Macron rewrites Trump campaign slogan as "Make Our Planet Great Again"

boing
62

It’s true the US has a highly skewed and self-absorbed perception of ourselves, because that’s how we’ve been socialized since time out of mind; spoonfed propaganda of our exceptionalism from birth, then passing that distorted self image down from generation to generation, even as we hypocritically demonized other countries for their fanatical nationalism.

These are detrimental flaws that have contributed to the current maelstrom that is today’s political climate, and those of us who are conscious are all too aware of it; in fact many of us strive to figure out a way to repair the damage that has been done.

However, that does not give anyone else license to sit in judgement upon us for our numerous shortcomings… especially not if they just happen to hail from a country that’s still living in the shadow of its own horrendous history.

To gleefully cheer at the discord and chaos afflicting another country is to demonstrate antisocial behavior; it’s inhumane malice that is toxic.

I heartily disagree.

I’m judging that individual not just on that one comment, but on his collective input on this site.
It’s nearly always rife with disdain and barely concealed contempt, and rarely has any positive content to contribute to any conversation that he’s involved in.

Dude… I’m a ‘working-poor’ Black woman in America; I have no power to “threaten” anyone.

What I stated is merely the truth for all countries, because we all occupy the same planet; what affects one eventually affects us all.

I’m not concerned about a decline in US power; as I feel that it has corrupted the country into something that’s the polar opposite of it’s alleged intended purpose.

Rather, I’m concerned about the decline of humanity as a whole; until we realize that we are all in this together, nothing’s going to get better.

10 Likes
63

You seem to have missed the word "also"in my post, which does not mean in English what it does in German.
Multilateral agreements one thing, a bit of a resurgence of “we can go our way and not that of the English-speaking world” another. Perhaps in a German context I was wrong to use the word “nationalism”; “independence” might have been better.

1 Like
64

“Sovereignty” might also work better.

3 Likes
65

True, but living in the UK currently “sovereignty” has even more negative associations than nationalism. (Plus Germany is not a monarchy).

4 Likes
66

It’s a tricky term, especially since nationalists and other unpleasant characters like militia types co-opt it to promote protectionism and isolationism and other ugly behaviour. In its neutral sense it amounts to the same thing as “independence” or perhaps “self-determination”. The term has been used without the monarchic connotation for a long time, though.

3 Likes
67

Thus begins the era of global politic fueled memes and media quips among oligarchs, wealthy bureaucrats and celebrities as humanity is sucked down a vacuous hole to hell.

If only we had Tim Caine as vice president right now.

68

Oh that argument … easy isn’t it? How far are you willing to go back. Just seventy years? Shall we compare the atrocities about 150 years ago? 200?

Perhaps we should take a look at the situation today and what the recent generation(s) learned from those lessons history taught them. There are some who owned up to their mistakes and some who still like killing people abroad because they look or behave differently. Nationalism is a cancer that led to our mistakes and because the USA was actively involved stopping that it should know better. That’s why it’s baffling that this error is repeating over and over again in the USA.

2 Likes
69

Better idea:

How about we all just work on being better people right now; or is that asking too much?

Rhetorical question, there; your answer is already evident from your collective content.

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce;” how I wish that didn’t seem to be true.

Too bad everyone can talk a blue streak about the multitudinous problems facing society, but nobody ever seems to have any viable solutions.

That includes myself.

Now good day.

10 Likes
71

Make me supreme leader, and I absolutely promise to be much better than either Trump OR Clinton. No joke.

2 Likes
72

I see what you are trying to say, but I think you are wrong if you reduce this to matters of independence or, as suggested, sovereignty.

Despite rumours spread by right-wing groups and left-wing extremists, the Federal Republic of Germany has quite a political tradition of independent decisions, and the sovereign (i.e. parliament as representation of the people) has even pushed through some against the explicit political will of the government in the past.

However, the relations to the US as Germany’s most important partner are and have been special.
Also, the US often took the lead on many fields of diplomacy, sometimes after consulting with its closest allies, and Germany followed the lead. This is something which seems to change, right now, fundamentally.

The USA just publicly declared that they don’t give a flying fuck concerning multilateral international diplomacy. This is related to the often (ab)used term “Wertegemeinschaft” (community of values), even though the traditional US opposition to binding multilateral agreements is somewhat outside of this domain of shared political values.

Simply put: the rest of the world now tries to carry on what they have been doing without the US getting in the way. (Fun fact: Papua New Guinea, famously, asked the US to do exactly that on the way to the Paris agreement. Seems like Trump is Papua’s Puppet!)

It’s not a matter of “regained independence”, “pride”, “sovereignty” or anything in this line if France, Germany and Italy declare that re-negotiations of the Paris Agreement are out of the question. That’s diplomatic damage control to stop the UNFCCC process from falling apart. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Sidenote FTR, the US COULD have left the UNFCCC. This would have been even more devastating. That this didn’t happen means that the process isn’t dead, and that some people in the current US admin are still not completely bonkers.

3 Likes
75
3 Likes
78

Cheap natural gas is replacing coal all over the place, and if what I keep reading on BB is true, non-fossil energy sources are approaching cost competitiveness. I think our CO2 emissions will continue to drop in a very competitive way.

But then, the Paris accords were only partially about the unenforceable emissions targets. A lot of what they were about was “climate finance” whereby “some” countries agree to transfer something like 3/4 trillion bucks to “other” countries over the next few years. The “other” countries, of course, were all in favor of this. We’re out of that now, and I’m fine with it, because my country’s way in the red already.

79

Don’t pull my quotes into your conspiracy theories as if I agree with them, please.

5 Likes
80

Done. But the “climate finance” information is not exactly a rumor thrown about on Breitbart and Free Republic.

So I would not agree with the term “conspiracy theory”. Perhaps “an inconvenient truth”?

81

A common conspiracy theory being thrown around among Freepers and Trump fans and Libertarians today is that it’s awesome that we got out of the agreement because America would be required to bear an undue financial burden and owe other countries massive amounts of money by ‘shifting’ it, and that somehow we’re on the docket for $100 billion dollars and 5% of our GDP.

None of that is true. We’d be joining China and Germany and other architects of the agreement in aiding establishing countries to help lessen their burden. That’s who those “other” countries are. Countries who want to lower their emissions but are extraordinarily poor. I know, it’s a globalist, lets-help-others approach that our current leaders hate more than anything.

11 Likes
82

If we actually went into these poorer countries and helped them build out a low-carbon energy infrastructure, Peace Corps style, I could absolutely support that. Walk away with lots of nice electricity flowing into those farms and villages. Love it.

Just writing checks to NGO’s and other governments? Nope, nix, no way.

1 Like
83

For all his flaws I feel Bush actually believed in governance and did things that he felt were in the greater interest of the country (even if much if what he did was wrong or terrible).

Trump is a nihilist who only wants to benefit himself and his cronies - screw everybody else, they are all a bunch of suckers. It’s like he’s and his people are the robot overlords from The Matrix and we’re all the human batteries.

5 Likes
84

It’s time to close the border with Mars!

1 Like
85

It was my understanding that the fund didn’t just write checks, but funded specific proposals that come from nations on the lower 50% of development rankings. So Germany couldn’t just ask for 2 billion for energy. But a less-developed country could, for example, submit a proposal to install solar shingles on new government buildings and affordable housing with some budget that is realistic to that project.

I could be wrong, though.

5 Likes
86

“The Rules for Rulers” video should be prohibited on Fridays. Just say’n

5 Likes