He who laughs last laughs best

https://www.foxnews.com/media/liberal-media-account-ripped-video-mocking-trumps-...

Stasi stooges sneer and jeer as President Trump warns of Russian gas-based hegemony. Hopefully they freeze to death this winter.

Nobody ever laughs last. Just saying.

>1 Kuiperdolin: Stasi stooges

A bit behind the times, aren't you? The Stasi ceased to exist more than thirty years ago, as did the country to which it belonged.

Oh, good, we're now talking about Russia's control over Europe's natural gas distribution.

"How Did Europe Get Hooked On Russian Energy?" (Bloomberg | Mar 2022)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-03-19/how-did-europe-get-hooked-...
A conversation with the author of Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century.

>3 John5918: says the bloke who spams the board with century-old grievances. A Stasi agent ruled Germany until last year much like a KGB agent still rules Russia. Read another book.

>4 aspirit: Article is paywalled but from what little I could read it says nothing about the environmentalists' guilt. Sad.

>5 Kuiperdolin:

Thank you; I think that's the first time I've had the novelty of being accused of spamming. Coming from a culture warrior such as yourself, I can only take it as an honour. Let's see, "the bloke who spams the board with century-old grievances". I can only guess that you are referring to the "Dealing with the dishonorable and the inconvenient" thread on which I post frequently, which is a thread specifically devoted to, er, centuries-old grievances.

>5 Kuiperdolin: I'm surprised there's a paywall for you. There's no indication of one on my side. It's set for certain regions, perhaps?

The article focuses on how Ukraine become important in Russia's distribution of natural gas into much of Europe. The conclusion brings up environmentalism in how, Helen Thompson believes, the development of solar power and wind power will be freeing for many countries-- but only if the world becomes less dependent on China's metals, which are used to create the green energy systems. Otherwise, energy dependency will continue to shift between major political power to major political power.

What you're looking for with "environmentalists' guilt" seems to be in Thompson's book. From what I've seen of other interviews with the author, she talks about how the "neoliberalism" of President Reagan and leaders around the world at the same time helped set up coal alternatives to fall into the same problematic patterns that need to end for environmentally technologies to be effective. Natural gas is one example of how politics are getting in the way instead of supporting the changes that are needed. Environmental activists might feel guilt for not doing more to ensure the systems are better than what we have.

Better to be a culture warrior than an inculture warrior, and this thread is "specifically devoted to" the Reds who laughed at Donald Trump before history vindicated him, so deal with it.

>8 Kuiperdolin: The list of people "who laughed at Donald Trump before history vindicated him" will include literally everyone who ever laughs at him, ever.

>8 Kuiperdolin: inculture: (n) want, lack, or neglect of culture or cultivation.

Thank you. I learned a new word today.

Curious why Trump's words in 2018 is such a big issue today that this thread is being dedicated to Germans who you apparently want to die (—dude, too extreme and not cool—) I went digging. (Obviously, Fox News is not a reliable source for anything but conservative outrage.)

Here's what I found. In 2018, the then-President Trump reportedly warned Germany against becoming dependent on Russian oil and gas. The transcribed quotes I initially saw don't sound anything like him. What did he actually say?

"Trump blasts Germany over gas pipeline deal with Russia" on CBS Evening News; Jul 11, 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JpwkeTBwgs

So he coherently made reasonable points. What a relief that must have been to some participants that he was able to do that at the summit. (I'm going to assume for simplicity that he didn't do what he usually does and contradicted himself a moment later.)

Did Germans laugh off concerns about their country's dependence on Russia for energy? WaPo said some at the summit "smirked". Less reputable sources appear to have translated those twists of lips to mocking laughter. The problem with that is a smirk can mean anything, especially in intercultural exchanges on complex topics. That Trump was talking about Russia as a threat probably sounded ironic in the moment.

As an aside, one of the arguments in 2018 against the possibility of Trump being a White House spy for Russia is that he's all along been too accommodating of Putin and Russian politics. (Mark Galeotti in an interview said, "The whole extraordinary, bromantic passion he seems to have for Putin in some ways has hamstrung much of his value, in that respect, because Congress is deeply suspicious. As is the public, and his own administration, when it comes to Russia." Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/d3e7xw/if-trump-is-a-russian-spy-this-is-how-the...

Going back to >1 Kuiperdolin: I don't understand why any of this means people should die. Seems to me the people of that country are victims deserving sympathy, the same as Texans are whenever their energy is threatened (by their own government on this side of the world). Because, weren't the Germans supposed to take Trump seriously? That would mean his words would have been accepted as genuine concern that Germany was vulnerable to Russia's aggression.

