Rattling America’s longest-standing alliances is starting to cost the U.S. military industrial complex.
U.S. arms makers were shut out of the European Union’s enormous defense spending plan released Wednesday.“We must buy more European. Because that means strengthening the European defense technological and industrial base,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The U.K. was similarly frozen out of the deal. Instead, the EU tapped South Korea and Japan to join the military program, which aims to spend more than $800 billion by 2030 as the bloc prepares for potential conflict with Russia.
“We need to see not only Russia as a threat, but also … more global geopolitical developments and where Americans will put their strategic attention,” said European Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius, according to Politico.
This is probably just the start of all kinds of MAGA damage that is coming to America. MAGA is openly attacking and poisoning our economy, society, minds, pluralism, social tolerance, government, rule of law, civil liberties, reality, rationality and democracy.
In my mind, this raises a deeply troubling new thought. This was first first articulated by Ron yesterday (I think). Namely, in large part, is djt looking for mass destruction for the sake of all the chaos, damage and pain he can cause? Maybe he believes that as all kinds of damage increases, his own wealth and power will increase. Maybe he is enraged with the whole fracking world because of all the slights and insults, real or made up, he acts like he has suffered. Maybe he actually believes he has suffered horrendous persecution.
I'm starting to sense something a lot worse than I have imagined up to now might be going on with djt and MAGA. Something a lot more malicious than mere wealth and power lust.
Q: Is Germaine being irrationally alarmist about this new destruction and chaos theory? Does anyone else sense that djt and MAGA are about a lot more than just wealth and power?
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Sabina chats about quantum computers and Microsoft lying about it and their maybe quantum Majorana chip.
At the very least we can say that the Microsoft claims
suffer from a certain . . . . lack of coherence!
The physics joke: Quantum coherence is a fundamental property of quantum systems that enables phenomena like superposition and entanglement by maintaining stable phase relationships between quantum states. When coherence is lost quantum phenomena collapse into old-fashioned physics. Maintaining coherence is necessary for quantum computers. Microsoft lacks coherence, get it? It's a joke. Nyuck, nyuck, as the 3 stooges would say.
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Salon reports about what is starting to look like how rank and file djt supporters are rationalizing their continuing support for djt even when his policies bite them personally very hard:
Camila Muñoz overstayed her visa and got deported
Bradley Bartell voted for djt but does not blame djt for losing his wife
Initially, much of the reaction to this story was framed in terms of "regret," with some outlets claiming Bartell is "questioning" his vote. It's an understandable error. It should be that someone would regret taking an action that led directly to his wife being arrested. Careful reading of the story shows, however, that all Bartell would commit to was saying, "It doesn’t make any sense," without ever saying if he was reconsidering the wisdom of voting for a man who promised to deport everyone like Muñoz, starting "day one." I took to Bluesky and warned people that there was no evidence that Bartell had learned a lesson, gently predicting he would stand by Trump.On Wednesday, that prediction came true, with Bartell telling Newsweek, "I don't regret the vote," even as he asked people to donate to GoFundMe to raise cash for Muñoz's bond. He twisted himself in knots to argue that this wasn't Trump's fault, insisting, "He didn't create the system, but he does have an opportunity to improve it. Hopefully, all this attention will bring to light how broken it is." This is, of course, delusional. ICE is acting Trump's orders, which his press secretary Karoline Leavitt clarified in January: "If an individual is overstaying their visa, they are therefore an illegal immigrant residing in this country, and they are subject to deportation." Bartell would have seen that, if he read the USA Today story about his and Muñoz's plight, but I'd bet he didn't. USA Today is the hated "mainstream media," and MAGA refuses to trust it, even if it has useful, fact-based information, such as how deadly serious Trump is about this deportation agenda.
None of this is to single Bartell out. On the contrary, the reason it was so easy to predict how he would react is that this is typical of most Trump voters, whose devotion to the MAGA cult reliably outstrips what should be more pressing concerns, such as the safety of their families. We saw this during the pandemic, as Republican voters — unable to admit liberals could be right about anything, including the germ theory of disease — refused to take precautions and even rejected the vaccines that Trump himself had authorized research funding for. The result was also predictable: death rates from COVID-19 among Republicans swiftly outpaced those of Democratic voters.
Being willing to admit you're wrong is hard for most people. In June 2017, I first wrote about the decades of psychological research showing that "buyer's remorse" makes people feel bad about themselves. Most everyone has, at one point or another, tied themselves in rationalization knots to avoid uttering the phrase, "I was wrong." Republicans have been swimming in decades of propaganda telling them liberals are the most loathsome people on the planet, making it all that much harder to admit that liberals were right all along. In addition, the personalities most attracted to Trumpism are hostile to critical thinking and attracted to "my way or the highway" attitudes that make no room to listen to disagreement. (emphases added)
The obvious question is will there be a major backlash against djt by his voters, even when he hurts them badly? So far the answer is no, not yet at least. They rationalize their own pain and suffering from MAGA cruelty and illegality. They believe the mess is (1) the fault of anything or anyone but djt, and (2) unconsciously, the fault of their own bad vote for their own pain and suffering. Apparently, most djt voters are still willing to twist themselves in knots to avoid blaming djt and to avoid the awful cognitive dissonance of what they actually voted for and are still empowering.
That exemplifies how powerful the grip on supporters' minds that djt has. MAGA really is a personality cult with djt at the center. We're in very deep trouble.
