by liberal japonicus
Allons-y!
"This is the Voice of Moderation. I wouldn't go so far as to say we've actually SEIZED the radio station . . . "
"This is the Voice of Moderation. I wouldn't go so far as to say we've actually SEIZED the radio station . . . "
by liberal japonicus
Allons-y!
Btw, the longest I ever had to stand in line for voting in a public election was about a quarter of an hour and that was at the height of the pandemic where the public health related restrictions simply slowed the process down a bit.
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Predicted results are not nice but not catastrophic either. In Berlin that is. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern it looks almost as bad as in Sachsen-Anhalt recently (but still it is unlikely that AfD will actually get into power this time).
This email arrived today from Anne Applebaum to subscribers of the Atlantic:
Wrongly described as “isolationist,” the ideologues and true believers now running the American government don’t think of themselves as ordinary Republicans who won an election and will temporarily hold power until the next one. Nor are they mere appendages of Donald Trump. They believe that they represent something much greater: the vanguard of a revolutionary movement that will alter not just America but the world—enriching themselves and their friends in the process.
Their revolution is the subject of my cover story for The Atlantic’s October issue. I wrote it based on 18 months of reporting from around the world, including from Copenhagen, São Paulo, Calgary, and New Delhi. Everywhere, I found people contending with the nature of America’s revolutionary change, one that has special resonance in the democratic world that came into being after 1945. This was a world based not exclusively on laws but on a set of mostly self-imposed restraints. Inside this sphere, America’s power was mostly derived from alliances that it refrained from exploiting. Long-term relationships were valuable, because the country never knew when it might need friends. U.S. politicians did not execute American foreign policy, or indeed domestic policy, in order to make money for themselves or their children.
This world is fast disappearing, and it is being replaced by one in which ideologues inside the Trump administration promote far-right parties who share their definition of “Western civilization” and foreign politicians willing to undermine the rule of law on behalf of American companies. Following the president’s lead, actors inside and outside the administration are seizing the revolutionary moment in order to win zero-sum victories for themselves, not to produce long-term stability and benefits for everyone. Most Americans probably don’t want to encourage the breakup of Canada, pursue the occupation of Greenland by stealth, or undermine democratically elected governments in Europe. But those are all projects very important to people in and around the Trump administration.
Some of this story concerns places that often fall under the radar and aren’t featured much in American media. But it’s important that Americans understand how the Trump administration and its cronies affect the inhabitants of places such as Nuuk and Brasília, because what happens there will shape perceptions of our country, and our companies, for many years to come. Thank you for supporting journalism that seeks to explain our modern world in all of its complexity; I hope you’ll read the story.
Anne Applebaum
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/10/maga-foreign-policy/688352/?gift=cx0iluuWx4Cg7JjlT8ugCeayfS3rJFojL8XCpZF_AAo&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share