For context, Franklin had already been in Britain for 13 years by this point trying to lobby Parliament and the King about various grievances with the Crown's governance over the colonies. He would spend another 2 years trying in vain to get them to listen, before finally sailing back to America in March 1775.
wpm · 2d ago
If anyone is ever in London and looking for a fun two-hour diversion, the Ben Franklin museum is an interesting look at this time in his life
m463 · 2d ago
I loved the Franklin Institute, but (lol) it was in philadelphia.
amy_petrik · 1d ago
He founded the frankling institute in philly and declared it shall have a giant heart, he founded the university of pennsylvania state university, he invented electricity, the very pipes series that the internet interconnected, he invented glasses (that you wear, not drinking glasses those were Jefferson's invention), he invented karate, he invented the public library, he invented volunteer firefighters, he invented doggystyle position, he invented viral books and meme books, he invented french fries, he invented swimming fins, he invented swimming snorkel, he invented the wood stove (cooking AND heat), he invented urinary catheters, he invented the cotton gin, he invented an early type of musical synthesizer called the arm-monica, he invented the odometer, he invented oil pressure gauge, he invented the limbo dance, but most of all, he definitely founded the franklin institute and it definitely wasn't named after him after the fact
mplewis9z · 2d ago
They're talking about the Benjamin Franklin House, which is in fact in London.
m463 · 1d ago
I realize that. He's like the colossus of rhodes with his feet on two continents.
begueradj · 2d ago
He was a Freemason :)
SwtCyber · 2d ago
It's the voice of someone who's done asking politely and is now holding up a mirror with a smirk
UberFly · 2d ago
As much as he loved Britain, his returning to the colonies after 15 years says a ton about his well-deserved character.
pjc50 · 2d ago
Everyone arguing below this about a flagged comment, but I'm slightly behind - what does it say about his character?
specproc · 1d ago
Had to get back to check in on his slaves.
thaumasiotes · 2d ago
> his well-deserved character
What would be an example of someone with a personality they didn't deserve?
hopelite · 2d ago
I will presume here, but in America “character” is not just a descriptive adjective, it is also an assumed qualitative adjective with a bias towards the positive. Having “character” is akin to a combination of that you are honorable, are principled, upstanding, and often implies a higher level learning or understanding and some refinement.
It is why it is believed to be “well-deserved” as it is a function of his behaviors, actions, and words.
mathgeek · 2d ago
This got me wondering if an actual answer would be folks with brain injuries.
nosianu · 2d ago
Or heavy metal and other neuro-toxins.
That is a far more severe problem than 99% of the public realize. It is like light outside the visible spectrum, or bacteria and viruses, before we had tools to see them.
While we can detect them, unless somebody has a huge sudden exposure, so that they have clearly attributable symptoms, smaller effects can only - badly - attributed statistically, for populations. Badly, because what exactly do you measure? It's not like you get numbers naturally. More aggression, less brain-ability in general, the measurements used even for the statistical analysis is hard.
Long-term slow exposure always correlates with age, so problems can easily be attributed to "aging" instead. And of course stress. And "it's all in your head" - which funnily (or unfunnily) enough is true!
thaumasiotes · 1d ago
Exposure has to be huge, or rather hugely different from the baseline, but it doesn't have to be sudden to be perceived.
This is where we got the expression "mad as a hatter". The problem with being a hatter wasn't that you were suddenly exposed to huge quantities of mercury. It was that you were constantly exposed to it.
nosianu · 1d ago
> Exposure has to be huge
No! Acute exposure is not the only thing that exists!
Source: Both the official line (e.g. that the only save exposure to lead is zero - and lead is not as bad as mercury, also an official line one can found in some NIH doc), as well as my own experience, as someone diagnosed and treated with chelators (see past comments).
You have chronic and acute. Chronic small does exposure exists. It has the problem that we have no reliable ways to diagnose or to treat that case, which is why I do not fault the medical system to be blind there. They just can't really do much or anything. If they did, it would be very inefficient, because there is no quick fix pill or surgery.
Just like Trump trying to stop reporting on things does not mean they don't exist, just because we don't try too hard (or at all) because we don't have a practical solution even in case of an assured diagnosis, if such were possible with current means, does not mean that only acute exposure problems exist.
thaumasiotes · 5h ago
I don't really see what you're trying to tell me. The example I gave of "huge" exposure was hatters.
Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and you deign to explain to me?
01HNNWZ0MV43FF · 2d ago
Maybe they meant well-deserved reputation or something.
ang_cire · 2d ago
Anyone with a personality disorder.
gadders · 2d ago
15 years? He didn't really try hard enough.
hopelite · 2d ago
> The substance behind the “Rules” was scarcely new…
It reminds me of something my grandfather would say “You can tell people a lot of things… you just can’t tell them the truth!”
The introduction also explores this theme with the explanation of how it was only the “biting” nature of the satire he was aware would not persuade, but would outrage in different ways… possibly intentional ways.
I tell people this a lot, because especially regarding historical events, the actual start dates of those events far precede the recorded date that is usually associated with martial actions.
The American Revolution had its origins starting in 1730. The American “Civil War” had its origins starting in 1820. The dates of the starts of most historical events don’t just happen on that day. It’s always bothered me immensely, because it’s so myopic and rather stupid in many ways. The lead up to and the planning of anything is always the far more important part than the execution, and if you don’t know that, you will fail under anything but the most advantageous circumstances.
throw0101a · 2d ago
> It reminds me of something my grandfather would say “You can tell people a lot of things… you just can’t tell them the truth!”
There are three ways to make a living:
1) Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.
2) Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.
3) Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.
Seems more like two ways, but the point stands, I suppose.
potato3732842 · 2d ago
I greatly dislike this reductive sort of pop culture history. Where does it end? The Religion act of 1592? Henry VIII deciding that boats 'n' hoes are more important than being Catholic? Some field in East Sussex in 1066? A bridge outside Rome? Some uppity carpenter? A bunch of jews sick of building pyramids? Some apes that stood up? Some rat-like things that managed to not get eaten by dinosaurs just long enough for a space rock to hit our planet?
The first identifiable steps of the assembly of the myriad (and exponentially increasing the further back you go) of necessary key preconditions that come together to result in a thing that happened does not mean that that's when that thing started happening. We are all sitting at the tail end of an incomprehensibly long line of specific events that were in no way pre-ordained and ultimately depend upon a lot of chance and individual whims.
The american revolution could have been prevented in the 1770s and maybe we'd have turned out like Canada or Northern Ireland. The civil war could have been prevented as late as 1860 and we'd have probably got rid of slavery in the 1870s or 80s like Brazil.
brookst · 2d ago
Odd take on causality.
It’s perfectly reasonable to say that an event was caused by earlier events and also that different actions in the intervening years could have produced different outcomes.
The ceramic bits on the floor were caused when I dropped the bowl, even though they could have been prevented had I managed to catch it.
akhosravian · 1d ago
The comment you are replying to was replying to a comment that was more akin to “the ceramic bits on the floor were caused by your parents meeting” though
brookst · 1h ago
Saying the civil war was seeded decades earlier is more akin to saying the dish was dropped because you put it away covered in oil the day before. It wasn’t some unforseeable eventuality.
DangitBobby · 1d ago
But in the case of history, how the plate got in your hands to begin with is often the most important to learn from, not the dropping it part.
potato3732842 · 2d ago
>Odd take on causality.
If you have something to say say it like a man. This is an internet comment section, not a bunch of mean girls pretending to run a parent teacher association.
>It’s perfectly reasonable to say that an event was caused by earlier events and also that different actions in the intervening years could have produced different outcomes.
