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Notes -
"Leftist" (larping) contacts are waxing verbosely about how to flee the US. To quote one:
For the most part, they don't understand how immigration works, imagining they can just go to relatives in e.g. Norway (surely, only the US has immigration laws!) They all believe they're next, that the Reichstag fire will occur, that their occasional meming or anti-Israel comments will get them sent to a Salvadoran concentration camp.
No one has the least idea of e.g. debanking, let alone how to cope with it. Their networking all happens through FB or at best ... gmail. I was kicked from the conversation for mentioning such matters (why crypto, https://odysee.com/ etc. exist etc.) and the performativeness of their whole program. They don't realize that... They have been on the (deep) state's side the whole time, while nominally opposing it? Baffling!
Anyway, https://landchad.net/ is lovely. Everyone should cyberhomestead.
What do we do now (that we "won")? What interesting projects do we have to move forward?Edit: Our community's migration here went into full swing when Reddit admins removed a common of mine about quotation marks. It turns out, I don't understand quotation marks either - my load bearing quotation marks get misunderstood. This is of course my fault; I must write better. But I have not the slightest clue how that could be construed as "consensus building". As I can't magically write better, I will write more words to clarify the final question(s):
The previous system is collapsing, how do users of this forum plan to insulate themselves from the shocks and take advantages of the opportunities going forward? I shared tidings from frenemies of the old regime, who never fully captured (or wielded) it to their liking. I am curious how to e.g. influence things as a fellow traveler and not be hit by blowback, how to protect and continue to amass wealth amid dedollarization and inflation etc. New world, now what?
I think the coming crises will be best weathered by small (in population), still-relatively-ordered European countries with a strong sense of social solidarity and government capable of quickly responding to the people and probably Japan (the Chinese don’t care to invade them, whereas there are conceivable scenarios where they make a move on South Korea). The Baltics are out because of the Russian thing.
I would put the ranking as something like
Tier 1: Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Japan (although probably only as a native)
Tier 2: USA
Tier 3 onward: everyone else
While I would not necessarily want to live through the automation revolution and/or China conflict in the US, the combination of ambitious, self-assured, optimistic worldview, bountiful natural resources, still-large domestic manufacturing sector and the lack of the soon-to-boil-over extreme ethnoreligious tensions present in the UK/France/Germany/Benelux mean that, if you can’t get into one of the above ‘premium’ European countries, you’re probably still best in the US.
It remains the case that ADOS blacks are more numerous and more troublesome than any of the troublesome minorities in western European countries. The nearest thing to an exception is North African Arabs in France - differential fertility means that they are 16% and rising of French babies (vs 12% and falling of the US being ADOS blacks) - so this statement will not be true of France in 20 years' time unless there is signifiant assimilation.
While I wouldn’t put absolute faith in extrapolations deriving from sickle cell anaemia testing (which is increasingly universal in France anyway), Maghrebis are almost certainly having much, much more than 16% of newborns in France.
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I wouldn’t be so sure of China not invading Japan in the event of a truly large-scale Pacific war (i.e. the scale that leads to China being at war with South Korea and/or the US). If nothing else, there are significant US military bases throughout Japan that would surely be struck in the event of a Sino-American war, and it is difficult to see the Japanese government letting that slide without considering it an act of war against Japan itself, not least because some of those bases are shared with Japanese personnel. They are rearming for a reason. A full-scale Chinese invasion of the Japanese home islands is pretty unlikely, yes, but it’s not impossible (certainly it’s more likely than a Chinese invasion of the continental US) and I would not consider them to be “safe” from Chinese attack in any meaningful sense.
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I’m intrigued about where Australia and New Zealand fit into this. I’m not super knowledgeable about their internal political conflicts, their economic situation, etc. Naïvely, they both strike me as highly functional societies, whose restive minorities could easily be subdued if shit truly hit the fan. Australia at least is massive, with huge capacity to accommodate a growing population. I don’t know how likely Australia would be to get sucked into a major world conflict involving China; if it sat such a thing out, it seems like it’d be well-positioned to thrive in whatever world order grew out of the resulting ashes.
Australia is pretty tightly allied to the US and is very likely to be involved in a direct conflict with China.
Socially, we have some issues related to mass immigration, but less so than the UK.
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"We," who? This is consensus building language.
Indeed, your post is arguably both weakmanning and "boo outgroup." If you want to talk about a particular strain of thought, be more proactive about providing evidence for that strain (where did you find this "quote?") so people can readily judge the extent to which you are or are not nutpicking. Then, actually talk about it, rather than dropping a contextless quote and a handful of quips.
Please don't post like this.
...users of the Motte? How is it consensus building to ask what people are doing as the world collapses around us?
