Dear Europe,

@alexwild we know, but it's the same as at your place. Most do not care enough.

@alexwild @Merovius sure. Look when the US has sorted itself out, we can talk. Until then this “oh look other countries have problems as well” is just deflection and your bigger problem is none of us are going to trust you.

@Mab_813 @alexwild Guessing you haven't hung out with AfD types lately.

USA is, like the rest of the world, becoming less religious as a whole. But the MAGA South are doubling down on Faith (also known as "belief without evidence")

@Szescstopni @alexwild This moment in "Cabaret" movie is just so perfect. This man represents all of us, watching and nodding with perplexity.

@NatureMC @alexwild
Carney talks a good game. I even think he meant most of what he said. But at home he gutted the national climate change policy (prompting its architect to resign from Cabinet), is gutting the public service at the worst possible time. He is leaning hard into the Canadian petro-state, which in the end is a cog in the omnicidal machinery we're dealing with. He is putting in mechanisms that will allow the executive to circumvent established laws.

@alexwild also, hypothetically, anyone doing anything about it who has a lick of sense isn't talking to journalists or documenting their day on social media.

@alexwild I won’t claim to understand how US politics developed. But my impression is that the current wave of democratic backsliding started around 2010, on the back of the Financial Crisis. And the tea party was then as well - and the US has been on this path before even then.
And my impression has never been, that most USians give much of a shit about EU politics.

Dunno. As I said we are aware and worried. But it sounds like you think US authoritarianism is new? Because I don’t think it is.

@dianshuo @Merovius that is precisely the attitude that will lead to fascists taking over your countries.

I am not trying to absolve Americans. I am trying to sound an alarm as I watch too many of you about to step on your own rake. The more you insist on interpreting these events through the lens of traditional geopolitics, the more blind you are to your own vulnerabilities.

@alexwild I agree the US is massively fucked up right now, but the EU isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Come on!

@Nymnympseudonymm @alexwild

No, I don't hang out with AfD types, why would I?

My impression was that AfD was not concentrating on christianity the way MAGA does, but maybe I missed something? I'm sure I've got Germans in my timeline, maybe they can elaborate?

#NoAfD

@alexwild @dianshuo TBF I don’t think social media conveys a representative image of how we view this. Most people I know have been worried about our vulnerability for at least 10 years (Brexit and the election of DJT have been noticed here).

And it is a topic that has been dominating public discourse since the pandemic, pretty much.

@alexwild everybody's yelling at everyone else to get their house in order while their own house is overrun by fascists. I guess people everywhere are feeling powerless to stop what's happening in their own countries.
@NaMi

@ilsk @alexwild from experience, this is not the case, & believing this tends to reflect suffering from the same pattern of self-deception that allows one to see it in one place yet not another. "Out there but not in here".

@alexwild

gross.

immigration to Sweden was already VERY restricted, too

https://www.dw.com/en/sweden-sees-drop-in-immigration-as-more-people-leave/a-69954145

@mateitudor @alexwild Right; so what's the next step? Where are we going with this?

I'm fully on board with removing hard borders and decentralising power (while building and maintaining regional mutual-assistance networks). We need a plan to get there though, and I'm not a big enough thinker to map it out. Little help please?

@robcinos @alexwild Yes. I'm reluctant to tag @Npars01 in again, not having even asked her, but... She does the most comprehensive rundown of the individual humans bankrolling this attempt to re-exert and solidify control over the masses by the few.

These are the people bending reality to their design. How do we stop it?

@gueuledatmosphere @NatureMC @alexwild

He’s a money man… an ex banker… they’re his tribe.

@Merovius
The biggest turning point here in the US was 9/11 and the patriot act. That was when a lot of rights were removed from citizens but I think it's been brewing since LBJ after JFK was assassinated.

The thing about US authoritarianism is that for most of it's existence it grew inside of corporate America who, in pursuit of profits, infiltrated politics. Most didn't realize this and continued to support companies who did the wrong thing. The misunderstanding that we voted only in November and not every day with every dollar we spent was key... And sadly many still don't understand this.
@alexwild

@bobkmertz @alexwild TBF as a German, I'm the last one to claim we aren't vulnerable and problematic. Like, we utterly failed to prosecute *a lot* of high-ranking Nazis and even today, a lot of the richest people in Germany got there on the back of WW2 slave labor.

Then again, this is also - at least partly - the fault of the US, which didn't want to prosecute industrialists, so as to not undermine capitalism in anticipation of the cold war…

But yeah, obviously we are far from innocent.

@dianshuo @alexwild @Merovius Our bigger problem is our governments have outsourced their infrastructure to American companies, that are more-or-less openly complicit with, or controlling the selection of, the US government.

Before you suggest European companies would be better - don't. The problem is the private companies and wealth concentration.

They're already inside the perimeter. Time to secure and eradicate the big tech companies from the public sphere.