The problem is that it's a meaningless statement. Everything "has its origins" or "was caused by" the prior situation which has its origins (or whatever comparable verbiage you prefer) in a nearly infinite set of things that created the immediate necessary preconditions. Like if the middle east didn't suck you might not have got Colombus when you did and the resultant effects. Or if the middle east sucked a little more you might not have gotten Marco Polo when you did having the resultant effects. But this all just devolves into a stupid "look how smart I am" exercise where we're all just basically listing things that came before and circle jerk about the ways they put their metaphorical thumbs on the scale of the future.
soiltype · 1d ago
sexism aside, they did say exactly what they meant.
andrepd · 1d ago
Yes, we are conditioned by the long thread of history and each event followed from those that preceded it. It's a good observation even though many people think things happen in a vacuum :)
This reads like the author has a lisp, with the letter s looking like an f.
kuschku · 2d ago
Fun fact: That long s accidentally lead to a new character being created.
In German, we've got words like "dass". Back in the day, every s that wasn't at the end of a word was written as long s, so "dass" would've been written like "daſs", which got turned into ß.
That's why until the recent orthographic reforms of 1996 and 2006 "dass" was written as "daß".
Aside: in some regions, "dass" would've been written like "dasz" / "daſz". That's why the letter is called Eszett (S-Z) even though it's capitalised as two consecutive "s".
BeFlatXIII · 1d ago
What was the impetus of the orthographic reforms? Is there still a sizable contingent of Germans who use the old orthography?
majewsky · 1d ago
To make the language easier to learn. Lots of languages go through orthographic reforms from time to time, English being one of the notable exceptions because there is no central authority that could impose rule changes in a way that would ensure that most language users eventually fall in line.
I entered school in Germany the very same year that the orthographic reform came into force, so I never learned the legacy spelling, but I certainly found it weird how much adult people at the time detested the rules that six-year-old me considered to be very reasonable (esp. the ss/ß reordering and the ban on fusing tripled consonants in compound words).
Would a fused tripled consonant be something like the fffl in “saustroffflaschen”?
kuschku · 16h ago
You mean Sauerstoffflaschen, which used to be written Sauerstofflaschen, but yes, that's exactly it.
whyever · 1d ago
I know some conservative newspapers (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) kept using the old orthography for a while, but even they started using the new one in 2007, ten years after the reforms.
Timeless rules… They can be applied generally to large organisations, and serve as an excellent summary of symptoms of elite blindness
SwtCyber · 2d ago
Makes you wonder if it's elite blindness or just the gravitational pull of power structures repeating themselves
burnt-resistor · 2d ago
Because most people will silently endure abuse for far too long that teach billionaires, politicians, and celebrities that there are no boundaries. They can be pedophiles and pederasts, shoot people in the street, and lawlessly disband food aid organizations (killing 13M+) without consequences. (And receive more investment because they've wired their lairs for video and audio recording to collect Kompromat.)
pstuart · 1d ago
It's all powered by hate, which itself is powered by ignorance and lack of critical reasoning skills.
burnt-resistor · 1d ago
Yep. It's the insulated, disconnected insouciance and unbounded selfishness that comes with a distinct lack of consideration, vulnerability, and theory of mind. To restore survival and decency, redistribution of wealth above $200 million needs to happen in all nations to put the morbidly rich on "GLP-1" and an incremental tax to prevent excessive wealth hoarding. Of course, this also requires the political coercion or overthrowing of corrupt regimes that won't allow fair, democratic elections.
TheOtherHobbes · 2d ago
Let's not forget the monarch at the time had serious mental health issues.
jjk166 · 1d ago
King George III didn't start really start showing symptoms of mental illness until 1788, and it was only during temporary periods until 1810. There had been a brief episode in 1765, but it was poorly documented, and is described more like a depressive episode than the mania he suffered later in life. All the same, during the period leading up to and during the American Revolution, he was his regular self.
It's also worth noting that by this point in time the monarch was not really the decision maker for most affairs of state. While he was likely the most politically powerful monarch after the Glorious Revolution, Parliament was nevertheless still calling the shots.
doitLP · 2d ago
True but he wasn’t ruling like the kings of old. Parliament was the governing body and was very powerful even if the king still retain more power of redress and authority than he does today
lc9er · 2d ago
Seems to be common at the extreme levels of wealth
SwtCyber · 2d ago
Wild how he predicted that satire would do more to polarize than persuade
croemer · 2d ago
Interesting that all nouns are capitalized, like in modern German and unlike in most other modern languages that use the Latin alphabet.
Telemakhos · 2d ago
Satire, Piece, and Virtues are the first Nouns that I find not capitalized. They occur within the first few Sentences, and I trust that my Observation and Diligence in this Matter might not go without Recognition.
alexchamberlain · 2d ago
Those are part of the modern day commentary, rather than the historic document that starts later in the article. The historic document itself seems to use capitalised nouns fairly consistently, though I haven't tried to find exceptions.
linguae · 2d ago
The Declaration of Independence and the original US Constitution (the main portion plus the Bill of Rights) are also written in this style, though not all nouns are consistently capitalized.
analog31 · 2d ago
I was curious, so in case anybody else was, the first printed versions of these documents also retain this style. It wasn't just a habit of handwriting.
wging · 2d ago
It’s not uncommon for the time. E.g. “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”
birn559 · 2d ago
That's great to learn. A a German native speaker I have a tendency to write like that even though I know it's wrong. Good to know at least it would have been correct at some point in time :D.
xeonmc · 2d ago
If anything, the more capitalizations the more presidential the writing becomes, e.g.
> in Order to form a more PERFECT UNION, establish JUSTICE, insure domestic TRANQUILITY, provide for the common defence, promote the general WELFARE, and secure the BLESSINGS of LIBERTY to ourselves and our POSTERITY…
robertlagrant · 2d ago
THANK YOU for your attention in THIS matter
jack1243star · 2d ago
Reads just like Trump's tweets
actionfromafar · 2d ago
That's the joke
pjmlp · 2d ago
As non German native speaker, that lives and works across DACH space, speaks the language, what I hate is the AI learning from Android phones ortography correction, that after a while think that all words have to be capitalized when I am writing in other languages.
burnt-resistor · 2d ago
Now, we can't even get people to capitalize proper nouns to disambiguate soil from a planet.
shikon7 · 2d ago
In a some sense that goes back to the roots, as you can't distinguish these in German either ("Erde" is always capitalized)
burnt-resistor · 2d ago
You're forgetting English is a far more confusing and ambiguous language.
"English" may mean a subset of British people, a language, or sometimes a restaurant MacGuffin, whereas "english" refers to only vertical spinning of a billard ball.
exe34 · 2d ago
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” ― James D. Nicoll
burnt-resistor · 2d ago
I would secretly hope Harbrace printed no further editions and kids and crims didn't invent new cant. The only constants are change, death, taxes, the ineffective shrieking about the impending rhyming of history caused by dangerously-stupid leaders, and the co-evolution of language and culture.
moi2388 · 2d ago
“ And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe. And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot”
potato3732842 · 2d ago
(buffalo) ^ 8
prpl · 2d ago
or engineers from Engineers
No comments yet
Jap2-0 · 2d ago
Decreasingly so, but even in stuff written in the last hundred years or so you'll sometimes find words capitalized for emphasis or similar.
tempestn · 2d ago
Most communication from the highest office in the land is indeed now In this Exalted STYLE.
selimthegrim · 2d ago
Famously Custer used to capitalize mule and horse and write Indian in lowercase
xdennis · 2d ago
It's not all nouns. Capitalization was a form of emphasis back then.
