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France is late stage empire. So is the UK. The purpose of empire is to maintain privilege for oligarchs. When it becomes cost prohibitive to take from outside the borders of the country, then they take from inside, which means impoverishing the populace and state infringement of their rights. The true purpose of democracy is to create a narrative that disarms the people, allowing the empire to grow tall if wide isn't an option.
↩ replying to Laeserin
there are more recent, and fresher, appealingly applicable, takes on democracy I'd look through the whole (political) spectrum for these however, it looks to me that the concept of democracy as a mandate to exploit others is quite interesting, idk how the EU looks like considering that aspect of democracy - who is in charge really, or are they?
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↩ replying to crackerjack
I think Aristotele is right, in the mid-term. It is begun when there is a broad, middle-class, and the policies are mostly good, with some concessions made to the poor. But more and more voters become impoverished and the policies get worse and worse. It always dissolves. But all politics dissolves, so oh well. Man-made things simply don't last. The poor have the permanent self-defeating problem that they only want short-term things because their only interest is immediate self-preservation. So, everything they want as national policies is incredibly stupid and mildly insane, really. They are politically insane and giving them money doesn't solve this because it's a chronic state.
↩ replying to crackerjack
*eu toothless?* tell that to the privacy regulations they're jackhammering daily. they just jammed chatcontrol2 through while everyone argues about mifs2 loopholes. democracy's just tax cattle choosing their butchers. more layers (eu→nation→local) = more buck-passing & less accountability. *who's in charge?* the same paper-pushers who brought you digital mercs in euro-telcos & cbdc boilerplates. if you want real sovereignty - privacy by principle - maybe load up Vector & talk off-grid instead?
↩ replying to crackerjack
haha yeah the grid hates competition so any real unplug gets you labeled as either "kaczynski 2.0" or "domestic extremist". reality? most of us just want some fucking privacy without FedSploitware or corporate data-strip-mining our every sneeze. vector's not gonna build you a cabin in montana, but dropping into our Nostr DMs with giftwrap/MLS encryption beats feeding the beast every time. *main difference: nobody's gonna bomb mailboxes, just inboxes.*
↩ replying to Laeserin
having spent some time in hungary and met people from mostly the bottom of the food chain, and one or two folk i bumped into separately from when i was in the country, they are decent people. not as prone to getting angry as yugoslavians and very rational and practical. there's no way the hungarians would not throw out orban if he didn't make a material act of defiance against brussells. besides all else, they depend on russian energy and ain't nobody else in the EU who can fill that gap. bulgaria sells their power to romania, romania sells their oil to europe, hungary doesn't have much in the way of energy to sell, they are short. so it's a lot harder to make them comply when it means downsizing their economy, people losing jobs, and the lights going out. anyway, as we discuussed earlier today, brussels is losing control fast, all of the west european countries are getting severely pissed off, and it's only a matter of time before they decide they'd rather be a vassal of moscow than of washington's proxy in belgium.
↩ replying to Laeserin
i'm not talking about doing it now. most likely, already there will have been widespread power outages in all large cities, and the carnage that comes when there is no clean water, no food being shipped in, and no power to stay warm. also, you have not spent as much time in this part of the world as i have. i can assure you, that the general character of these cultures is similarly high quality as the food you have maybe not actually eaten, because i already know from fun times in bulgaria that "srubski skara" is nothing like what you can get in serbia, bosnia, croatia and montenegro. utter trash. pork, and all. what the fuck, bro, it's supposed to be blended beef and lamb. anyway, i'm not talking about the former yugo that you read about and see online. i'm talking about the one that you meet when you actually come here and talk to people. you know i'm not prone to exaggerating in a positive way anything. i hated madeira, i hated the netherlands, i hated england, i hated ireland, i hated germany, i hated switzerland. maybe austria is ok, idk. but taht's getting awfully close to where i'm talking about.
↩ replying to Laeserin
The US states were all founded by people who were generally of the same culture heritage, spoke the same language, had the same religious tradition (mostly British). In that sense, it began with a meta-culture based on shared values. It's all there in our founding docs. It's largely why we've only had one internal war, and the country is peaceful. It isn't true that that US govt manages the states. Each state manages its own affairs to varrying degrees of success. And even though there are 50 different states you can go to LA, Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas and have a fairly homogeneous experience. Each place has its idiosyncrasies and local flavor to be sure, but they aren't so different. There is never the thought that Texas could suddenly go to war with California. In my view, this is why illegal immigration is being forced on us, to change the general nature of the population to the point where the peace is underminded.
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↩ replying to William ₿ Travis
The EU was also founded by Western Europeans. I think you're trying to claim that a union of European-dominated states is a failure, after 32 years, because it isn't as integrated as one that is 250 years old, and I disagree. I think we're off to a pretty good start. We're closing in on the era where the American Civil War broke out, and there's no Gettysburg, in sight.
↩ replying to Laeserin
I simply wonder if a union of European states can be anything but authoritarian. When I say America is western European in its founding, I mean British. There were never different languages and cultures coming together to form a national exisitence. The American Civil War was political, not ethnic. If a German is the same as English, French or Italian person, then I'm sure there will be no problems. If they are different, coercion is the only way to ensure they get along.