing, and Trump being seen as Putins puppet and anti-Nato etc.
Here in Germany the start of the complete madness was before Trump (but when Trump was probably already on the horizon).
It started in the summer of 2015, when Merkel decided that we will open our borders to the people coming over the Mediterran sea.
Full trains of African men arrived, they stormed thed borders, and the cities became very crowde very quickly.
It was obviously insane, but politician-media relentless sold it as a great thing.
This was the first time I experienced that only one opinion was allowed, and everyone (including me) was afraid to voice anything against the official consensu.
This is nothing new really. When Reagan was president, pundits in Europe were having conniptions. I remember a poll in Denmark in the mid 1980s where 82% of respondents agreed with the statement that Reagan was a "stupid swine" (dumt svin), which is a commonplace insult in DK.
It has changed in two respects: First, it has gotten much more pervasive, with even the centrist and right-leaning papers (like Springer, to say nothing of FAZ) becoming critical or openly hostile. Second, the 'stupid Republican' trope (familiar since Reagan, as you say) has disappeared almost entirely. Trump is just evil and dangerous and likely to bring about some kind of apocalypse.
I agree that the inflammatory tone has increased. But in Denmark, I read about the aforementioned poll in the 1980s in the main "conservative" paper that we received every morning. This same paper is now even worse with complete TDS; luckily it's behind a paywall. But you can see the roots of this leftism already 40 years ago. Also "dumt svin" in Danish implies malevolence, not just stupidity. What really worked up the leftists in the 1980s was the medium range Pershing missles. Reagan was evil for stationing them in Europe. My stupid German relative was out walking on the Autobahn to protest them. It was quite a fever pitch and astounding since the left had no problem with the SS-20s pointing directly at them from the other side of the wall.
Yes, it is interesting that the euro leftists have not adopted the propaganda of before where Reagan and GWB were portrayed as stupid. But this simply mirrors the strategy of the leftists in the US, who jumped on this trope to denigrate both republicans. Of course, GWB is now a respected elder statesman according to the leftists.
Can Trump or/and Elon Musk sue these publications under the Volksverhetzung laws? I mean they incite hate and violence- since the German authorities believe in censorship, why not use it against them?
I think it's fair not to apply the 'stupid Republican' label to Trump, who I view as a mutant outlier. (Think the Mule in Asimov's Foundation series, only less competent.)
Of course, he will have to surround himself with people, most of them are bound to be Republicans.
> We had only article after article after article praising the “civility” of the encounter. You can understand, in this media environment, why most Germans believe that Harris is poised to win. It’s inconceivable why anybody wouldn’t cast their vote for her.
One of the major ways in which I am different from most people is that I've internalized a lesson from lesswrong. I don't remember which article it was, but a long time ago on either LW or SSC, I read an article that put forward a simple and obvious thesis that had nonetheless never occurred to me: if the universe surprises you, that means that _you_ were wrong, every time. The universe can't be right or wrong. The universe simply is what it is. When you try to understand the world, it's your job to understand the world _as it is_, not as you wish it was.
And so when I hear things like
> It’s inconceivable why anybody wouldn’t cast their vote for her.
If I were to believe that it was impossible for Trump to win, and then Trump won, I would not be saying "HOW THE HELL DID HE WIN", I would be asking myself "What was the mistake in my thinking such that I was so disconnected from factual reality?"
The worse relations with America get, the better for Germany - maybe. I hope against hope that the more and crasser their assumptions about the world are falsified in real time right before their very eyes, enough Germans will finally grow up and take their country’s place in the world and political reality seriously and start supporting things to actually benefit Germans. But I also thought Nordstream would be the wake up call but that didn’t move the needle at all. Also, outsiders have no idea the appeal of playing the Oberlehrer has for so many Germans, which really feeds into this whole dysfunctional dynamic. It’s an addiction.
Trump or Harris will not change that the USA is dropping Europe, and Germany is hellbound into degrowing, and saving the weathe,r and being an example to the rest of the world.
To use the Trumpian terminology, today's Germany sounds like a real shithole. I admired Germany from afar for many years, but this sounds really, really bad. A bona fide kakistocracy.
I feel a lot of the British press is hemmed in because they still have comments under the articles - which are amazingly written by very eloquent and informed people. Once Merkel banned the comments, the propaganda papers took steroids.
I think your writings resonate with us here in the US because of the time you have spent here, Eugyppius. But what of those Germans who swoop in for a visit to NYC or one of our national parks, and then return home? (Do they really think that half of this country supports the next "H*tler"?)
This isn't simply a bias that you've described; in terms of the results achieved, this can almost be considered a wartime-level propaganda campaign.