SwtCyber · 2d ago
Capitalizing nouns was more of a stylistic convention back then
hellojimbo · 2d ago
Is this like the prince or art of war where we are supposed to draw some lesson from very specific critiques and extrapolate it to every scenario.
somenameforme · 2d ago
Is it specific? What he describes is essentially the downfall of every single great Empire that has ever existed or even would exist long after his death. For that matter it even largely describes why a certain Empire without declared borders is in ongoing decline, first in soft power and now in hard.
It's essentially just describing hubris, which those who find themselves in power - particularly power that they themselves did not build, can never seem to escape.
philosophty · 2d ago
"What he describes is essentially the downfall of every single great Empire that has ever existed..."
Even accounting for hyperbole this is just not at all historically accurate.
Military conquest and failures, economic decay, succession problems, and weather are responsible for at least as many cases and probably more.
somenameforme · 2d ago
Cause vs effect. Empires grow exceptionally hubristic over time. For instance the Brits likely never even considered the possibility, in a million years, that they could lose in a military conflict with the colonies. The idea would have been preposterous. It wasn't because of a careful and objective military assessment, but because of hubristic belief in their own inherent superiority - the imperial disease.
At worst it would be a mild rebellion which would be shut down in due order with a bit of good old fashion drawing and quartering. Empires grow out of touch with reality, and base their decisions on this false reality that they create. The outcome is not hard to predict. So for instance the exact same followed the Brits all the way to their collapse. Enjoining WW1 was completely unnecessary and effectively bankrupted them. The Treaty of Versailles was painfully myopic - all but ensuring WW2, and that was essentially the end of their empire.
pyrale · 2d ago
> For instance the Brits likely never even considered the possibility, in a million years, that they could lose in a military conflict with the colonies.
They likely couldn't. The US independence war was part of a larger war between the French empire and the British empire. The british empire was also at was with Spain and the Netherlands at the time.
> Enjoining WW1 was completely unnecessary
Britain didn't start WW1.
CamouflagedKiwi · 2d ago
Not all of your examples are simply hubris (although there certainly was some of that).
> Enjoining WW1 was completely unnecessary
It effectively was necessary. They were drawn it via a pre-existing treaty with Belgium; it also does not seem like a good long-term plan for them to allow Germany to dominate the entire European mainland.
The whole thing was a mess, but not because Britain was out of touch with the reality of the situation. They were very aware but felt they had no choice.
> The Treaty of Versailles was painfully myopic - all but ensuring WW2
It was, but that's a perspective that's very clear in hindsight, and at the time it arose more from ignorance of the consequences (and possibly some vindictiveness) than hubris.
ninalanyon · 1d ago
> that's a perspective that's very clear in hindsight,
It was clear at the time at least to people like Keynes who wrote a book on the subject: The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
"My purpose in this book is to show that the Carthaginian Peace is not practically right or possible. Although the school of thought from which it springs is aware of the economic factor, it overlooks, nevertheless, the deeper economic tendencies which are to govern the future. The clock cannot be set back. You cannot restore Central Europe to 1870 without setting up such strains in the European structure and letting loose such human and spiritual forces as, pushing beyond frontiers and races, will overwhelm not only you and your "guarantees," but your institutions, and the existing order of your Society."
somenameforme · 2d ago
There's a decent Wiki page on Britain's entry into WW1 here. [1] Britain's cabinet had already decided, before they chose to declare war, that the treaty did not obligate a military response.
---
"Few historians would still maintain that the 'rape of Belgium' was the real motive for Britain's declaration of war on Germany. Instead, the role of Belgian neutrality is variously interpreted as an excuse used to mobilise public opinion, to provide embarrassed radicals in the cabinet with the justification for abandoning the principal of pacifism and thus staying in office, or - in the more conspiratorial versions - as cover for naked imperial interests."
---
Similarly many people were fully aware that Treaty of Versailles was foolish as it was being drafted. Its excessively punitive nature essentially precluded any sort of peaceful reconciliation, which should always be the goal at the end of war. You never know who your allies, or your enemies, will be in a few decades. History loves a plot twist.
Hubris is a second order effect. It doesn't collapse the empire directly, it just hinders the ability to deal with military failures, economic decay, etc.
I think you could also argue that one of the reasons the Roman empire persisted so long was that their existential close calls (Hannibal being the most prominent one), became embedded into their cultural DNA.
shermantanktop · 2d ago
I dunno about every scenario. But it’s a pretty obvious lesson for Pax Americana, which has been based on both hard and soft power, both of which are in the hands of someone who doesn’t seem to share the premise that they should be used at all the way they have been in the past.
tomlockwood · 2d ago
Also I reckon it reads as a good lesson for managers too!
chrisco255 · 2d ago
Pax Americana isn't an empire, it's built on treaties with sovereign nations. The U.S. doesn't set arbitrary laws for Europe, like the British were doing to the American colonies.
It might be argued that the relative peace in Europe and Asia is already cracking up, given the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Either way the world is a completely different place than it was in 1949 or 1989, and as the global situation evolves it makes absolute sense to adapt with it.
Nicook · 1d ago
lmbo most of europe still has US military present within their borders.
staplers · 2d ago
The U.S. doesn't set arbitrary laws for Europe
Tariffs feel relevant here..
WJW · 2d ago
That's a US law effecting goods coming into the USA, and mostly affecting prices for American consumers. European goods going to all other countries are unaffected.
somenameforme · 2d ago
I think Trump has made clear that Europe has no meaningful sovereignty. However, the only thing unique about Trump is that he doesn't play the typical games and makes no effort whatsoever to let them save face and pretend to be sovereign. We created a system where Europe is economically and militarily dependent upon the US, which means on issues we truly care about - they have no ability to say no. They're going to do what he says -- they know it, he knows it, and now everybody else also knows it because he loves to gloat about it and make it unambiguously clear that he's imposing his will on them.
The great empires of old, dating back to at least Alexander the Great and almost certainly before, all learned a simple truth. The way you create a stable empire is by giving those under your control so much as freedom as possible to maintain their own ways. We simply took this to the next logical step and created an empire no longer defined by borders.
WJW · 2d ago
> I think Trump has made clear that Europe has no meaningful sovereignty.
How do you define "sovereignty" here? Because (for example) many European countries have made it crystal clear that they will continue to support Ukraine whether or not the USA continues or not. That's not something they could do if the US had taken over their sovereignty. There are plenty of other demands that Trump makes which the EU is going "lol nope" about, like adjusting its own taxes, selling Greenland, or lowering food safety standards so American foods could be sold here.
Does the US have a lot of influence? Sure. So does the EU over the USA, though the EU has long preferred soft power over military presence. China has a lot of influence over the USA too, simply by having to power to meaningfully harm its economy (although at significant cost to itself too). Does that make the USA "not sovereign"? The US has a lot of influence over Russia's economy too, but nobody would argue that Russia is "not sovereign" because they're under sanctions. By that logic even the USA is not fully sovereign because it's "forced" to spend time and money to counteract the countries out there defying its will. Defining sovereignty is very tricky in a globalized world.
somenameforme · 2d ago
Trump has never once opposed Europe continuing to fund Ukraine however long they want. On the contrary, that clearly became his plan once it became clear he wasn't going to be able to get a cease fire. Now he simply wants to get out of Ukraine without it being a huge L on his legacy like Afghanistan was for Biden. So how does he plan to do this? Just dump it on Europe. This started out with calls for the EU to 'pay their fair share.' It's now been made clear that "their fair share" is 100% of the cost of the war. We get out of the war, it's no longer tied to Trump, and the MIC lobby still gets filthy rich because the EU funding for Ukraine will go straight to the US MIC anyhow.