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What has always gotten to me is the fact that (apart from their political opinions) they’d be fine even if Trump does every terrible thing they think he’s going to do. They’re white, natural born citizens, pay taxes, and do work that’s useful to the economy. The Nazis would not go after them (with the obvious exception), nor would Putin, Orbán, Duerte, or any other dictators. They’re the kind that such regimes want — educated, good jobs, pay taxes, not criminals, etc. and most of them lack the spine to seriously put themselves out there as against the regime when it stops being a fun LARP. When things get bad, they’ll shut up, scrub their socials, and for their “mental health” stop following the scary news, let alone do anything. Those that intend to fight are doing it stupidly with zero thought to opsec or grey man that it’s would be relatively easy to comb through socials and pick them up before doing anything serious.
I hate to go all Niemoeller on you, but this is not certain.
I mean, yes, if you decide to greet with "Heil Hitler", do not voice any contrarian political beliefs, don't engage in any norm-violating behavior (such as having gay sex, or having a Jewish boyfriend, or having a hereditary illness, pissing off the local Nazi bigwig), don't get killed either in Stalingrad or by an Allied bomb, then you are probably fine (where fine means getting to live through the 3. Reich with your limbs intact, not that you will thrive or still own what you owned before).
The main thing about Trump is that he is not literally Hitler -- there are many more checks and balances in place in the US. But living under Hitler is totally a big deal.
I mean the reason they ever went after Niemoller is that he was outspoken about his opposition to Naziism. There were millions of Germans doing normal German things throughout the 10 years of Nazi rule. Some of them might well have quietly and privately disagreed behind closed doors. The Nazis did not round up absolutely everyone who wasn’t a Nazi. They were after active dissidents, degenerates as they defined them, race mixers, etc. but it wasn’t true that any time someone said something anti-Hitler that the Gestapo would rise up through the floor and ship them off to Buchenwald. Active, ongoing dissent might get you marked. But if you keep your head down and mostly behave, your fate will be to ride out tge war and suffer only the fate of living in a country that th3 allies bombed the crap out of — which everyone suffered.
And that’s why I find the “fleeing white liberal women” so hilarious. First, as I mentioned in previous comments, they absolutely are not afraid of Trump or a fascist state. If they were, they’d certainly be careful about what they’re saying, about telling social media that they were at a protest, tagging themselves and their buddies in photos at tge protest. They’re also, other than being stupid online (again working from the belief that Trump is going to mass deport people to El Salvador, declare martial law, and cancel their social security number making life impossible) completely ineffective. It’s just insane how LARPy and performative the thing is.
As far as leaving the country, again, these spoiled little white future wine moms are not someone that any regime would worry about. Once they realize that it’s getting serious, they’re going to stop. And really, as long as they aren’t actively fighting the regime, there’s no danger. Trump doesn’t like immigrants or LGBT. He’s fine with white women.
Whether or not Trump "likes" transgender people, he's certainly instituted some policies they very much perceive as hostile to them.
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Trump is very comfortable with gay men. What little evidence I am aware of shows he doesn't care about trans people.
A journalist asked Trump what bathroom a transwoman would need to use in Trump Tower. He said he doesn't care.
Trump's mentor was Roy Cohn. An interesting guy worth a googling.
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Does Trump "dislike" LGBT? One of my pet peeves is the usage of that term, which I find to be baldly political and rather deceptive in its lumping of so many groups together. Just another subtle linguistic way of saying "straight" or heterosexual behavior somehow puts one in a political camp that isn't "LGBT."
But Trump doesn't seem to have any particular problem with homosexuals, either gay or lesbian, nor have I seen or heard him say anything about bisexuals. Arguably he disapproves of the progressive push of transsexuals in sports, but has he made any statements that he "dislikes" the T?
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One of the first groups the Nazis went after, years before "I dunno, Madagascar?" was taken off the table for the Jews, was other Nazis.
Scapegoats are not chosen based on a rational evaluation on how much their sacrifice will actually please the Gods, they're chosen based on complicated psychological and sociological factors that can be hard to predict in advance.
It also a question about how serious the people are, how likely they are to be effective in thwarting stated goals of the regime, and whether or not you can go after them without causing more harm to the regime than good. On most of these accounts, white PMC women are pretty low on the pole.
They simply are not serious about their resistance. It’s showing up to an outdoor protest theater, wearing merch and carrying signs. Then hashtaging the whole thing for views. What they are not doing? Building resistance cells. Buying weapons. Training for a fight. Hiding illegals in their homes. Practicing OPSEC and building anonymous communication channels, buying burner phones to use during protests. I can come up with dozens of effective resistance tactics that aren’t “livestream myself and all my friends at a protest” and “post I hate Trump” several times a day on social media. Second, im not seeing any move toward doing anything. The protests are a fun afternoon and I’ve seen a lot of bitching about people not having paid time off to go to these events. They’re going to get bored or run out of PTO or Theres going to be minor inconveniences (maybe they use water canons and it’s cold outside, or tear gas, or someone they know spends the night in jail) and they’re going to fade away.
