this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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Europe

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[–] [email protected] 98 points 5 days ago (5 children)

The other 27% must not read the news, eh?

Even if you believe the US is an ally to whatever country you're from (outside of Russia, of course), he's proven to be untrustworthy and unreliable.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

27% hoping the US is just going through a phase

[–] [email protected] 49 points 5 days ago (1 children)

That was an understandable reaction for 2016 to 2020. But not anymore.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago (2 children)

It still could be a phase, albeit a much longer one than originally hoped for. I'm not convinced that's the case but I think there's reason to have at least a sliver of hope that the US will turn the corner and return to something approaching sanity. That's not to say that the people of France are wrong in their perception though. For the foreseeable future all of Europe should default to assuming we'll be ambivalent at best when approaching matters that concern them.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago

The other 27% are fascists too.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I don’t consider it an ally of the American people, either.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 4 days ago (5 children)

Maybe France will end up liberating the North American continent once again. πŸ˜‰

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

You could find an area with an "oppressed" French minority, and start by stirring an uprising in there. Once the pot begins to boil, try adding some French commando forces in disguise.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

They could start in la Louisiane and OrlΓ©ans, and teach you how to pronounce these names correctly

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

For 53% of American people, the United States is no longer an ally of US.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago (3 children)

It’s a way higher number than that. Women, GSM, anyone not white, Muslims, disabled people, elderly people, children, students, immigrants, non-fluent English speakers, and of course, anyone outspoken against the regime.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You say anyone not white but I an pretty sure lotta non white folk voted for the cheeto man

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago
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[–] [email protected] 45 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

France should take the Statue of Liberty back. The US gov will probably replace it anyway, by one of Donald having is golden balls sucked by a sexy eagle while driving a cybertruck, or something.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

The French:

Ever since those fuckers voted for the insane right wing populist lunatic, they are no longer a reliable ally!!

Also the French:

Yay, Le Pen!

[–] [email protected] 41 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Thats the 73%/23% split explained.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

This is the only scrap of dignity I have left in my people, the fact that Russian propaganda works just as well on the French, who at their laziest could teach us a thing or two about measured responses to unwelcome politics.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

France has always been a bit different. They left NATO for a bit to push back against the US/UK dominance and they developed an independent nuclear deterrent and delivery systems. They are a shit country in many ways, probably more like the US than they realise. They held onto colonialism for too long, have a stupid political system and their police and security services have done some shitty things. But hard not to admire their independence even if some of their motivations for independence (eg maintaining colonial possessions) might have been suspect.

Many countries caved to the US and became client states, heavily reliant on US defence industry and an extension of the US military, not because we were free loaders as Trump claims but because the US pushed their interests so hard and for so long. We cancelled our own weapons programs and shuttered our factories to support US jobs ahead of our own. Most of us are so dependent on the US it has been hard to conceive of a world without them. Being against the US alliance was basically equivalent to being against national security and being a fool or a supporter of potential enemies.

Trump is breaking people's world view. The French leadership were decades ahead of the rest of us.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 days ago (1 children)

A small correction, France never left NATO completely. They left a lot of the joint command structures and stopped hosting NATO's HQ in Paris, but they never cancelled the treaty or anything like that

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago

Yes. It is an important distinction. I should have been more clear.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago

In this brave new world, we are all Gaullists.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 days ago (1 children)

That feeling has been reflected in recent polls here in the UK too and I think the US might be finally blowing it with its 'allies'.

I hope that the Trump administration can get all its core industries up and running because there is a big sense that the US empire is on its way out now. It was always bound to happen eventually because it always does but I was not expecting to see it unravel so fast and so soon.

Perhaps the US population can resolve (or dissolve) its internal divisions and conflict but I think it will take years and Europe has urgent problems that need tackling right away.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 4 days ago (3 children)

That's crazy to me that America has changed so much that a nation they freed from Nazi control cannot consider the USA an ally any more because of the fascist ideology the trump administration is showing to the world. This all happened in like 2 months time. This is just the beginning and I don't see things getting better at all.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It's so much worse for the US

France was our first ally. After the revolutionary war, France was the first to recognize us as a country.

They were the first NATO nation to join us in the global war on terror after we invoked Article 5.

Make all the "France surrendered" jokes you want but they have given more to us than we have given them, diplomatically speaking.

Trump is just giving every ally we have a huge middle finger that will take decades to overcome. All so that Trump can feel like a big man.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Make all the "France surrendered" jokes you want

It's so weird to me that France has been a military force that has oscillated between a force to be reckoned with and the most powerful land force in the world since the 17th century, but you lose one war to a blitzkrieg with an overconfident military leadership...

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago

It's not just two months.

Second gulf war, France and Germany not joining in although our soldiers were dying in Afghanistan after the US declared Article 5. US government "that is old Europe, they don't matter". US people "we should bomb Germany back into the stone age". That's when my generation became anti-US.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

It's too bad that the sensible areas of US are on both sides of the continent. Would make a split much simpler if they were closer together.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago

Only? Probably for the remaining 27% it never was...

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 days ago (5 children)

China is more trustworthy than the US right now

[–] [email protected] 37 points 5 days ago

The Chinese regime also lies through their teeth, but they are a known and rational actor.

A backstabbing, erratic β€žallyβ€œ is worse of course.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 days ago (1 children)

If they'd be willing renounce their claims to Taiwan and allow democracy in Hong Kong and Macau, maybe I could see that. Until then, same shit in more outwardly rational packaging.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Actually, yes. Stability-loving nationalist autocrats vs. instability-loving nationalist autocrats.

Thankfully, the real democracies don't really need to choose one or the other, as long as we stick together.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It's okay France, most Americans feel the same way too

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 days ago

I assumed we lost their support years ago. I thought we couldn't get more petty than "Freedom fries". I was way wrong.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago

What percent thought of us as an ally before November?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago

250 year old friend thrown away for a 100 year old adversary.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

I can’t blame them. I wouldn’t want to be an ally with the U.S. either.

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