And what does the EU get out of this? Local economies that are already headed into recession now expected to pay dramatically more for Ukraine to the US, skyrocketing energy costs owing largely to being compelled to purchase US natural gas, getting to deal with jacked up tariffs to the US, and eventually being the ones that get to take the L over Ukraine. This is not "influence" - this is countries being dictated to act in a way that runs completely against their own self interest.
overfeed · 1d ago
> like Afghanistan was for Biden
wut? It was Trump[1] who invited the Taliban to Camp David, negotiated with them sans-Afghan governenment, and started the process of withdrawal with troop reductions, a deadline and everything.
Absolutely, and it was Bush who started it. But Biden oversaw the retreat and it was our biggest failure since Vietnam, and so it will always be his loss. This is also why LBJ is 'LBJ's war' even though he, too, did not start it. Trump's well aware of this reality which is why every interview he does he tries to stress that Ukraine was Biden's war, but he knows that in the end he inherited this disaster and so, in the end, he'll be the one associated with it, so he wants to 'cleanly' wash his hands of it as quickly as possible. And since Zelensky seems increasingly delusional, it's likely that giving it to Europe is his only real out.
WJW · 2d ago
If I were to summarize:
- Europe chooses to fight a war it wants to fight;
- with the weapons it has decided are the best choice available at the moment (even though many of those are not yet produced domestically and so need to be imported);
- while hugely increasing its own weapons manufacturing;
- paid for by its own money. (aka the factories built and new weapon systems introduced will not be controlled by the US)
You seem to argue (but correct me if I'm wrong) that this is somehow a huge win for the USA and proves the European states have barely any sovereignty as in your previous post. But the more logical result of all this would be that the European countries come out of this war with a significantly larger defense-industrial base. In addition this bigger DIB will be used to shift away the composition of EU armed forces away from American systems and towards domestically produced systems. Like you mention the USA will not pay for anything anymore, but as the saying goes "the one who pays is the one who gets to decide". Pulling support also means you no longer get a say in decision making. Finally, the USA not helping in Ukraine makes it much easier for politicians to say "no thank you" when the US wants help in a future Taiwan conflict. None of these things improve US influence over Europe.
Tariffs are completely separate and are mainly a US thing being paid for by US importers to the US government. Natural gas imports are Trump overstating his dealmaking skills: countries do not buy gas but companies do, and the global energy companies are not bound to this trade deal.
Finally this:
> Trump has never once opposed Europe continuing to fund Ukraine however long they want.
Yes he did. He proposed a peace deal to Putin in which Ukraine would basically surrender, then tried to pressure Zelensky and the EU leaders into going along with this. This very much included Ukraine giving up the fight and EU halting support. Obviously, this didn't happen and now Trump tries to pretend he meant this occur all along.
somenameforme · 2d ago
Your entire argument hinges on the claim that Europe is choosing to do these things which I think can be plainly falsified by looking at what they're agreeing to. Here are the notes [1] on the recent trade "agreement" with the US.
------
US gets:
- EU investment of $600 billion in the US, invested at Trump's sole discretion
- guaranteed sales of $750 billion in US energy resources at a nice fat premium
- guarantee sales of an unstated other than "significant" amount of US military equipment
- elimination of all EU tariffs in many sectors, including on all US industrial goods
EU gets:
- Pay new and increased tariffs to the US, ranging from 15-50%.
------
Claiming anybody is choosing this is simply unbelievable.
Picking a White House publication is going to give you the rosiest picture imaginable. Let's pick some claims apart a little bit to see how it might not be as rosy as you seem to imagine:
- The mentioned EU investment is not at the discretion of Trump. Not even the White House statement says that. In addition, for one party to invest the other has to be selling. It's not a gift. The EU buying factories etc in the US (and shipping the profits back home) is hardly being dominated. Neither is it guaranteed: there are hundreds of ways to delay or cancel such investments. In most US places, just encouraging the local NIMBYs will be enough.
- Energy imports from the USA over the last 2 years already stood at ~30 billion per month. The 750 billion is over the remaining term of Trump, so very roughly 3.5 more years. That means the EU committed to spend ~215 billion per year, which is actually less than it has been spending on average anyway over the past two years. No premium was agreed in regards to energy prices. Don't know where you get that from, the linked publication does not mention anything like that.
- As stated before there are plenty of things we'd actually want to buy from the US, such as weapons for which we're still building our own factories. The Patriot missile factory under construction in Germany is one such example. While it is not yet done, we want to buy missiles to send to Ukraine. So this is a "concession" to do what we were already going to do. Also note that almost any amount can be construed as "significant" if you're a politician.
- The EU commits to "work to address a range of U.S. concerns" regarding tariffs. Quoting from that White House publication, we'll even provide "meaningful quotas". What does that mean? Which timescale? How high will the quotas be? Does "supporting high-quality American jobs" mean 5 jobs or millions of jobs? This is just a thing negotiators stuck in there so both parties could claim victory.
Finally tariffs are a big nothing burger when it comes to this discussion. It clearly has nothing to do with the EU being a US vassal because every country in the world is being tariffed, up to and including those poor penguins in the pacific. Unless you claim that China and Russia are also not sovereign countries? They have tariffs too. The phrasing of "Pay new and increased tariffs to the US" is also incomplete. The importer of the goods pays the tariffs, and most big companies have already indicated they will raise prices in the US to compensate. In effect US consumers will simply be paying an extra tax to their own government for the privilege of buying goods produced abroad.
In short, the EU negotiators got some of the lowest tariffs in the world in exchange for things they were already doing, were going to do anyway, or will not have to do. The negotiators did a rather splendid job I'd say.
somenameforme · 2d ago
You're misunderstanding the agreement. This is what the EU agreed to with Trump - it's not a legal text that you get to angle shoot out of. If Trump doesn't like the way the EU is enacting the terms, then they get to pay even higher tariffs, all at his discretion. My comments are not based solely on that source. For instance here [1] is another source mentioning that "Trump said the investment was at his discretion, with 90% of the profits going to the U.S." And that fat markup on LNG? Current spot price for wholesale LNG in the US is $3 vs $11 in Europe. The profit margins are juicy. [2][3]
By contrast you're throwing out numbers and claims without sources, which are wrong. For instance the entirety of all EU imports from the US are less than $30 billion per month [4], of which energy is but a fraction. Them meeting his demands there will be a dramatic increase in imports, to the point that it's not clear if this is even possible.
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[And this mess is part of the reason I don't cite everything. This is just ugly]
> it's not a legal text that you get to angle shoot out of
LOL yes we can and we will. I can state this confidently because the entire agreement is exactly that. A bunch of terms with definitions too vague to matter.
If Trump wants to be an unreliable ally again, then everybody knows he will do so anyway. It'll be based more on what kind of breakfast he had than whether the EU sticks to the terms or not.
somenameforme · 1d ago
No, you don't understand. It is literally not a legal text - but an semi-formal agreement. Both sides are free to do as they see fit (or not), but in the end it's essentially a list of tribute that the EU will pay to Trump, and he gets to decide if it fits the standards of what is expected.
chrisco255 · 2d ago
I'm with you all the way up to the last paragraph.
There has been no explicit peace deal with Russia. There has been an ongoing negotiation and attempts at agreements but my no means was Trump suggesting to surrender all of Ukraine to Russia.
You do realize that EU support and weaponry is completely insufficient to fight Russia, right? Their military is far stronger than anything you've got. The only reason Ukraine has been doing as well as it has is because of American training, intel, weaponry, drones, etc. If America walked away, Ukraine would collapse quite quickly, regardless of empty pledges by the EU.