If DJT was a complete unknown, if the US was in the depths of a depression (with Versailles war debt around our neck), if American children were sifting through garbage looking for food, one might be concerned about the possibility that half the country could support a "Hitler" (<sarc>you know, "like Trump"</sarc>).
Knowing from experience how ubiquitous the English language is throughout Germany, I find it hard to believe that Germans are forced to rely on their media for our news. (We're not talking about the Second World War, where English was less common and where one could be hauled off for listening to BBC broadcasts on an illegal radio in his basement.)
Sadly, I think this is a lack of curiosity on their part.
Harris is another childless open borders fanatic like Merkel. Sad that Germans would simp for her instead of Drumpf, who has German heritage. Goebbels would be proud of the German and American corporate media propagandists.
It is easy to be a Champagne Socialist when the U.S. is picking up your tab for defense spending. That gravy train is about to reach the terminus.
The German economy was already torched by Joe Biden with Russia sanctions and blowing up Nordstream.
The demoralized Germans promptly pinned a medal on Biden for his trouble. But that too, is just the extent of TDS in Europe.
Hear, hear. Europe are like Americas teenagers. Complaining while living under the roof, always knowing better than their parents. It’s all so childish. They never seem to escape high school or the days at Uni, LARPIng as adults.
That’s what you get with “cradle-to-the-grave” State welfarism, a State dependent, infantilised, biddable, compliant population.
The US picking up the tab for defense spending is simply the cost of empire. In exchange they got to blow up Nordstream and more.
As much as I’d like to see European nations take charge of their own security in order to assert their own sovereignty and interests, I fully expect our current crop of politicians to simply make us pay for our own subjugation.
Indeed. I don’t think this stops until there’s a fiscal collapse. Just read about another $400 million to Ukraine. It’s Soviet levels of funny-money madness - just riding the bull until it dies.
☝️💥THIS!💥☝️
Can’t imagine media worse that ours, but Germany’s media flat out lies. Consider that fascism is socialist corporatist combined. That describes the Democratic party, and Trump doesn’t touch that form of government. Yes, regardless of his former underling’s opinion. The problem with Kelly is he gave the press no instances that would indicate a fascist leaning.
As Mark Halperin said last week “ If Trump win it will cause a mass mental health crisis, alcoholism, drugs, broken marriages & suicides. “. The crisis will be sustained & hideous. A complete failure to understand how Trump could be elected. The failure is because lefty authoritarian’s are so poorly informed and never leave their bubbles of moral superiority.
Mostly because the corporate media & many public institutions lied so badly about Trump and Biden.
The media’s mass cover-up of Biden’s cognitive decline is unlike any cover-up in history. Biden was talking to a dead woman in a press conference, his cognitive decline was obvious to an 8 year old but not a Columbia J-school grad. The Democrats in Congress all knew about his loss of mental acuity.
At no time in the last 8 years was Biden cognitively capable of being a WH janitor let alone President.
It is incredibly frighting that no corporate media journalist said “hey this guy shouldn’t change the TP roll let alone have the nuclear codes”.
Competency crisis meets growing PMC (authoritarian bureaucrats) = a population of over-educated imbeciles, who are incentivized by status not to think for themselves.
We have seen these lies manifest in polls taken of wealthy, white, highly educated, urban women.
After George Floyd these people watched MSNBC, CNN & read NYT’s. They thought the police shot 10,000 unarmed black men a year (real number was <10).
During Covid a majority of the same cohort thought 50% of people who got Covid were hospitalized (real number 1-2%). They also thought IFR was 10% (real number was 0.15% to 0.25%).
The key to mass-control are not weapons, CCTV or injectables.
The key to mass-control is in the hands of whoever controls MASS-PERCEPTION of reality.
Guess who's in charge ??? ... 🤣🤣🤣
Ultimately, reality is in charge.
Yes, in the long run. But as Keynes memorably said: "In the long run we're all dead."
For all the anti-Trump crazies, both here and abroad, I have some bad news. With two weeks to go before the election the polls have swung sharply in Trump's favor - 4 to 6 percentage points in the past two weeks. Harris' flailing campaign will probably make it worse in the next two weeks. Trump is out performing his 2020 poll numbers at this point by 10-12 points. Harris' numbers with minority voters are almost unbelievably bad, but confirmed in several polls - 40% worse with Latino's and 30% worse with Blacks. Looks like a Trump landslide.
Don't count on it. I strongly suspect there to be middle of the night ballot dumps and voting machine "corrections."
