Gsus4

I don't think anybody planned beyond that, by everyone's reactions. But it looks as if people read too much Fukuyama uncritically and not enough Huntington.

Unless it is used to pretend that it is a real video and circulated for denigration or blackmail, it is very much not at all like assault. And also, deepfakes do not have the special features hidden under your clothes, so it is possible to debunk those if you really have to.

Or pasting someone's photo over porn...in their minds...

"Now kiss"

Exactly, Taiwan made sure it was worth defending, but I fear that this will lose value over time. Besides you never know what stupid shit is going to come out of tramp's brain the day anything escalates.

yeah...really puts the maga view of Europe of "pathetic freeloaders" into context...I just don't believe that leaving the US would make Europe safe. On the contrary. I actually fear a grand bargain to finally destroy liberal democracy between idiot dealmaker trump and rising power Xi. Their interests are aligned in this respect: as long as it exists anywhere, liberal democracy is a threat to their political projects.

Well, things were slightly better before COVID, after that, the EU decided to derisk, because trust in China actually decreased across the board. In other words, the US is not as untrustworthy as China...yet.

"Take on" is doing the heavy lifting in that whole video. It means dealing with all sorts of hybrid warfare on the part of China, like cyberattacks or funding Orban and far-right parties or taking on the cheap electric vehicles. It does not mean going to war with China. Even if you look at NATO's documents, it is referred to as a long-term challenge, not a direct threat.

The EU can't abandon the US first, more likely that the US would abandon the EU... damn...this is like couples' therapy.

Yeah, nobody in the EU is going to war with China, but its tech dominance (as the US's) poses a challenge to how the countries organize themselves. You confuse The EU with the west, but if the US abandoned NATO, would China abandon russia? I don't think so. So China's backstop of russia is a direct threat to the EU, whereas the EU is not direct threat to China without going through the US.

There are wealthy people in China too (and a disgusting cult of wealth to go with it to make any communist nauseous or any oligarch envious) and they're obedient little piggies, just like those idiots at tramp's inauguration

By humiliating and pushing out the pacifists, you ensure that there will be war. That's it. The US is doing it, russia is doing it, China apparently also wants to do it, why not.