WJW · 2d ago
Interesting statement, and I think this shows how different the viewpoints are on both sides of the pond. First off obviously, the EU absolutely doesn't see its pledges as "empty". If anything, the amount of weapons being used in Ukraine are by now 80+% produced either in Ukraine itself or somewhere in Europe. Artillery shell production has increased fourfold over 2022 and will double again this year. US weapons deliveries are nice and everything is welcome, but it's mostly (Patriot) air defenses that Europe cannot yet produce at sufficient scale. There are huge training missions for Ukrainian soldiers in eg France and the UK where the US has basically zero input. American drones are crap compared to what the Ukrainians build themselves, to the point that the US is importing drone knowledge from there these days. All new fighter jets for Ukraine have been donated from EU countries, not a single one by the US. The Ukraine collapsing without the US is simply not true, and that is why so many of Trumps diplomatic advances have failed so far: he doesn't hold the leverage he thinks he does.
The relative strength of the combined armies in Europe is also something that we apparently think very different about. There are certainly strategic deficiencies: we'd prefer to have a more robust domestic nuclear umbrella for example, and the US has an advantage in things like intel satellites. In terms of regular weaponry though, we have more than enough "stuff" to win, especially with Russia severely depleted by several years of attritional warfare in Ukraine. The numbers gap is already big enough, but most of the Russian stuff is decades old by now while the European countries are mostly rocking up with extremely modern equipment.
somenameforme · 2d ago
European production is mostly a mixture of a myth to an outright lie. For instance as of late 2024 the commissioner of defense for the EU stated that only 20-25% of EU supplied weapons come from the EU. [1] And similarly EU claims of artillery production were dramatically exaggerated [2]. The EU 'military industrial complex' remains mostly going unsustainably deep into debt to buy US arms. Energy costs alone likely preclude any large scale manufacturing with any degree of efficiency.
> There has been no explicit peace deal with Russia. There has been an ongoing negotiation and attempts at agreements but my no means was Trump suggesting to surrender all of Ukraine to Russia.
I think you've been watching US propaganda? This "deal" explicitely happened, there was a lot of "wtf" moments at that. It was a thing that sparked protests.
BartjeD · 2d ago
This 'reasoning' explains why the predominent sentiment in Europe is now: 'Bye bye USA'.
I think the party in the USA has ended. And I'm definitely not investing there again until there is some clarity about the next regime.
baobun · 2d ago
> This 'reasoning' explains why the predominent sentiment in Europe is now: 'Bye bye USA'.
Is it? I'm (somewhat shockingly) not really seeing any willingness to detach from US Big Tech or even consider thinking what's behind the curtain. The collective delusion is surreal (or should I say hyper-real).
andrepd · 1d ago
> This 'reasoning' explains why the predominent sentiment in Europe is now: 'Bye bye USA'.
Do you mean the people? They don't matter, the EU is not a democracy that has to answer to its people.
Do you mean the leaders? They just signed a treaty to agree to 10x tariffs for their goods, 0% tariffs for the USA's good, and to buy a trillion dollar's worth of energy and arms. Doesn't sound like "bye bye USA".
chrisco255 · 2d ago
Ok, good luck fighting Russia on your eastern flank and whatever spills over in the coming years from the middle east and northern Africa. And good luck funding your defense without making serious cuts to your entitlement programs. And good luck sorting out the internal tension in the EU in that context.
amanaplanacanal · 1d ago
I haven't seen much evidence the current US administration is interested in defending Europe from Russian expansionism. Trump tried to give Putin everything he wanted in Ukraine.
watwut · 2d ago
Trump has made it clear America is his dictatorship and his own only. Republicans like it. That does not mean America already descended as much yet, it is just expression of Trump wishes.
> They're going to do what he says
Except they ... did not. He is loosing influence. He is getting face saving deals for himself, but that is about it.
analog31 · 2d ago
This reads almost like a precursor to the Declaration of Independence, which lists many of the same offenses of King George.
macintux · 2d ago
That is, effectively, what it was.
skybrian · 2d ago
Yeah, historical analogies are good mostly for suggesting possibilities you hadn't thought of. They don't prove anything.
bigDinosaur · 2d ago
Empires having a rise and fall or increase/decrease in power/land is probably the most evidence supported grand narrative of history there is, although the specifics are always going to be different the general problems are perhaps universal (see also: The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph A. Tainter)
skybrian · 2d ago
Maybe I'm missing what you're saying, but I think that by itself, the bare statement that "sometimes empires get larger and sometimes they get smaller" is about as useless as saying that stock markets fluctuate? But the reasons why it happened in various cases are often worth reading about. That's why we read history.
bigDinosaur · 2d ago
The trend is secular, so fluctuations are not the point.
majormajor · 2d ago
"Things change" is unconvincing to me as a "grand narrative." More an evidence-supported obvious fact.
bigDinosaur · 2d ago
"Things change" is not the point, rather that empires always have a secular trend of expansion and eventually decline. I was responding to someone who claimed that historical examples don't prove anything, but this trend is as good as proven as one can get in history.
skybrian · 2d ago
If they all started at zero and the ones that are no longer in existence end at zero, then roughly speaking, wouldn’t that have to happen?
But in slightly more detail, not every empire has ended, yet, if you count Russia and the Chinese as empires. Also, some empires have had declines that reversed again for a while, such as Byzantine Empire.
ViscountPenguin · 2d ago
There are plenty of empires in history that have had growth trajectories far more complex than "rise -> final fall".
Of particular note is China, which made falling and then regaining territorial extent a practical sport.
kelipso · 1d ago
By that logic, Europe, Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Byzantine Empire, Roman Empire, and whatever kingdoms that were there and in all of Europe during and before that are all one empire that kept rising and falling all the time.
jabl · 2d ago
The history of China is perhaps not the history of AN empire, but rather a bunch of states/kingdoms, some of which every now and then managed to subjugate their neighbors and build an empire, for a while.
SwtCyber · 2d ago
Sort of, but with a sharper edge of sarcasm
tonyhart7 · 2d ago
except china, china for some reason always unite despite many civil war and unrest
like imagine at some point roman empire and china is co-exist together and 2000 years later only 1 survive
joeblubaugh · 2d ago
Chinese continuity is overstated for the purposes of modern nation-building. The Qing and Ming are as different from each other and modern CCP China as the kingdom of Prussia is from modern Germany.
actionfromafar · 2d ago
That past is always a different country, but actually I'm kind of disappointed that Qing and Ming are not more different than Prussia is from modern Germany.
tonyhart7 · 2d ago
but they still chinnese???? "but sorry you are wrong, its is mongolian goverment" nerd noise
Yeah but the empire is still in fact china, like you cant change that
1. does they identified some sort of "chinnese" ???: Yeah
2. does they still speak some form of "chinnese language": Yeah
"buttt it iss different eeeerrr" before you talking about whats different, BRO ITS 2000 YEARS, what do you expect ???? like do you expecting people not changing anything for two millenia????? like cmon bruh, use your critical thinking
"china proper" as whole is always referring to "whole region" not just this empire or dynasty or anything
dpassens · 2d ago
Please do us all a favour and learn to communicate properly.
tonyhart7 · 2d ago
sorry that you aren't get it if you are not fluent native
but you can ignore the satirical part and focus at bullet point
It's true, China went through a ton of unification -> division -> reunification phases in history. There's even a famous quote for this: "what is long divided must unite, what is long united must divide"
I think one possible reason is that the Qin Dynasty really managed to assimilate everyone into the same shared values, religion, language, writing, and so on. Other empires didn't succeed to that level, and the people in them always had strong differences, language, values, religion, beliefs, writing, philosophy, and so on.
thaumasiotes · 2d ago
> I think one possible reason is that the Qin Dynasty really managed to assimilate everyone into the same shared values, religion, language, writing, and so on. Other empires didn't succeed to that level
Qin conquered the other Chinese states and the ensuing dynasty flamed out immediately. The work of creating an empire was done by the following Han dynasty.
