“I’m not going to go to some backwoods country and tell them how to live their lives,” Vance added. “But European countries should theoretically share American values, especially about some very basic things like free speech.”
The US ranked 26th in the world when it comes to free speech, with several members of the European Union higher up the list, according to the 2024 Global Expression Report.
😑 I’m going to have to disconnect from the news more often moving forward
most of europe explicitly does not have free speech, because it’s commonly understood that harmful speech exists. i don’t know what he’s trying to convey with that idea but he comes across as misinformed, and not a little bit controlling (“should”)
American here! Its because this is all rhetoric for the idiots that follow him. He doesn’t care if Europeans see him as an idiot, he cares that the idiots here see him as big brained. And the rubes eat up anything that has “free speech” in it because they generally interpret that as “its OK to be racist and misogynistic, its my right because freedoms!”
Hope this helped explain.
And probably also explains why I want to leave.
Not sure how Euros haven’t figured out that the main thing America inherited from Britain is our ability to not give a fuck what Continental Europeans think about us. Not sure why Euros keep thinking they can shame or guilt Brits and Americans into doing what they want.
The important thing is, that in Europe free speech is normally defined as the freedom to say everything as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. This is also with a lot of different forms of freedom. Your freedom ends where the freedom of others begin.
That also exists in the US under libel. You can’t say anything you want if it harms someone, unless I’m mistaken.
Not accepting hate speech, in particularly inciting violence is not contradictory to free speech in my opinion.
We should not follow the US idea, that speech is only free, if any vile poison can be spread. In the context of Musk that is also ironic, as he is using his powers to censor people.
I think it’s clear that we can never rely on the US again in any respect. Absolute chaotic backwater sinkhole of an oligarch fascist state.
We’re on our own.
Maybe it’s good that we know that now.
As an American, I agree. Hopefully the Republicans try to go off the rails enough that the public finally gets convinced that the only way to deal with these maniacs is their own language - violence.
-
The people who voted for him unironically ain’t the brightest bulbs. I guarantee they’ll see Tr*mp blame Dems and run with it.
-
Even if they do see them going off the rails, there’s no guarantees we’ll be able to do anything about it. For all we know, he could easily turn the country into a dictatorship where nobody gets to vote for anything anymore. As Tr*mp has said before, He’Ll OnLy Be A dIcTaToR dAy OnE (or something along those lines). In English, I’m positive that translates to “Democracy Is Dead”.
The issue is they aren’t going to stop with their plan. Whatever rights they can remove and also reinforce their own political position and wealth, they will do. And if things get far enough in their larger plan, there won’t be the option or ability to fight back, either democratically or otherwise.
The only real hope I see is if they try to go too far too quickly and people realize that if they don’t make a proper stand, then they’ll lose everything.
Did…did Vance just call European countries “backwoods”? He couldn’t possibly have, right? He’s not that stupid…right?
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.
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”:
“I’m not going to go to some backwoods country and tell them how to live their lives, […] But European countries should theoretically share American values, especially about some very basic things like free speech.”
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.”
Trump has long shared his disdain for NATO – during his first term, he reportedly privately discussed pulling out of the alliance completely.
Which would at this point not be unwelcomed.
It wouldn’t be fantastic, the UK and France can’t project the same kind of power the US does.
Well, true.
But on the other hand, sanity from not being beholden to a demented child-raping fascist is a big bonus.
Is the US power projection at the long term benefit of the EU though? The consistent destabilization of the Middle East for instance brought more tension to Europe as people had to flee from the region. EU member states getting dragged into US wars didn’t help our image in the world either.
When it comes to defense, UK and France have enough nukes for effective deterrent. The EU is also large enough to thwart aggression at its borders and buffer zones like countering the Russian invasion of Ukraine, if the EU chooses to develop and maintain a joint defense infrastructure. Unfortunately that was postponed instead of forwarded after Biden won in 2020 and EU politicians went back to the status quo.
“Power projection” isn’t necessary for a strictly defensive alliance.
The fact that a direct attack on one member counts as a direct attack on all members (some of which have nukes) is enough.
I can’t see how this makes any sense in a geopolitical view.
It makes sense from the perspective that Musk is the new (secret) president of the USA. He paid hundreds of millions to get to this position, now he tries to get profit from it.
Elmo’s going to get fucked and tossed aside like every other asshole that deals with The Idiot. Did you miss the endless list of former cronies who endorsed Kamala, specifically because they worked with this walking personality disorder?
Any time you imagine some “4D chess” explanation, where surely there must self-consistent clever schemes behind this batshit insane nonsense, that is you, as a reasonable person, figuring out why a reasonable person would do something that looks batshit insane. That explanation will never predict future nonsense. These people are exactly as crazy as they appear. The gallingly simple explanation for why this all looks so fucking stupid is that fascism is not rational.
Musk is not the secret president, Musk did not even get elected lile Vance did. Musk will probably get his deregulation commission and some support for Twitter, since that’s a worthwhile propaganda tool. Inasmuch as Trump is steerable rather than just behaving erratically, he is steered by old money and fossil interests.