Their both childless cat ladies. They are married but having kids VERY much changes you. You start thinking more about the future and your kids and less about yourself. While I won't say a person who's not got kids can't be a good president but it sure does help because you care more about the future and anything happening now that impacts that future where as w/o kids you tend to be concerned with yourself. This of course is "in general" as not every person is like this.
NOTE: Harris has 2 step kids she got when she married but that's NOT the same. The step kids were like 15 and 18 when she came into their lives so there were already almost young adults.
Exactly.
Any parent with grown, successful, mover and shaker children never forgets changing their diapers.
There was a problem with the iconic Iwo Jima picture. They didn't have all the men in the picture properly identified. One man, all you could see was his back--no facial features. He was one of the several that was killed on Iwo. His mother said for years: "I diapered that butt. I recognize it anywhere." She was right.
I have a USMC Captain grandson. Infantry officer. I chuckle when his mother is fussing over whether he is eating right, getting enough sleep, etc. Often, neither. He may be a tough as nails Marine, but to her he will forever be her little boy
And that is the biological norm. Women are supposed to have that kind of connection to their kids. It worries me greatly to see the damage that feminism has done to society. Today women are very selfish placing their own desires above what's best for the family. They initiate %80+ of divorces in Ame4rica (number goes up for college graduates) and the vast majority vote for a president based first and foremost on his; her stance on abortion. It's not the economy or possible war that is the primary concern its being able to end the life of an unborn child because it's an inconvenience. I'd wager that a larger percentage of woman support aborti0on then do men and that is not normal. Feminism has told women to be selfish and to live life like a man in order to be happy and of course that screws up their chances to be a mother because by the time she's graduated and worked a few years to pay of that massive student loan debt she'll either be at that age or past it where it get's risk to give birth due to age.
Here's a question for anyone. If men are obligated to society to defend and protect, aka the draft, then aren't women also obligated to society to do their part which is being a mother with a husband so babies can be born and we can continue without fear of a societal collapse due to a population collapse.
THIS mother of 6 approves your message… “the hand that rocks the cradle…”
I (and my wife) are so jealous. You have 6 kids? I KNOW Christmas when your kids are young adults with their own kids, is going to be a very joyful gathering/even for you and your spouse.
😎
Draft should include women too, if they all want the vaunted equity.
I can not agree with that because I recognize biological reality and placing women in combat is an incredibly bad idea. That said you're NOT wrong. In America women have little to no accountability.
They get lighter sentences for the same crime
They get special/preferential treatment in the Family's Courts (divorce, child support, etc.)
Affirmative Action in the Past and DEI now give women preferential treatment over men.
If the women gets pregnant from sex she can get an abortion; the man has no choice or say so in teh matter, he is at her mercy.
Women get sympathy when they face tough times where as men get "Why the hell aren't you picking yourself up and getting back into the fight"
In the west, women literally have rights, like abortion, that men don't and yet the feminists still argue that they are oppressed and not treated equally. Feminism has poisoned the minds of multiple generations of women and currently it is on track to create a record high number of older alone and childless women who will NOT be able to deal with that situation. I think we'll see a spike in suicide of women in the next 10-20 years; a record breaking high.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you either. Just feel that for all of the femminazis insisting on equality and equity, then they can’t just pick and choose which rules they like and which they don’t.
Equality across the board.
"German heritage."
Way to go, my boy. Way to go.
PS: Perhaps it was the remnants of your Ivy League education struggling not to die because obviously no one would otherwise play the ethnic identity game as a reason for voting for anyone.
Harris has no border policy that she has uttered. Should she win, the United States will become the united world, losing its 250 year status as a nation, and onetime world leader.
Thank you, Captain Obvious...
I think “Der Spiegel” is quite the appropriate name for the mag. They look in the mirror and see their own radical ideas and then claim it’s really the other side. Classic psychological projection.
Exactly, as in their endless Munchian scream that Trump will end Democracy, when, in fact, it is they who are busy developing "end runs" around any traditional, democratic, constitutional impediments to their desire for total control......
Jim Gaffigan joked at the Al Smith dinner that Democrats were so upset at the possibility of Trump destroying democracy that they immediately engineered a coup against their own sitting president.
Accuse your enemies of your own felonies….A communist guideline paraphrased from their playbook.
It should be called Der Spiel. The Yiddish word for a chancer trying to convince an audience. The modern English, it is used colloquially to refer to any rehearsed or repetitive talk, particularly when there’s an element of persuasion or salesmanship involved.
yes, absolutely correct.
Sehr gut!
The goal with the political polls is to create the narrative that Kamala is in the lead ... or, if she wins the election, it won't be a surprise ... after all that's what all the pre-election polls said would likely happen.
Thus, (another) presidential election was NOT rigged.