> There's even a famous quote for this: "what is long divided must unite, what is long united must divide"
Often given as "the empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide", but your translation is much closer to the text, which doesn't mention empires except in that it follows this statement ["They say that across the course of history, what has long been divided must unite, and what has long been united must divide"] with a discussion of Chinese governments schisming and unifying.
didibus · 1d ago
I'm not an historian or even did any extensive research on this. I thought that the Qin dynasty established a ton of standards super aggressively and also worked very fast to erase and assimilate. Even if it didn't last long, it kind of set the pattern.
thaumasiotes · 1d ago
It lasted for fourteen years, with a sharp drop in stability for the last three of those. No, that's not enough time to do cultural transformation.
The shared values, religion, language, and writing preexisted the Qin. So much was shared that the state of Qin considered it a problem - Qin propaganda (before the conquest) tended to emphasize how different they were from the other Chinese states.
jjmarr · 2d ago
In Western tradition, an "empire" is definitionally unassimilated in that there are multiple groups/territories ruled centrally from a metropole. A state would no longer be an empire once it assimilates disparate territories.
thaumasiotes · 2d ago
No, there is an alternative (and far, far more traditional) definition in which an emperor outranks a king, which is how China is termed an "empire".
ajross · 2d ago
China literally fought the bloodiest civil war of the 20th century! It's technically still going on, even. One of the sides makes a lot of good chips, maybe you've heard of them.
lern_too_spel · 1d ago
That's a bit of an oversimplification. The residents of Taiwan had been Japanese citizens since the end of the 19th century and did not participate in the Chinese Civil War. Chang Kai-Shek moved his supporters to the island in 1949 based on the Allies' promise of the return of Taiwan to the RoC and then quickly declared martial law, which lasted for four decades. The current ruling party in Taiwan does not consider itself a rightful ruler of mainland China and instead sees itself as the government of a sovereign Taiwan.
ajross · 1d ago
And that sounds more like apologia than elaboration. Needless to say the PRC itself does not agree with the DPP's assessment of itself as the government of a sovereign Taiwan.
The point was a glib response to an assertion that China is somehow especially unified as a matter of policy or politics. And, yeah, no; no it is not. At all.
lern_too_spel · 17h ago
I mean to say that it's incorrect to claim that the Chinese civil war is ongoing and even more incorrect to say that one side of it does a good job manufacturing chips. The part of the KMT that fled to Taiwan constitutes a minority of Taiwan's population and is not even politically dominant any more, and the rest were Japanese citizens who then became Taiwanese citizens, never having fought in a civil war.
ajross · 3h ago
> I mean to say that it's incorrect to claim that the Chinese civil war is ongoing
What I said was that the Chinese civil war is technically ongoing, as evidence for deep and persistent Chinese political disunity, and I stand by that 100%.
You're arguing with someone else, I think. And in particular you seem to be arguing from the perspective of the PRC with regard to Taiwanese independence, which I find distasteful.
andsoitis · 2d ago
in the grand scheme of humanity, do you consider a single civilization largely persisting in key aspects over 2000 years a feature? Or a bug?
msgodel · 2d ago
If it's my civilization it's a feature, if it's your civilization it's a bug.
It sounds like a joke but that is exactly how it works and many people have forgotten it.
What would be an example of someone with a personality they didn't deserve?
It is why it is believed to be “well-deserved” as it is a function of his behaviors, actions, and words.
That is a far more severe problem than 99% of the public realize. It is like light outside the visible spectrum, or bacteria and viruses, before we had tools to see them.
While we can detect them, unless somebody has a huge sudden exposure, so that they have clearly attributable symptoms, smaller effects can only - badly - attributed statistically, for populations. Badly, because what exactly do you measure? It's not like you get numbers naturally. More aggression, less brain-ability in general, the measurements used even for the statistical analysis is hard.
Long-term slow exposure always correlates with age, so problems can easily be attributed to "aging" instead. And of course stress. And "it's all in your head" - which funnily (or unfunnily) enough is true!
This is where we got the expression "mad as a hatter". The problem with being a hatter wasn't that you were suddenly exposed to huge quantities of mercury. It was that you were constantly exposed to it.
No! Acute exposure is not the only thing that exists!
Source: Both the official line (e.g. that the only save exposure to lead is zero - and lead is not as bad as mercury, also an official line one can found in some NIH doc), as well as my own experience, as someone diagnosed and treated with chelators (see past comments).
You have chronic and acute. Chronic small does exposure exists. It has the problem that we have no reliable ways to diagnose or to treat that case, which is why I do not fault the medical system to be blind there. They just can't really do much or anything. If they did, it would be very inefficient, because there is no quick fix pill or surgery.
Just like Trump trying to stop reporting on things does not mean they don't exist, just because we don't try too hard (or at all) because we don't have a practical solution even in case of an assured diagnosis, if such were possible with current means, does not mean that only acute exposure problems exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_the_Paranoid_Android
It reminds me of something my grandfather would say “You can tell people a lot of things… you just can’t tell them the truth!”
The introduction also explores this theme with the explanation of how it was only the “biting” nature of the satire he was aware would not persuade, but would outrage in different ways… possibly intentional ways.
I tell people this a lot, because especially regarding historical events, the actual start dates of those events far precede the recorded date that is usually associated with martial actions.
The American Revolution had its origins starting in 1730. The American “Civil War” had its origins starting in 1820. The dates of the starts of most historical events don’t just happen on that day. It’s always bothered me immensely, because it’s so myopic and rather stupid in many ways. The lead up to and the planning of anything is always the far more important part than the execution, and if you don’t know that, you will fail under anything but the most advantageous circumstances.
The first identifiable steps of the assembly of the myriad (and exponentially increasing the further back you go) of necessary key preconditions that come together to result in a thing that happened does not mean that that's when that thing started happening. We are all sitting at the tail end of an incomprehensibly long line of specific events that were in no way pre-ordained and ultimately depend upon a lot of chance and individual whims.
The american revolution could have been prevented in the 1770s and maybe we'd have turned out like Canada or Northern Ireland. The civil war could have been prevented as late as 1860 and we'd have probably got rid of slavery in the 1870s or 80s like Brazil.
It’s perfectly reasonable to say that an event was caused by earlier events and also that different actions in the intervening years could have produced different outcomes.
The ceramic bits on the floor were caused when I dropped the bowl, even though they could have been prevented had I managed to catch it.
If you have something to say say it like a man. This is an internet comment section, not a bunch of mean girls pretending to run a parent teacher association.
>It’s perfectly reasonable to say that an event was caused by earlier events and also that different actions in the intervening years could have produced different outcomes.
The problem is that it's a meaningless statement. Everything "has its origins" or "was caused by" the prior situation which has its origins (or whatever comparable verbiage you prefer) in a nearly infinite set of things that created the immediate necessary preconditions. Like if the middle east didn't suck you might not have got Colombus when you did and the resultant effects. Or if the middle east sucked a little more you might not have gotten Marco Polo when you did having the resultant effects. But this all just devolves into a stupid "look how smart I am" exercise where we're all just basically listing things that came before and circle jerk about the ways they put their metaphorical thumbs on the scale of the future.