>10 aspirit: those people should die because thousands will die anyway, and a lot more suffer, from their anti-Trump fanaticism and ridiculous luddite ideology. Let the guilty ones be the ones dying rather than the innocent.

>11 Kuiperdolin: Germans should die because they'll die anyway for not changing their infrastructure based on statements by a foreign leader? That really isn't funny.

Reliance on Russia was a mistake. I would have said so in the summer of 2018 if there hadn't been hundreds of more pressing (elections! health! household!) issues to focus on when that piece of news flitted around.

The way I see it, though, Trump's relationships with most European leaders were abysmal. He had no previous experience in energy distribution nor national security nor any type of government position before becoming POTUS, which must have looked especially embarassing for the US to people in countries where qualifications for social advancement is a huge deal. How surprising is that German leaders wouldn't follow the suggestions of someone who was internationally said to have damaged the reputation of his own country?

Look at what else was happening at the time of the UN summit. Puerto Rico had been without power for something like ten months. Most of a year! Blame for the failed power grid belongs to multiple administrations, but Trump was responsible for overseeing recovery efforts at the time. More than a thousand people died from federal neglect after the hurricanes Irma and Maria hit in 2017. International news had reported on the administrative screwups, like with the expensive but useless orders to the military.

Puerto Ricans didn't deserve to die because the POTUS didn't take their suffering seriously. The most vulnerable Germans-- really, none of the general populations of the UN-- deserve to die because of the mistakes of their overtly optimistic leaders.

Innocent civilians freezing to death would not be not a joke, or least not a cruel one.

You're misrepresenting my posts again. I never wrote I want all Germans to die, just the ones who sabotaged European energy and criticized Donald Trump.

>13 Kuiperdolin:

So people who criticised a particular political leader and people who, correctly or mistakenly, supported a particular political energy policy should die? Good grief. That sounds pretty draconian.

It's pretty draconian to insist everybody should die except the ones guilty of the situation.

>15 Kuiperdolin:

Who is suggesting that? It's pretty draconian to want anyone to die.

>13 Kuiperdolin: I didn't say you want all Germans to die. There are several million Germans, not thousands. I understand that when you wrote "thousands" you weren't saying "thousands of thousands".

Thousands of Germans appears to be an accurate range for how many Germans protested him in one way or another; protesting is certainly a form of criticism. More voted for the politicians who decided to increase Russian control of the gas distribution.

What it looks like you're saying is critics of Donald Trump should die. I've been hearing and reading similar remarks since 2016. (Reminder: He lost the popular vote. Close to 66 million Americans declared that year by vote that we didn't want him to be POTUS. So the threats were against many millions, though still not all/everyone.)

Possibly I am misinterpreting what it is that you said would be funny, but it looks like more of the same hateful intent that Trump supporters have been widely sharing the past six years.

I have no idea where you're seeing the insistence that "everybody should die". I have heard that from a Trump supporter a long time ago. (She was obviously yearning for a Biblical Apocalypse.) That's not in this thread.

I'm reminded of an observation I saw in a recent article in the Economist: "Fascism works by creating enemies"

Fascism has many features, but one of the most salient, IMO, is the practice of declaring some set of people to be less than human and therefore killable. This dehumanizing is usually conceived to be on racial, ethnic, or religious grounds, but in this case I'm afraid what we're seeing is an ideological fascism. Those who do not agree should die. While >1 Kuiperdolin: does not propose outright that they should be murdered, it's a short step from expressing a hope that they suffer a slow death by freezing to suggesting that they be helped along (as in >11 Kuiperdolin:)

While this user's posts in the past have been surprisingly vitriolic, this is the first time in my memory when they've expressly called for the deaths of those who disagree with them. I find this to be an alarming development.

>18 kiparsky:

And as I've said elsewhere in this group, the person using this type of hate speech may not actually intend that their words should be taken literally, but there are plenty of heavily armed disturbed young loners, radicalised extremists and domestic terrorists out there who latch on to this type of incitement to reinforce their own warped worldview and justify their desire to kill those who disagree with their politics. Dangerous territory.

In addition to the possibility that these ill-advised posts might encourage or incite some terrorist action (given LT's limited reach, this may be a remote likelihood) there's also the phenomenon of "self-radicalization", where a person takes increasingly extreme views over time, ultimately talking themselves into a position that they would not have held at the start.

We've seen a transition over the last year from "All democrats are dumb-heads" to "People who criticize Donald Trump should die". This is definitely "dangerous territory", as you say.

Trolls used to be outliers. That was an important part of what it meant to be a troll. Recently, they've embraced the philosophy of collective action.

dumb even for librarything