I think the fix is in again ... unless the Trump turnout is too overwhelming for the riggers to overcome.
One reason I think the fix is in is all these polls that, almost overnight, showed Kamala surging into the lead. This operation was a necessary component of the coming (inevitable?) election fraud.
I start with the premise they HAVE to have their designated person in the White House to finish all their unfinished programs (and to prevent any prosecutions for their past mass crimes and frauds). They also KNOW - or think they know - that they can get away with another rigged election. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you've achieved this status, go ahead and use it when you need to.
Agree completely, except for 'finish all their unfinished programs'. I don't think government programs are ever finished, they just become self-sustaining behemoths ;)
BTW, you a Star Trek fan?
Yes, but not because of the giant tardigrade. I am a member of the smaller moss piglet variety.
So what's your take on what Paramount has done with teh IP the last 5 years?
No opinion. I haven't seen the newest stuff because I don't subscribe to those streaming services.
🤮 they’ve ruined it….
I believe Bill was referring to the programs we aren't aware of b/c their money laundering and/or sex trafficking; things that even those with $$$ can't buy their way out off once exposed.
My reply was mostly tongue in cheek ;)
It's not just power and/or money but most of the scum and villainy in DC are tied up/involved in so many illegal and corrupt actions that they can't allow a non-establishment controlled president into the White House; it's way too risky.
Yes, that what they did with Biden. Made it look like the race was really really close. Then they shut down the count to push Biden over the top.
Remember, Biden got 81 million votes, NOT 81 million voters
Yes. In several key states Trump was substantially ahead. At midnight counting stopped for mysterious reasons, people were kicked out of the counting areas, viewing into the room was blocked, and mysteriously again, at 2 or 3 in the morning Biden had surged ahead. The cheating was laughably obvious to anyone with a brain who observed all this. Biden didn't actually win by a lot of votes in those key states....I've heard the number 40,000.
There is 1 county in GA where 900 military votes came in from overseas for Biden. Trump received no votes. Yeah, right.
Trump got significantly more votes than any previous presidential candidate had ever gotten; but Biden, somehow, got more.
The prize is so big that some people (or groups) would do anything . . lie, cheat, steel, or even kill to get it.
Another reason to down-size our federal government. Where is Truman when we need him?
TRUMAN WAS AN ABSOLUTE CRIMINAL
Pulled those big suitcases full of ballots from under the tables… wow that was memory holed…
The Democrats in 2022 retained the governorships in all battleground states. "Miraculously", in the case of Arizona. So, everything is in place for another outrage.
This is not even remotely true. Ohio is a battleground state and it has a Republican governor. Georgia is another battleground state with a Republican governor. The governor of Nevada is also a Republican in a battleground state. One can quibble whether or not Ohio is still a battleground state since it has been turning more red recently.
Have you not seen several high profile Republicans go to the DNC convention and support Harris? Just because the person is a Republican that doesn't mean you can trust them. The Republican party has a number of sell-outs as well as RINOs
I find it hilarious that the "evil war monger" (according to Democrats all though his tenure in government) Dick Cheney and his spawn Liz Cheney are now supporting Harris and being warmly embraced by the Democrats. Such a joke! What this really means is that the neocon traitor Republicans who went to the dark side of the Democrats were really one and the same in terms of what they wanted to accomplish. This supports the idea of a "uniparty" control group that is behind the military industrial complex, among other industrial complexes we all know about.
You're referring to the Uniparty in DC, the real party that runs things. It consists of traitors from both e Republican party and the Demoncrats.
Ackshually, it is more than remotely true.
Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona are battleground states...and they all went blue. Ohio is not a battleground state. Kemp of GA is a typical, harmless regime Republican.
Michigan retained the evil triumvirate of Gov Whitmer, SoS Benson, and AG Nessel, who threaten to prosecute anyone questioning election integrity.
I think maybe the worst thing the US does is to interfere in almost every other country’s election (and governance), and then turn around and complain about minor, sometimes unverified, interference from other countries.
Now there’s a new twist: reports of Brits and others, coming here to campaign for Dems; I wonder if Germans are helping too.
and the fact that Michigan "cleaned up" the voting rolls and somehow ended up with 100K more registered voters than eligible voters.
It's interesting that the voting "irregularities" occur only in battleground states. In California, for example, the state has been completely taken over by Democrats to the extent that any opposition will never again reach an equal footing or have any chance of dominating again. We know that due to the sheer numbers of Democrats in this state (plus all the illegals who vote), we who are not Democrats have a meaningless vote for the positions that make a difference, we cannot get our people elected. Since we already know it's a done deal that Harris will get the popular vote here and thus get California's 55 electors, nobody needs to bother cheating, it's a waste of time.
