217
JD Vance says US could veto NATO if Europe tries to regulate Elon Musk’s platforms
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2024
217 points (95.4% liked)
Europe
1509 readers
472 users here now
News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)
Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in [email protected]. (They're cool, you should subscribe there too!)
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
(This list may get expanded when necessary.)
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the mods: @[email protected], @[email protected], or @[email protected].
founded 4 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Did…did Vance just call European countries “backwoods”? He couldn’t possibly have, right? He’s not that stupid…right?
Bro, you know he’s fucking dumb af.
He graduated from Yale...
fucking LOL.
Hey bud, I have a PhD from MIT (seriously, I do). I can't tell you how many fucking morons permeate the halls of academia. A guy in my lab once asked me how to convert a flow rate to a pressure. In a fucking lab at MIT. I had to explain to my own fucking advisor that the bullshit rules of thumb one learns in chemistry class are NOT reliable.
Anyone who goes to one of these universities has a certain degree of intelligence and access to wealth. You can certainly trade a little bit of one for the other but only within limits. And I would be extremely careful just labelling him dumb because he's a populist.
Intelligence is not a binary thing. There's loads of people in academia that are very good at the specific thing they study but are absolute morons about near everything else. Just because someone has a degree in business or whatever that does not mean they know jack shit about geography.
The guy has a law degree. That means he knows how to form complicated sentences that seem absolutely coherent. And sounding coherent is a large part of his basic business as the VP.
I find it unhelpful to claim he's "dumb" when in fact he's an opportunistic, malevolent, populist weasel.
Not only do I think Vance never meant to call the EU "backwoods" (I still think he used it as a comparison), it also doesn't matter whether he did. He pretty much has the upper hand:
Finally, no one in the EU would care about slights like this. We have all seen the first Trump presidency unfold. We expect Trumpists to be pompous nationalist douchebags.
Why is that stupid? Europeans are dependent on him now. European leaders will demurely congratulate Trump and him on their victory and hope they won't be hit too hard by what comes next.
To call a bunch of countries that rank much higher than the States on quality of life “backwoods” is a pretty wild statement. The U.S. is the proudly unwiped asshole of the developed world.
Facts don't matter to Trump or Vance. Don't expect anything in that department. They care about getting ahead or looking like they are.
In my reading, Vance didn't call European countries "backwoods":
My paraphrasing of that would be: "There are 'backwoods' countries and I expect nothing of them. But European countries must share our values and need to leave our propaganda platform untouched."
My reading is:
There are 'backwoods' countries and I am not going to be telling them explicitly how to live their lives, they should by default share our values and be doing what we do.
With this reading he is using backwood countries as european countries. With the American Republican party, you can safely assume the most offensive interpretation of their sentences because history shows us that they usually mean it.
I think he means "backwood countries can do whatever they want, but EU countries can't"