In German, we've got words like "dass". Back in the day, every s that wasn't at the end of a word was written as long s, so "dass" would've been written like "daſs", which got turned into ß.
That's why until the recent orthographic reforms of 1996 and 2006 "dass" was written as "daß".
Aside: in some regions, "dass" would've been written like "dasz" / "daſz". That's why the letter is called Eszett (S-Z) even though it's capitalised as two consecutive "s".
I entered school in Germany the very same year that the orthographic reform came into force, so I never learned the legacy spelling, but I certainly found it weird how much adult people at the time detested the rules that six-year-old me considered to be very reasonable (esp. the ss/ß reordering and the ban on fusing tripled consonants in compound words).
This is my very personal perspective. If you're interested in a more complete picture, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_der_deutschen_Rechtschr... looks like a good summary (through translation if necessary).
It's also worth noting that by this point in time the monarch was not really the decision maker for most affairs of state. While he was likely the most politically powerful monarch after the Glorious Revolution, Parliament was nevertheless still calling the shots.
> in Order to form a more PERFECT UNION, establish JUSTICE, insure domestic TRANQUILITY, provide for the common defence, promote the general WELFARE, and secure the BLESSINGS of LIBERTY to ourselves and our POSTERITY…
"English" may mean a subset of British people, a language, or sometimes a restaurant MacGuffin, whereas "english" refers to only vertical spinning of a billard ball.
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It's essentially just describing hubris, which those who find themselves in power - particularly power that they themselves did not build, can never seem to escape.
Even accounting for hyperbole this is just not at all historically accurate.
Military conquest and failures, economic decay, succession problems, and weather are responsible for at least as many cases and probably more.
At worst it would be a mild rebellion which would be shut down in due order with a bit of good old fashion drawing and quartering. Empires grow out of touch with reality, and base their decisions on this false reality that they create. The outcome is not hard to predict. So for instance the exact same followed the Brits all the way to their collapse. Enjoining WW1 was completely unnecessary and effectively bankrupted them. The Treaty of Versailles was painfully myopic - all but ensuring WW2, and that was essentially the end of their empire.
They likely couldn't. The US independence war was part of a larger war between the French empire and the British empire. The british empire was also at was with Spain and the Netherlands at the time.
> Enjoining WW1 was completely unnecessary
Britain didn't start WW1.
> Enjoining WW1 was completely unnecessary
It effectively was necessary. They were drawn it via a pre-existing treaty with Belgium; it also does not seem like a good long-term plan for them to allow Germany to dominate the entire European mainland. The whole thing was a mess, but not because Britain was out of touch with the reality of the situation. They were very aware but felt they had no choice.
> The Treaty of Versailles was painfully myopic - all but ensuring WW2
It was, but that's a perspective that's very clear in hindsight, and at the time it arose more from ignorance of the consequences (and possibly some vindictiveness) than hubris.
It was clear at the time at least to people like Keynes who wrote a book on the subject: The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
"My purpose in this book is to show that the Carthaginian Peace is not practically right or possible. Although the school of thought from which it springs is aware of the economic factor, it overlooks, nevertheless, the deeper economic tendencies which are to govern the future. The clock cannot be set back. You cannot restore Central Europe to 1870 without setting up such strains in the European structure and letting loose such human and spiritual forces as, pushing beyond frontiers and races, will overwhelm not only you and your "guarantees," but your institutions, and the existing order of your Society."
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"Few historians would still maintain that the 'rape of Belgium' was the real motive for Britain's declaration of war on Germany. Instead, the role of Belgian neutrality is variously interpreted as an excuse used to mobilise public opinion, to provide embarrassed radicals in the cabinet with the justification for abandoning the principal of pacifism and thus staying in office, or - in the more conspiratorial versions - as cover for naked imperial interests."
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Similarly many people were fully aware that Treaty of Versailles was foolish as it was being drafted. Its excessively punitive nature essentially precluded any sort of peaceful reconciliation, which should always be the goal at the end of war. You never know who your allies, or your enemies, will be in a few decades. History loves a plot twist.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_declaration_of_war_upo...
I think you could also argue that one of the reasons the Roman empire persisted so long was that their existential close calls (Hannibal being the most prominent one), became embedded into their cultural DNA.
It might be argued that the relative peace in Europe and Asia is already cracking up, given the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Either way the world is a completely different place than it was in 1949 or 1989, and as the global situation evolves it makes absolute sense to adapt with it.
The great empires of old, dating back to at least Alexander the Great and almost certainly before, all learned a simple truth. The way you create a stable empire is by giving those under your control so much as freedom as possible to maintain their own ways. We simply took this to the next logical step and created an empire no longer defined by borders.
How do you define "sovereignty" here? Because (for example) many European countries have made it crystal clear that they will continue to support Ukraine whether or not the USA continues or not. That's not something they could do if the US had taken over their sovereignty. There are plenty of other demands that Trump makes which the EU is going "lol nope" about, like adjusting its own taxes, selling Greenland, or lowering food safety standards so American foods could be sold here.
Does the US have a lot of influence? Sure. So does the EU over the USA, though the EU has long preferred soft power over military presence. China has a lot of influence over the USA too, simply by having to power to meaningfully harm its economy (although at significant cost to itself too). Does that make the USA "not sovereign"? The US has a lot of influence over Russia's economy too, but nobody would argue that Russia is "not sovereign" because they're under sanctions. By that logic even the USA is not fully sovereign because it's "forced" to spend time and money to counteract the countries out there defying its will. Defining sovereignty is very tricky in a globalized world.
And what does the EU get out of this? Local economies that are already headed into recession now expected to pay dramatically more for Ukraine to the US, skyrocketing energy costs owing largely to being compelled to purchase US natural gas, getting to deal with jacked up tariffs to the US, and eventually being the ones that get to take the L over Ukraine. This is not "influence" - this is countries being dictated to act in a way that runs completely against their own self interest.
wut? It was Trump[1] who invited the Taliban to Camp David, negotiated with them sans-Afghan governenment, and started the process of withdrawal with troop reductions, a deadline and everything.
1. https://www.factcheck.org/2021/08/timeline-of-u-s-withdrawal...
- Europe chooses to fight a war it wants to fight;
- with the weapons it has decided are the best choice available at the moment (even though many of those are not yet produced domestically and so need to be imported);
- while hugely increasing its own weapons manufacturing;
- paid for by its own money. (aka the factories built and new weapon systems introduced will not be controlled by the US)
You seem to argue (but correct me if I'm wrong) that this is somehow a huge win for the USA and proves the European states have barely any sovereignty as in your previous post. But the more logical result of all this would be that the European countries come out of this war with a significantly larger defense-industrial base. In addition this bigger DIB will be used to shift away the composition of EU armed forces away from American systems and towards domestically produced systems. Like you mention the USA will not pay for anything anymore, but as the saying goes "the one who pays is the one who gets to decide". Pulling support also means you no longer get a say in decision making. Finally, the USA not helping in Ukraine makes it much easier for politicians to say "no thank you" when the US wants help in a future Taiwan conflict. None of these things improve US influence over Europe.
Tariffs are completely separate and are mainly a US thing being paid for by US importers to the US government. Natural gas imports are Trump overstating his dealmaking skills: countries do not buy gas but companies do, and the global energy companies are not bound to this trade deal.
Finally this:
> Trump has never once opposed Europe continuing to fund Ukraine however long they want.
Yes he did. He proposed a peace deal to Putin in which Ukraine would basically surrender, then tried to pressure Zelensky and the EU leaders into going along with this. This very much included Ukraine giving up the fight and EU halting support. Obviously, this didn't happen and now Trump tries to pretend he meant this occur all along.
