Such a good one. Read it earlier this year.

"I asked a Ouija board" also works--cooperative input via non-reproduceable means that just so happens to give me the answer I want.

He followed it up with:

"I just hate how he treats the military--firing all those generals, and just because they were black? It's an absolute disgrace."

This is a 70 year old white guy from eastern North Carolina, mind you.

"Everyone says I am a man of few principles, but that is unfair because I am actually a man of no principles."

Nobody works for me, but maybe interrogate your statement and what assumptions it makes for a moment.

Nobody else on the continent is hankering to be called by the name we've been called by for years. Who exactly are you trying to be offended on behalf of?

I have long maintained that a selection of random American adults chosen via lottery would be better than most of Trump's cabinet picks, because the average American would *know* they didn't know enough for the job instead of arrogantly thinking they're the only ones smart enough to do it.

Yeah, if people could just wait to have a take or explainer until we know LITERALLY ANYTHING, that would be great.

I deny the kafka trap, and by denying it, sublimate it into the dialectic, thus sidestepping it completely, and avoiding--oh, shit, now I'm in a *different* trap.

My brain is melting as I think of which historical figure to make my joke about "Would love to show this to..."

Augustine? Hegel? Jerome? Baudrillard? Nietzsche? Heidegger? Marx? Emperor Leo III?

So much going on here.

*deep existential sigh*

TMT...

American disfunction is a reality, and no matter how much Europe wishes it wasn't so, it is, and European parliaments can't go back in time and make different decisions that would have lessened the need for US forces as security guarantors (assuming they would make those decisions even now).

4/4

There's also the fact that US force presence in Europe is something that most European defense ministries don't want to lose, and there is likely the fear that if they come to some arrangement in Ukraine that really displeases Trump, he might yank US forces out. Congress could stop it, but...

/3

This is not an endorsement of Trump's pro-Russia stance at all, by the way, just an attempt to explain why he has such a large say. If Europe's defense industrial base had more capacity and/or organic capability, the US would be less essential. Alas, we're probably some years away from that.

/2

In all honesty, the reason Trump is there is because even if Europe funds Ukraine, the weapons--a lot of them anyway--have to come (directly or indirectly) from the US. Arms control agreements mean countries have to approve where their weapons are sold, even if they aren't selling them.

1/