This is why NATO has begun ramping up defense purchases recently.

Trump has been polling higher recently, and that scared the fuck out of Europe, because they know Trump will at best allow Putin to steamroll the region and, at worst, actively use US resources to help dictatorships expand their sphere of influence, culminating in WWIII.

They’re not willing to wait until that happens.

Very happy to see this comment! But is that not a great thing? What’s your take?

On one hand I understand how important it is to defend democracy in Europe. On the other hand, why is Europe depending on the US for their own defense?

WWII and the Cold War is long past, Europe long rebuilt and healthy. If my neighbor is a raging asshole that may come over and kick my ass, I’m armed. I’m getting my neighbors armed and making sure we’re all trained and on the same page. And fuck the guy 2-miles away with his wavering support. He won’t be in my front yard when the Brown (Orange) Shirts come knocking.

Weird hearing Americans decry military spending (because we’re geographically safe), and also decry Trump for wanting out of NATO, or at least demanding they pay their share.

FFS, the most expensive thing on Earth is a second-rate military. Make a damned choice.

On the other hand, why is Europe depending on the US for their own defense?

They’re not. That’s kind of a weird thing to say, if you have any understanding of the situation.

The point of NATO is to present a unified front against the ever-present authoritarian threat in the region that’s been ongoing since WWII, and the US as a founding member has spent more on their military by orders of magnitude, so has had an outsized voice in NATO.

If they pull out those resources, that would hurt the coalition because, again, with their military spending being more than ten times the next ten countries combined, they’re the silverback gorilla in the room, and losing that against countries willing to throw their entire population as human cannon fodder into conflicts because they don’t care about human costs would hurt a lot. What happens when Russia decides to reclaim the rest of the countries Putin thinks are rightly part of their federation, because Putin has delusions of becoming an historical tsar? What happens when Trump’s US backs Putin in that effort?

Your few guns will not fix any of this. Your few guns will not even help stave off anything in your own county. That’s never how this has worked. This will be ushered in while you get your groceries and watch Netflix, with no clear enemy to fight, after an authoritarian has been voted in as president, as everything else is just a Tuesday.

I appreciate that you think you can head off the next major fascist regime because you’re armed, but that’s not how this works. You will never have a target to shoot at. You will be just like average Germans in the 1930s, waiting for the moment it has gone too far, and then in the late 40s trying to figure out when that moment actually happened.

I mostly agree with your response, except for chastising OP about the color of the shirt. They start by mentioning brown, then parenthetically say “orange” as an unveiled reference to Trump.

This is because Trump is known to use a LOT of bronzer that turns his skin an unusual orange color. So what OP was trying to do was to relate the brownshirts to the presumed task force that Trump would create if he became a dictator.

It wasn’t about the colour of the shirt; that’s what you took from my comment?

lol okay, my point had nothing at all to do with colours.

Brownshirt == fascist paramilitary force

Redcap == fascist paramilitary force

Orange shirt == ?? Uh, maybe someone who should retake cosmetics finals?

Nice insult, I guess? Is that the new thing instead of calling someone a bot?

Anyways, I guess the explanation of how OP took the traditional brownshirt and updated it to fit the color that represents Trump in order to propose that his fascist forces could be called ‘orangeshirts’ just kinda flew over your head, huh? It’s ok, maybe you’ll get it somewhere down the line.

No, sorry. I mixed things up in my head and didn’t realise you weren’t the troll I’d replied to, so I was overly aggressive. I was kinda drunk, and I should know better than to be online inebriated. I sincerely apologise.