Second, white PMC women tend to be married to high value men who will absolutely object to their wives being imprisoned by tge regime. They are basically walking talking hostage puppies — naturally sympathetic no matter what they’re doing. Headlines about wealthy white women getting arrested and deported is going to cause major headaches for the regime. The face of most sympathy for tge downtrodden stories are women. Mothers crying in Palestine are trotted out any time someone wants people to feel sorry for Palestinians. And Jews, not to be outdone trot out videos of women being kidnapped and raped when they want to convince you that you should support their side. Even in the USA, when you want a sob story about cutting something, there will always be a woman in the center of the story who is now struggling. They deported a Palestinian man related to high ranking figures in Hamas. But you mostly see his crying, pregnant wife.
Trying to determine what liberal white women are thinking about Trump and modern America, I found some fun subreddits.
/r/twoxpreppers is for women prepping for the worst. And supporting each other in their decisions not to arm themselves. Sure, they think we are entering the Republic of Gilead and they will be cattle in a living hell. But, that doesn't justify such extreme actions as buying a gun or in any way preparing for violence. Accusations of LARPing are too common, but these people are actually LARP resistance. Not even trying.
I mean the entire thing is just absolutely insane. They’re even chiding a woman who wants to clean up her digital image by deleting posts about Trump and they’re all like “no, they want to scare you into being silent! Don’t worry about it.” They think a cop “isn’t going to notice” you putting a sticker on their vest — as though there’s going to be one cop and nobody’s gonna tell him.
If I were Hispanic and thought that I might end up in a dragnet, I wouldn’t be looking to these idiots because they’d do more harm than good.
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If US was really vanning protesters and sending native born US lefists to Salvador they'd probably get asylum in European gerontocracies.
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The ones I know seem to at least be very well-informed about the exact paperwork and criteria needed to claim citizenship by descent in a half-dozen EU nations, and have hired genealogists and translators to track down the appropriate documents. Either that or they're applying to Master's or PhD programs in the Netherlands, Germany, etc.
Did we win? I suppose I'm tired of winning then, just as promised. Regardless, everyone's project should always be to build a functional community in whatever way you see fit: befriending your neighbors, starting a club based around your favorite hobby, learning practical skills and teaching them to others, starting a family, and so on.
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We, kemo sabe?
I'm pretty sure the Motte's rules prohibit coalition-building like that. There isn't a "we" like that, and this is not a forum to strategise for a particular cause.
I also feel obligated to note that there is no 'winning' democracy beyond the short-term. That's intentionally not how it works. One group wins an election, gets a short window, and then have to justify themselves and fight the same battle again, and again, over and over. There is no final or lasting victory.
Now, that aside...
I have noticed the usual panic about fleeing the country. To be fair there were (smaller) panics like that in 2020, in 2016, in 2012, and in every US election in my lifetime. That said, there are more this time around. The other day I ran into someone sharing this and it's obviously quite comical. The Trump administration does a tiny amount of deportation theatre and too-online people predictably panic. I am not saying that any of the administration's deportations have been right - that one university protester idiot should not be deported, despite his idiocy - but I am saying that in terms of realistic threat assessment, this is lunacy. I do not think there is any benefit in indulging it, or treating it as anything other than theatrical flourish from people whom we know are not going to leave.
...we Motte users.
What did Motte users win?
Motte users were right in many critiques, and the system broke as expected (though easier and faster). Given that context: now what?
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The rivalry with a Schism.
Who most would not realize there was ever a rivalry with.
Because we won so hard.
Did we fight? What did we win?
Trace went to do his own thing, it briefly blossomed and then wilted. Did we cause that? I don't see it. Did we gain anything by its demise? I doubt it.
I dunno, I kinda had the impression he was trying to blow this place up.
If that's true, then it was utterly beneath notice.
Truly the greatest proof of victory.
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The SSCbowl. We narrowly beat ratanon for coolest offshoot community. DSL need not apply.
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The content president as asmongold puts it.
I dunno, I think Biden delivered more content. Not that I'm complaining.
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I don't watch WoW streamers, so I'm afraid I don't follow.
You don’t watch WoW streamers? Where do you get your geopolitical analysis from? Surely not some legacy boomer outlet, I hope.
I bet Rachel Maddow couldn’t even clear Molten Core.
