Europeans Deserve Better!

I don't know how it is in EU countries, but I'm distressed at just how deep US corporations have their claws into UK politicians. e.g. https://www.thenational.scot/news/25367773.peer-urged-crack-palestine-action-request-us-arms-firm/

In the EU there is Italian Meloni desperate to please Trump and undermine the EU (without getting anything back from Trump, by the way). There is also a pro-Trump MAGA-like movement supported by some of the far-right parties of the Patriots (ironic that self-proclaimed "patriots" support a rival). Generally speaking, (far) right-wing parties now tend to be anti-EU and pro-Trump (when they are not pro-Putin).
- Merz is just as bad, as is Wilders.
It has been known that the US companies used UK as lobby when the latter was in the EU.
De Gaulle was right. He always thought the US will use UK to wedge itself and influence Europe. Even though he knows UK will always stand with Europe, he said they will always pick US over Europe.
- Don't worry we have Putin and Netanyahu influencing us in the US. So the US is just a middleman wedge into the UK, from now Russia and Israel.
- Aye. Long been a thing: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL28536706M/Awkward_Partner

I always find it interesting how the UK, who left the EU complaining about sovereignty, is not trying to give up US tech products like the EU is.

Scandimandian here, hell yeah. Local is best, produced by fellow citizens somewhere in the county second.

A lot of stuff, particularly tech is hard to find though. At best it's low grade Chinese stuff with a custom label slapped onto it. Not even assembled here by foreign parts. Just straight from slave factories.

But I eat local eggs at least. Made by slave hens.

this is the problem with people zealously advocating boycotting american industry. good on paper, sticky in practice.
it’d be great if you could just never buy american again but certain economic sectors, such as tech, only really offer you the one market. idk what europe’s precious metal industry looks like but both the US and Europe need to heavily invest in fabs in the coming decades. for all the problems we have, the entire West’s reliance on Chinese fabs is our collective achille’s heel

Why exactly do you deserve better? The foundation of your wealth was plundering the global south, and still continue to do so through financial institutions built with the wealth plundered to this day except in the countries that managed to forcefully kick your ass out, which you now label as authoritarian lmao.

The one on the left is a lie. Coca-Cola consumption has risen since trump, for instance.

Got some data to back that up? All I can find is a decline in Europe revenue 2025 Q1 by 1.1%, but hey, maybe you found more recent numbers?
- Data from July where I read it: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1m6ykfl/cocacola_earnings_beat_estimates_as_strong_demand/
  Growth was 3% in EMEA, can't find the 5% for Europe, might have hallucinated that one...
  EDIT: I just noticed I didn't claim 5% in my previous comment above, but had this exact discussion recently many times and was convinced it was 5% up in Europe. It's late, I need a nap...

As someone once put it, “politics is the art of saying “nice doggy” until you can find a rock”. Buying off the toddler-in-chief with obsequious compliments and gold-plated tat buys time to decouple your economy, and is a less-worse alternative than him deciding to make an example of your country, sinking your economy, and your government being replaced by actual Nazis.

I mean Donald Trump is already attempting to replace the governments with Nazis yet they project about globalists treating tariffs over progressive policy, look at how Elon Musk interfered with Germany’s election making them turn further rightward with his propaganda Platform Twitter giving extra spotlight on right wing voices, that wanker would litterally try to convince Germany for first-past-the-post and with terrible options being fascists or neoliberals. Thank god leftists can win under mixed-member proportional, however european need to become more resilient against the far-right with tighten election rules ie $50 per year contributions to local, regional and national elections.

I'm not much into memes, but kinda like this one :)

We didn't design the bad systems in which we are forced to participate.
https://www.quora.com/Do-USA-citizens-deserve-better-candidates-than-Trump-and-Hillary/answer/Jay-Bazzinotti
(applies to any representative democracy)
- We did not design it but we let them keep on screwing us, over and over.
  It would barely be a caricature to say the EU politics for the Last 35 years has been a constant middle finger towards EU-citizens. And most of us saying something like 'well, not my problem'...
- Make a new party for which the only policy point is to change the voting system.
  Say "vote for us and we change the voting system and the immediately resign and make way for a new vote".
  But the people don't want that, because they get played against each other.

Most politicians, and pretty much all viable ones who have any chance of getting elected or can control the direction of any major party, are either rich bastards themselves or cronies and sycophants to the rich, the fact that they're the only choices we get to vote for doesn't make them "representative" it just means they've completely stacked the deck so that we have no choice but to vote against ourselves no matter who we vote for. Democracy itself hasn't totally failed us (yet, I hope) but our political system of representation and the current institution of democracy certainly has.

Its almost like this russian dude wrote in the early 20th century about the state serving the ruling class of each respective country. What you think is a "democracy" is really a bourgeois democracy.
This doesn’t apply in countries with proportional representation since people can vote who they want.