------
US gets:
- EU investment of $600 billion in the US, invested at Trump's sole discretion
- guaranteed sales of $750 billion in US energy resources at a nice fat premium
- guarantee sales of an unstated other than "significant" amount of US military equipment
- elimination of all EU tariffs in many sectors, including on all US industrial goods
EU gets:
- Pay new and increased tariffs to the US, ranging from 15-50%.
------
Claiming anybody is choosing this is simply unbelievable.
[1] - https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-th...
- The mentioned EU investment is not at the discretion of Trump. Not even the White House statement says that. In addition, for one party to invest the other has to be selling. It's not a gift. The EU buying factories etc in the US (and shipping the profits back home) is hardly being dominated. Neither is it guaranteed: there are hundreds of ways to delay or cancel such investments. In most US places, just encouraging the local NIMBYs will be enough.
- Energy imports from the USA over the last 2 years already stood at ~30 billion per month. The 750 billion is over the remaining term of Trump, so very roughly 3.5 more years. That means the EU committed to spend ~215 billion per year, which is actually less than it has been spending on average anyway over the past two years. No premium was agreed in regards to energy prices. Don't know where you get that from, the linked publication does not mention anything like that.
- As stated before there are plenty of things we'd actually want to buy from the US, such as weapons for which we're still building our own factories. The Patriot missile factory under construction in Germany is one such example. While it is not yet done, we want to buy missiles to send to Ukraine. So this is a "concession" to do what we were already going to do. Also note that almost any amount can be construed as "significant" if you're a politician.
- The EU commits to "work to address a range of U.S. concerns" regarding tariffs. Quoting from that White House publication, we'll even provide "meaningful quotas". What does that mean? Which timescale? How high will the quotas be? Does "supporting high-quality American jobs" mean 5 jobs or millions of jobs? This is just a thing negotiators stuck in there so both parties could claim victory.
Finally tariffs are a big nothing burger when it comes to this discussion. It clearly has nothing to do with the EU being a US vassal because every country in the world is being tariffed, up to and including those poor penguins in the pacific. Unless you claim that China and Russia are also not sovereign countries? They have tariffs too. The phrasing of "Pay new and increased tariffs to the US" is also incomplete. The importer of the goods pays the tariffs, and most big companies have already indicated they will raise prices in the US to compensate. In effect US consumers will simply be paying an extra tax to their own government for the privilege of buying goods produced abroad.
In short, the EU negotiators got some of the lowest tariffs in the world in exchange for things they were already doing, were going to do anyway, or will not have to do. The negotiators did a rather splendid job I'd say.
By contrast you're throwing out numbers and claims without sources, which are wrong. For instance the entirety of all EU imports from the US are less than $30 billion per month [4], of which energy is but a fraction. Them meeting his demands there will be a dramatic increase in imports, to the point that it's not clear if this is even possible.
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[And this mess is part of the reason I don't cite everything. This is just ugly]
[1] - https://www.barrons.com/articles/trump-tariffs-trade-u-s-inv...
[2] - https://ycharts.com/indicators/henry_hub_natural_gas_spot_pr...
[3] - https://ycharts.com/indicators/europe_natural_gas_price
[4] - https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/imports/united-s...
LOL yes we can and we will. I can state this confidently because the entire agreement is exactly that. A bunch of terms with definitions too vague to matter.
If Trump wants to be an unreliable ally again, then everybody knows he will do so anyway. It'll be based more on what kind of breakfast he had than whether the EU sticks to the terms or not.
There has been no explicit peace deal with Russia. There has been an ongoing negotiation and attempts at agreements but my no means was Trump suggesting to surrender all of Ukraine to Russia.
You do realize that EU support and weaponry is completely insufficient to fight Russia, right? Their military is far stronger than anything you've got. The only reason Ukraine has been doing as well as it has is because of American training, intel, weaponry, drones, etc. If America walked away, Ukraine would collapse quite quickly, regardless of empty pledges by the EU.
The relative strength of the combined armies in Europe is also something that we apparently think very different about. There are certainly strategic deficiencies: we'd prefer to have a more robust domestic nuclear umbrella for example, and the US has an advantage in things like intel satellites. In terms of regular weaponry though, we have more than enough "stuff" to win, especially with Russia severely depleted by several years of attritional warfare in Ukraine. The numbers gap is already big enough, but most of the Russian stuff is decades old by now while the European countries are mostly rocking up with extremely modern equipment.
[1] - https://kyivindependent.com/eu-to-produce-2-million-artiller...
[2] - https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-weapons-shells-european-unio...
I think you've been watching US propaganda? This "deal" explicitely happened, there was a lot of "wtf" moments at that. It was a thing that sparked protests.
I think the party in the USA has ended. And I'm definitely not investing there again until there is some clarity about the next regime.
Is it? I'm (somewhat shockingly) not really seeing any willingness to detach from US Big Tech or even consider thinking what's behind the curtain. The collective delusion is surreal (or should I say hyper-real).
Do you mean the people? They don't matter, the EU is not a democracy that has to answer to its people.
Do you mean the leaders? They just signed a treaty to agree to 10x tariffs for their goods, 0% tariffs for the USA's good, and to buy a trillion dollar's worth of energy and arms. Doesn't sound like "bye bye USA".
> They're going to do what he says
Except they ... did not. He is loosing influence. He is getting face saving deals for himself, but that is about it.
But in slightly more detail, not every empire has ended, yet, if you count Russia and the Chinese as empires. Also, some empires have had declines that reversed again for a while, such as Byzantine Empire.
Of particular note is China, which made falling and then regaining territorial extent a practical sport.
like imagine at some point roman empire and china is co-exist together and 2000 years later only 1 survive
Yeah but the empire is still in fact china, like you cant change that
1. does they identified some sort of "chinnese" ???: Yeah
2. does they still speak some form of "chinnese language": Yeah
"buttt it iss different eeeerrr" before you talking about whats different, BRO ITS 2000 YEARS, what do you expect ???? like do you expecting people not changing anything for two millenia????? like cmon bruh, use your critical thinking
"china proper" as whole is always referring to "whole region" not just this empire or dynasty or anything
but you can ignore the satirical part and focus at bullet point
also: https://web.archive.org/web/20250102025407/https://nces.ed.g...
I think one possible reason is that the Qin Dynasty really managed to assimilate everyone into the same shared values, religion, language, writing, and so on. Other empires didn't succeed to that level, and the people in them always had strong differences, language, values, religion, beliefs, writing, philosophy, and so on.
Qin conquered the other Chinese states and the ensuing dynasty flamed out immediately. The work of creating an empire was done by the following Han dynasty.
> There's even a famous quote for this: "what is long divided must unite, what is long united must divide"
分久必合，合久必分
https://ctext.org/sanguo-yanyi/ch1
Often given as "the empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide", but your translation is much closer to the text, which doesn't mention empires except in that it follows this statement ["They say that across the course of history, what has long been divided must unite, and what has long been united must divide"] with a discussion of Chinese governments schisming and unifying.
The shared values, religion, language, and writing preexisted the Qin. So much was shared that the state of Qin considered it a problem - Qin propaganda (before the conquest) tended to emphasize how different they were from the other Chinese states.
The point was a glib response to an assertion that China is somehow especially unified as a matter of policy or politics. And, yeah, no; no it is not. At all.
What I said was that the Chinese civil war is technically ongoing, as evidence for deep and persistent Chinese political disunity, and I stand by that 100%.
You're arguing with someone else, I think. And in particular you seem to be arguing from the perspective of the PRC with regard to Taiwanese independence, which I find distasteful.
It sounds like a joke but that is exactly how it works and many people have forgotten it.