That looks HIGHLY suspect but it's also a small enough overage that it can be explained away as some count error possibly with both the post cleanup count and the actual count of registered voters. What you need to force an investigation is a significant overage. I'm not sure what that number is but %10 or higher is probably a good number. IN Michigan registered voters to voting-age residents is at %102. If that were %110 or higher I believe we'd see Michigan being forced to investigate even if it require taking the state to SCOTUS to judicially slap the Governor into action
I heard that it was 500K. I had a lot of difficulty getting my name removed after I moved out of state. Twice I tried by using the official website of the SoS, but my name remained. I had to contact my township clerk directly to finally accomplish the task.
I hope not, Bill. Rather I hope it is their desperate ploy to get people to stay home; not vote
Did you know that their trying to shut down the betting markets that take bets on election turnouts because it's a threat to their control of perception as it has a far more accurate take on who is really in ty he lead.
The cheat margin is what Trump has to beat. He has to get enough votes that they can't offset that with mail-in ballots DNC operatives creative using names of illegals and dead people (this is why they are fighting in court against any state cleaning up it's voter rolls; they need those names. Last time it was (rounding) 80 and 81 for Trump and Biden. If there are 200 million registered voters and Trump get's 110 million and Harris gets 70 million that would require creating more than 40 million mail-in ballots. They can't do that because the total number of votes would then exceed (by a lot) the total number of registered voters and that would raise a lot of red flags. Trump has to beat Harris and in a way that they can't just create mail-in ballots for Harris to offset.
Exactly! As Hugh Hewitt says, "If it's not close, they can't cheat."
All the Left wing polls are moving to the right to avoid embarrassment for missing the outcome so badly that their reputation is left in tatters. I don't doubt that the fix is in, merely that it may not work this time.
The "it's a toss up" is the new "he is sharp as a tack". Unfortunately for the media, that narrative is also rapidly collapsing. The latest polling shows unambiguously that Harris's support is collapsing and virtually all the undecideds are going with Trump.
As I type this I'm watching Trump's live press conference in Swannanoa NC with local and state officials and local business owners etc. I heard the tremble in grown men's voices as they described what their community is suffering and how grateful they are that Trump has come to see the situation right there, right now. I didn't over-mind when one guy asked to offer a prayer and then prayed for Trump to succeed in regaining the Presidency. There's a verse from one of the scriptures of one of the three Middle Eastern blood sacrifice cults surviving into modernity, and I'll paraphrase from the translation I like because people will start screaming if I don't: "Hold fast, all of you, to the rope God extends to you..." and in desperate times people must grab onto comfort where they can and I think an exhortation like that includes anyone in need anywhere.
So--Trump with all his flaws and idiocies and un-mastery of self is there, and grown men are comforted and relieved to see him, and Kamala is off shouting somewhere--far far from where people are desperate to the point of tears, even big manly men, because things continue to be really awful for them and their community right now--to prove she got the right stuff because shouting always shows strength, right?
Maybe your compatriots without the provision I'm sure you're making in your own home right now need to have a real hard winter themselves to understand a little more viscerally why Kamala ain't such a great choice in the real world out here, there and everywhere.
Somehow your comment reminds me of what we used to say when we lived in Tehran, in reference to the terrible driving habits there. "Me first, you never!" And so it is with what we designate the "elites". Everything is about THEM and what benefits THEM. Everyone else? Maybe they'll throw us some crumbs here and there, but basically it's NEVER for the rest of us.
They regard us as too stupid to want the correct things.
Tehran traffic? I'll tell you sometime about my bus rides over the Malakand Pass. It was a little better in vans.
A bunch of our church members are going up to North Carolina for disaster relief in 2 weeks… I’m really afraid of what we are going to see… 😢😢😢🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
Hopefully we can do something good… 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
I know from my own life experiences that a stranger showing up in a moment of great need and despair is a very great gift.
You'll see a lot of grief and loss but you will help people to begin to get through it.
Thank you… 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽👍🏽
Germany has enough problems. It is hard to believe they have the time to worry about the US presidential race.
American politics are a huge theme of press coverage here – second only to German politics. We read more about them than we do about the politics of our immediate neighbours like France or Italy.
Do regular Germans buy into the propaganda, or do they just go along to get along?
yes, by and large they do.
Absolutely. 90% of people around me are victims of state propaganda.
I wondered the same. My Grandfather was born in Germany and came to the U.S. as a young child. He was a deeply committed Republican.
😮
I apologize for my country's politics.
Seriously bizarre unless you’re a vassal state. Can states get Stockholm syndrome?
Sad!
