France is an interesting choice as the first ones to threaten. They might be the country most willing to tell America to fuck off and spend an evening lighting Teslas on fire.
DEI initiatives don’t really exist there like they do in the United States. Their constitution already bans employers from making distinctions based on race, gender, religion, etc. The closest thing France has that I know of is a requirement for corporate boards to be 40% women. They aren’t going to change that law because Trump threw a hissy fit.
Plus, DEI doesn’t even really mean anything specific in the United States anymore. It’s just a dog whistle (like “woke”) Republicans use to signal that they’re racist and sexist and stir up racial animus. They use it when it doesn’t even make sense. Trump blamed “DEI hires” when an ARMY helicopter crashed into a passenger jet even though all the pilots and the air traffic controllers were white men. He blamed the LA wildfires on DEI.
DEI is basically the modern n word.
I was going to say, it’s not always a derogatory word. Those who are still aligned with DEI don’t use it that way. So yeah, I guess it is.
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“Europeans are beholden to US policy.”
lol ok.
What a putz. EU, U do U.
Small Govt. say what?
I’ve come to learn that when they say “small government” they don’t mean that what the government touches is small and focused. They mean that the size is physically small but have the same, if not more, power than a large government body.
Basically they want fascism and a monarchy.
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When I was a right winger and had some more connections to musicians here in Hungary, some came up with the idea that the government should allocate some funds to pay musicians to use Hungarian made equipment, especially as some popped out in 2010 expecting a “raise in nationalism and love for domestic products”, so they don’t have to use foreign ones in exchange of endorsement money.
The reception? We got called communists for barring them from buying “quality branded” products from the west, and they told us the horrors of buying Tisza shoes instead of Adidas too…
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There’s no smaller government than a dictatorship
Small enough to fit snuggly between you and your rights.
Small enough to perhaps fit inside a uterus…?
That’s a good way to have foreign companies that are currently invested in the US to pull all of their investments and fire everyone working for them over here.
Everything he does is just making us more isolated from the world.
I’m increasingly seeing that as the point. I’ve believed since 2016 that he’s either intentionally or being easily manipulated to serve Russia’s interests and obviously I’m not alone here.
But at this point, dismantling US soft political power, military power, economic power - every action Trump is taking is directly damaging the US with no apparent self-interested payoff. Sure, it’s plausibly deniable and just on the edge of conspiracy-sounding to the public and mainstream, but the theory that Trump acting to destroy the US on behalf of Russia is currently the best fit to the evidence.
100% agree. He’s been a Russian agent from the start working towards the dismantling of the US in every way. Including, I think, trying to push the country so far that it splits up so the US is no more. Putin’s revenge on the US “winning” the Cold war.
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Make America Go Alone!
This is the lens through which I see his actions, too. I have one additional twist, which is if it doesn’t benefit him personally, it needs to go. Even if it’s replaced with something 10% the value, he now owns 100% of that 10%.
@Xanthobilly @ReallyActuallyFrankenstein partly this. Possibly also dementia + power-crazed wannabe dictator I suspect
Everything he does is just making us more isolated from the world.
That is why tariffs make sense. If you were preparing the US for WW3 then you would do exactly what Trump is doing.
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It can be under certain circumstances, its generally desireable for a country to be able to feed itself for example, and being able to produce products yourself is useful when negotiating trade agreements. The problem is when autarky becomes conflated with isolationism.
European countries tell trump to take his tiny mushroom dick and shove it up his shit encrusted asshole.
Trump can go fuck himself.
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Or else what, he will double tariff them?
Double-secret-tariffs!
You better listen otherwise I’ll crash my economy!
