[rendall]

As a US citizen resident of Finland, I am proud of my adoptive country. I have been so far relatively neutral-to- vaguely-supportive of MAGA wrt the culture wars, and I find Trump's posturing on Greenland appalling and disgraceful. Yes, we all know that Trump's MO is to demand something horrendous in order to secure something less horrendous, but there is no path from threatening an ally's sovereignty that leads to anything good for the US. Monstrous.

[mkw5053]

This isn’t an aberration, it’s a continuation. Trump has repeatedly done things that would have been disqualifying for any normal president: threatening allies, undermining institutions, abusing power, normalizing coercion. The reason this moment feels different to some people isn’t that the behavior changed, it’s that they’re finally among those bearing the downside. That normalization, enabled by years of “it doesn’t affect me” neutrality, is part of how we got here.

[rendall]

That's only part of it. It feels worse now because everything is visible. Information moves instantly. Evidence is public. Financial trails can be followed. Citizens now expect ethical behavior from their leaders as a baseline rather than a bonus. In earlier eras, people slept better largely because they didn’t know what was happening, not because leaders were more virtuous.

For decades now, elite self-dealing, institutional opacity, and captured power steadily eroded public trust. Trump did not arrive as a reformer. He arrived as a punishment mechanism. A stress test. Unfortunately, US elites are drawing the wrong lessons so far.

[rjsw]

It stopped people asking about the Epstein files.

[rendall]

... I don't think it stopped people from talking about it, though. That gambit has failed.