They'd better worry about the US's presidential race. The neocons currently pulling the strings in Washington are determined to foment a war between the West and Russia. And NATO is the stalking horse for that war (the US is NOT about to do it alone). Say what you will about Trump, he has promised to stop the US involvement in the Ukraine-Russia conflict on Day 1 of his administration, should he be elected. I don't know how the rank-and-file Germans feel, but I can assure you that there is NOT ONE parent of a military-service age child in the US that wants to see their child die for a nation as corrupt as Ukraine. Nobody (except the neocons) on the western side of the Atlantic have a dog in that fight.
I'm going to leave you with a quotation that is more relevant today than it was when it was originally spoken:
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war ... after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along ... the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
I'll forego telling you who said that. But I'll entertain guesses ... :-) (Then I'll tell you!!)
I'd tell you my guess, but I cheated and looked it up.
Good for you! (Kind of surprising, wasn't it?)
A lot of quotes from that source seem non-intuitive at first.
Excellent quote!
Nazi propaganda guy… Herman Goring… sorry, hard to spell of this keyboard…
The vassal always has to worry about its mother country. The modern German ruling class is proud to be subservient to the Empire and wants everyone in the Imperial capitals to know how loyal and obedient they are—they are like a kid in the front row of class hoping to be recognized as teacher's pet.
As Churchill said: “The Hun is always either at your throat or your feet.”
These modern Huns are always at some set of feet or other.
Shall we hope that they realise that being at someone's feet is the ideal position from which to cut the other's Achilles, both of them?
"The enemy reaches all the way to the ground" as we said in my judo days.
Seems to me that the liberal German ruling class is much more dedicated to atonement and self-abasement than to any kind of fighting.
The owners and operators of the Global American Empire couldn't have asked for more docile servants.
The German Shepherd has been bred into a poodle who knows how to sit up and beg.
It’s all about the DISTRACTION.
You know, I think they had the same view of Reagan during his time as they now do of Trump. They should really reflect on that.
I was working in Iran and then Saudi Arabia for Reagan's entire time in office, so what I read about him was the obviously slanted press opinions, mostly from the foreign press outlets. I couldn't watch American TV or news or read the newspapers. I'm no dummy, so I knew what I was reading was incredibly slanted against him, but it was hard to find out what the truth really was.
And CJ Hopkins was prosecuted for his cover art. Hypocrisy much?
No doubt the perpetrators are languishing in a prison cell as we speak.
😐
Then I guess Germany’s about to be surprised.
Fingers, toes, eyes crossed. Prayers and thoughts as well.
Hopefully!
In Norway the situation is more or less identical. A recent poll showed 84 % of the population would vote for babbling Kamala. This is imo primarily a measure of the dominance of libtard media propaganda.
We have a state-owned media network - NRK, which is like a norwegian BBC - where absolutely all of the abundant coverage of US politics, is drenched in TDS. No pundit supports Trump in public, and hardly anyone even bothers an attempt at understanding his popularity, beyond vectors like «hate» and the «rise of fascism».
Just today there was a programme on the «intellectual» public radio channel, titled «Can Trump win by hating?». This is the level of analysis almost always.
Non-state media is basically the same, where all newspapers denounce Trump as a hateful nazi and celebrate Gamala as an exciting girl boss sent to save freedom and democracy.
It is exhausting but also fascinating. None of them bother to ask a question like how they would judge any other nation with an 84 % consensus in a democratic election. They just take this as a natural fact.
It is of course indicative of the political and journalistic consensus that exists also domestically, where there is no room for any opinion that deviates from leftist euro dogma.
Did that also developed in the last decade or so?
As a German, I tend to think it all started with Merkel here in GErmany, but it seems to be a phenomenon in the whole Western world.
The 2016 Peasants' Rebellions (Brexit and Trump) engendered a massive total hysterical response in the owners and operators of the global American Empire, one part of which was the transformation of any member of a Western liberal class from journalist to professor to actor etc into a single unified PR propaganda dept.
From coastal California to Berlin our educated cosmopolitan Anywhere class have the same beliefs, ideas, habits, concerns etc—number one being their total commitment to the Social Justice ideology, which means permanent rule by our global-corporate managerial class (who currently own and operate Social Justice), with the concomitant burning hatred for anyone who threatens their power, who then becomes Emmanuel Goldstein before receiving an obligatory Hitler stache.
'The 2016 Peasants' Rebellions (Brexit and Trump) engendered a massive total hysterical response in the owners and operators of the global American Empire, one part of which was the transformation of any member of a Western liberal class from journalist to professor to actor etc into a single unified PR propaganda dept.'
Excellent summary.
Thanks!
And I just woke up here in Cali!