Wait you solo Molten Core? WoW has changed in the last 15 years.
You may be older than you think—MC was definitely soloable in WotLK, which was over 15 years ago!
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I'm an FFXIV player. I only get my geopolitical analysis from horny anime girls and gay bunny boys.
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Trump will say something mildly amusing in the bufoon with power sort of way or call some one fat and then asmongold will point to the screen and make a funny face, then chat will go POGCHAMP or LETS GOOOOOOO. Infinite content.
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My wife wants us to move. I keep arguing that if America goes down the shitter, Europe is probably an even worse place to be even if we can live there indefinitely (we can).
Her argument comes more from a place of virtue ethics, rather than utilitarianism. She feels invested in America and we raise our kids here and reading all of this bad stuff in the news feels bad and makes her want to get America out of our lives. It does not matter if our quality of life would be worse in Europe, at least we can live in a society that is not so sick.
I think you should subtly start showing your wife some European news. Granted, almost every single Western European country's main media channels are state owned/controlled so bad stuff gets memory-holed or ignored a lot easier here. And often things just don't get translated to English by any reputable sources so can be conveniently ignored by right-minded English speakers. But still it doesn't take much to convey to her that a sizable portion of teenage girls in the English speaking country have been gang-raped rather recently with almost no intervention.
And just spend an afternoon investigating the average net salaries you could earn in a couple Euro capitals and browse websites for properties you could rent/buy with that money as other posters mentioned.
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As @IGI-111 hints, Europe is not so sick as America, but instead is differently but certainly no less sick.
By all means come here if you want to trade the sickness you know for another you don't.
I’m an outsider - what are the ails of Europe?
Depends what you mean. If you're asking for the kinds of things you'll notice after moving here as an American, the first slap to your face is going to be the salaries, the second the taxes, and if you didn't manage to buy a property in the US that you could trade in, the third one will be the housing prices, particularly relative to the aforementioned after-tax salaries.
If you're referring to the kind of Culture War stuff dr_analog's wife is referring to, on one hand she might feel right at home with the European PMC which will provide her with plenty of positive reinforcement, but on the other hand The Far Right Is On The Rise™ - AfD, Vox, Le Pen, Reform... take your pick - and vile Putinists are lurking under every rock, coming up with ever more creative ways to undermine our glorious Union. And if by any chance she's Red Tribe and just wants to get away from it all it's a bad choice as well. Europeans used to smugpost about how wokness is just American politics, but they all got with the program right now, and you get the same bombardment of Trans Women Are Women, CRT, infinity immigrants, etc.
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Ignoring the "Europe is doomed because they are not following my preferred policy" style of arguments, the big ones are:
"NIMBY" is a bit of an Americanism to begin with, and I'd say it violates your "doomed because not following my preferred policy" constraint,
Excessive rents in tier-1 metro areas (even for poor-quality accommodation in less-good neighbourhoods) is a near-universal problem and near-universally recognised as a problem. So I don't think this is a "doomed because not following my preferred policy" issue - it is a "doomed because universally recognised problem is not being solved" issue (although the simplest solution would be to adopt my preferred policy and increase housing supply). Certainly my intent when stating the proviso to exclude issues like "taxes too high" or "you can't own a gun" where the question of whether there is a problem at all is controversial.
The problem is worse in the UK and Ireland than in Continental Europe, but Barcelona, Paris, and Frankfurt all show the classic pattern, with the same retarded political response as London or San Francisco.
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Consider German villagers (and sometimes town-dwellers) trying to block everything from pork farms to wind power plants to power cables to roads to mosques to railway lines and stations getting built. They're not always wrong to do so, but NIMBY as a phenomenon clearly does exist here.
I thought in the US context it usually refers to residential construction (hence "NIMBY cities") and was a way of saying "the real estate prices are too damn high" (which they are) but polluting it with his preferred policy.
I freely admit to being to letting local news fly in one ear and out the other, so maybe I missed the phenomenon, but I also haven't noticed particular shortage of solar and wind farms, and a local railway construction is currently adding half an hour to my commute.
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I hope other euros will chime in. I only know half of it and I'll probably forget to mention most of that half, too.
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Yeah...about that...
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If she thinks there's a shortage of bad news here, I'll be happy to send her a curated newsfeed right to your doorstep.
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My impulse is that the urge to flee is tied into the idea that “their side winning” is equivalent to the system functioning properly. A loss of popular support of this scale can only be interpreted in terms of the whole thing falling apart.
That being said I’m sympathetic to being freaked out. I don’t go looking for it yet pretty consistently find myself sucked down “leave before it’s too late” rabbit holes that are pretty effective at freaking me out when I’m doomscrolling at night.
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