Did you wake up in a physical or a metaphorical sense?
lol neither
only metaphorically
exactly. this is why they put so much emphasis on "consensus", lest the proles figure out "martyrdom" is possible in room 101. they will not be satisfied until there is no possible symbol of a rebel.
their indifference to objective facts verges on contempt. this seems to be the common trait amongst the "sophisticated" these days. and they can get away with it because most people are gullible and confuse incomprehensibility (gobbledygook) as profundity.
They don't know how right they are, Ryan, in emphasising "consensus".
If you break down the etymology of "consensus" you find that the latin root means "feel together/feel the same". As in, sharing emotional response to something makes it right.
The meaning "general accord/agreement on an issue" is a modern (well, late 1800s) interpretation of the original sense.
thx Rikard. I just learned today.
You're welcome - it's a "work related injury" for me to look up words.
A modern deconstruction of the word [Consensus] would yield:
Con; to decieve, to defraud, to fool.
Sens; meaning, also something relating to the senses
Us; we, any group speaking with itself, alt;
US; the United States.
Works, don't you think? And universities all over the West are full of hundreds of thousands of students and tenured tutors of any title, all thinking that the above vivisection of a word actually carries some objective truth or deep insight.
Bedtime for this Bozo now - hope you rode out the hurricanes alright!
You can take Hagen's text about Norway and replace all references to Norway with Sweden, Finland or Denmark. I suspect it is the same with the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, France, Austria and Italy and Greece too.
I.e. all of the EU nations where media is owned and/or under the control of the same handful of media corporations/families.
And it's been ongoing since the 1970s, the center and the right steadily inching ever leftwards, while the left has also inched leftward.
It escalated in the past decade, as it seems to have done all over the west. But similarly to how eugyppius describes the situation in Germany, norwegian media have historically been completely biased in favor of the Democrats. Republicans have always been viewed as some form of extremists – a combination of heartless capitalists, deranged militarists or religious fanatics, which to be fair is not way off the mark in regards to old school GOP.
But something strange and crazy has developed since Trump was first elected. But again this is not particular for Norway. And the similarity to german media just confirms that this is a phenomenon of all western elites, that originates in, or is dispersed by, american legacy media. Indeed much of norwegian media coverage is basically just copies of narratives from the NY Times and the likes - sometimes to the point of plagiarism. And there is no right wing media at all, apart from a few "alternative media" sites which cater to perhaps 10 % of the population.
If anything is specific for Norway in this regard, it's just how widespread the opposition to Trump is. Although I might be wrong, again since Germany seems to be equally tilted. But here even amongst those who vote for the populist right party, only 30 % said they'd support Trump. This is partly due to support for Ukraine being strong also on the right wing, and Trump being seen as Putins puppet and anti-Nato etc.
Here in Germany the start of the complete madness was before Trump (but when Trump was probably already on the horizon).
It started in the summer of 2015, when Merkel decided that we will open our borders to the people coming over the Mediterran sea.
Full trains of African men arrived, they stormed thed borders, and the cities became very crowde very quickly.
It was obviously insane, but politician-media relentless sold it as a great thing.
This was the first time I experienced that only one opinion was allowed, and everyone (including me) was afraid to voice anything against the official consensu.
Australian MSM also the same, just a little more reserved.
Disgusting.
This is nothing new really. When Reagan was president, pundits in Europe were having conniptions. I remember a poll in Denmark in the mid 1980s where 82% of respondents agreed with the statement that Reagan was a "stupid swine" (dumt svin), which is a commonplace insult in DK.
It has changed in two respects: First, it has gotten much more pervasive, with even the centrist and right-leaning papers (like Springer, to say nothing of FAZ) becoming critical or openly hostile. Second, the 'stupid Republican' trope (familiar since Reagan, as you say) has disappeared almost entirely. Trump is just evil and dangerous and likely to bring about some kind of apocalypse.
I agree that the inflammatory tone has increased. But in Denmark, I read about the aforementioned poll in the 1980s in the main "conservative" paper that we received every morning. This same paper is now even worse with complete TDS; luckily it's behind a paywall. But you can see the roots of this leftism already 40 years ago. Also "dumt svin" in Danish implies malevolence, not just stupidity. What really worked up the leftists in the 1980s was the medium range Pershing missles. Reagan was evil for stationing them in Europe. My stupid German relative was out walking on the Autobahn to protest them. It was quite a fever pitch and astounding since the left had no problem with the SS-20s pointing directly at them from the other side of the wall.
And also, back then other opinions were available. You could be pro-Reagan, if you were more on the CDU/FDP side.
Today there is omnly one opinion allowed.
Yes, it is interesting that the euro leftists have not adopted the propaganda of before where Reagan and GWB were portrayed as stupid. But this simply mirrors the strategy of the leftists in the US, who jumped on this trope to denigrate both republicans. Of course, GWB is now a respected elder statesman according to the leftists.
And Cheney is Saint Paul.
How did things evolve to this?
Slowly...and then all at once.
30 year process.
Exactly.
Ugh 😣
Can Trump or/and Elon Musk sue these publications under the Volksverhetzung laws? I mean they incite hate and violence- since the German authorities believe in censorship, why not use it against them?
I think it's fair not to apply the 'stupid Republican' label to Trump, who I view as a mutant outlier. (Think the Mule in Asimov's Foundation series, only less competent.)
Of course, he will have to surround himself with people, most of them are bound to be Republicans.
> We had only article after article after article praising the “civility” of the encounter. You can understand, in this media environment, why most Germans believe that Harris is poised to win. It’s inconceivable why anybody wouldn’t cast their vote for her.
One of the major ways in which I am different from most people is that I've internalized a lesson from lesswrong. I don't remember which article it was, but a long time ago on either LW or SSC, I read an article that put forward a simple and obvious thesis that had nonetheless never occurred to me: if the universe surprises you, that means that _you_ were wrong, every time. The universe can't be right or wrong. The universe simply is what it is. When you try to understand the world, it's your job to understand the world _as it is_, not as you wish it was.
And so when I hear things like
> It’s inconceivable why anybody wouldn’t cast their vote for her.
If I were to believe that it was impossible for Trump to win, and then Trump won, I would not be saying "HOW THE HELL DID HE WIN", I would be asking myself "What was the mistake in my thinking such that I was so disconnected from factual reality?"
I guess most people never ask themselves this
So few people ever stop to ask themselves "What if I'm wrong?" which is similar to your excellent rule of thumb.
This self-questioning becomes a lot easier if you've ever suffered a personal major paradigm upheaval, as many of us experienced thanks to Covid.
Oh, absolutely.
As an American, I always thought the Bill of Rights was sacrosanct, until the manufactured virus hysteria crisis.
💯!!!
Over here that is known as the "Pauline Kael Effect."
The worse relations with America get, the better for Germany - maybe. I hope against hope that the more and crasser their assumptions about the world are falsified in real time right before their very eyes, enough Germans will finally grow up and take their country’s place in the world and political reality seriously and start supporting things to actually benefit Germans. But I also thought Nordstream would be the wake up call but that didn’t move the needle at all. Also, outsiders have no idea the appeal of playing the Oberlehrer has for so many Germans, which really feeds into this whole dysfunctional dynamic. It’s an addiction.
Trump or Harris will not change that the USA is dropping Europe, and Germany is hellbound into degrowing, and saving the weathe,r and being an example to the rest of the world.
"Oberlehrer"?
The head teacher, more or less. Colloquially, an unbearable, lecturing know it all.
To use the Trumpian terminology, today's Germany sounds like a real shithole. I admired Germany from afar for many years, but this sounds really, really bad. A bona fide kakistocracy.
I'm in the same boat.
To be fair the anglosphere media also reluctantly admits from time to time that Trump is some kind of voice of the deplorables, not just Clown Hitler.
anglosphere media substantially less anti-Trump. Even openly anti-Trump media like CNN are not as extreme as our state media. it is really crazy.
I feel a lot of the British press is hemmed in because they still have comments under the articles - which are amazingly written by very eloquent and informed people. Once Merkel banned the comments, the propaganda papers took steroids.
I think your writings resonate with us here in the US because of the time you have spent here, Eugyppius. But what of those Germans who swoop in for a visit to NYC or one of our national parks, and then return home? (Do they really think that half of this country supports the next "H*tler"?)
This isn't simply a bias that you've described; in terms of the results achieved, this can almost be considered a wartime-level propaganda campaign.
"Do they really think that half of this country supports the next "H*tler"?"
Although I reject the analogy in Trump's case, improbability is a poor argument. After all, the majority of a country once supported the original.
If DJT was a complete unknown, if the US was in the depths of a depression (with Versailles war debt around our neck), if American children were sifting through garbage looking for food, one might be concerned about the possibility that half the country could support a "Hitler" (<sarc>you know, "like Trump"</sarc>).
Knowing from experience how ubiquitous the English language is throughout Germany, I find it hard to believe that Germans are forced to rely on their media for our news. (We're not talking about the Second World War, where English was less common and where one could be hauled off for listening to BBC broadcasts on an illegal radio in his basement.)
Sadly, I think this is a lack of curiosity on their part.
Germany, 51st deep blue U.S. state.