I do not think it is. The story of the US contains all those things. And just as the story of the US contains Abu Ghraib, it also contains functioning courts sending Abu Ghraib perpetrators to jail. You can call it the permanent struggle between good and evil. There is no country in the world without evil. But there is a difference between evil being present and evil dominating. When functioning courts are dismantled, the perpetrators rewarded, you are forbidden to even talk about it, and there is no recourse left, it will be different. People who have not lived through a totalitarian regime sometimes miss that distinction. I also grew up in a communist Czechoslovakia, and I did not idolize the US because I was blind to the bad parts. I idolized it because you had evil, but not evil fully controlling the game. Even now, you can still simply move out of the US. Sure, there might be some bureaucratic hurdles, but you can fly away on a plane - your only way out is not to try to crawl under barbed wire and risk getting shot.

I will be honest - when people say something like “it’s all the same, Russia, the US, all are bad”, I think to myself... óóóh, you have no idea what you are talking about. Unfortunately, the current US is going in that direction, so you might find out. Not that I wish that on anyone.

European military. Why do some people act as if European countries had no armies?

And even if we had no armies and Russia attacked and totally destroyed us, how is it related to the topic discussed here, which is whether the influx of European engineers to the US will continue or not?

> This whole thing just seems like the standard hysterical overreaction of people who spend too much time on social media.

Perhaps. I don't think it is, but let's say you are right. How is that relevant? People do not want to go to a country they perceive negatively. Whether that perception is an objective fact or hysteria is, in this context, immaterial.

What concessions? Can you name one thing that Trump got that the US did not have before?

If these actually are attempts at some sort of “the art of the deal” manipulation, they are failing catastrophically. He is achieving nothing while destroying the soft power the US benefited from since WW2.

> The second-order effect: coercive bargaining within the Western alliance becomes normalized

What? What does that even mean? Do you realize how hand-wavey this sounds? With this kind of vague ex-post rationalization totally blind to any negative consequences of the supposed “bargaining”, you could sanewash literally any action. Trump shoots the Prime Minister of Norway on live TV? He just wanted to promote better security of the Western leaders.

Someone else in this thread talks about the supposed lack of awareness of “the art of the deal” meme. No, I am aware of the “4D chess” theory to explain Trump’s behavior. I just don’t think it matches the observation. I think the “malignant narcissist with emotional maturity of an 8-year-old” works much better.

BTW, I like how Emily Maitlis talks about Trump’s “achievements” in Davos - it brings a bit of much-needed levity to the situation: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/34yP2X-nZCk

Appeasement of aggressors has a terrible track record, both historically (Hitler, Putin) and specifically with Trump (TACO).

Danish military analyst Anders Puck Nielsen argues, IMHO convincingly, that Europe should NOT try to appease Trump, but do the opposite - escalate to de-escalate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwRsTDlqU8I

His reasoning is that Trump is a malignant narcissist, and malignant narcissists separate people into two categories: those perceived as strong, whom they admire (Putin, Xi), and weak, whom they abuse. Appeasement will only encourage further abuse. The only viable option is to show strength.

As a European myself, I will support politicians with an uncompromising approach, no matter the cost.

Guess what, we also care about domestic issues more. Except in smaller countries, your election might have a bigger impact on our fate than our own elections. We only want to live our lives and take care of our families... and then you elect the president who starts helping our worst enemy, and then even threatens our neighbor.

Our soldiers bled and died for you in Iraq and Afghanistan. Please, try to put yourself in our shoes. Imagine you live in one of those small countries that always tried to be a good ally to the US, and you get stabbed in the back, and then you hear an American basically saying, “come on, we don’t care about you, we only care about ourselves”. How would you react?

He believes they will switch from charisma to ideology to keep the movement going.

As a European myself, I will support politicians with an uncompromising approach, no matter the cost.

Obviously, this worldview is strategically myopic, based on ignoring many things the US was getting out of this arrangement, like US military bases in Europe (also used for power projection to the Middle East), Europeans buying US weapons (big part of why those weapons are so advanced), doing America's bidding in the UN, supporting US military adventures (however misguided) in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.

It could be argued that the US role of being the security provider to Europe and others was the main source of their wealth and power. The US had the proverbial goose laying golden eggs, but Trump got angry that they had to shelter that goose, so he kicked her out... no goose would abuse the US like that!

Here is one example: Trump saying that the EU was formed to screw the United States: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kq28VSlvUw

A gentleman does not ask a lady's age.

> A rough analogy might be, we figure out advanced bioengineering and then the next thing you know we as a society have collectively gone to great lengths to apply it to create the Torment Nexus

What connection between bioengineering and Torment Nexus do you have in mind? The advances of bioengineering that pop up in my mind are mRNA vaccines and new cancer treatments, which I consider awesome and not at all Torment Nexus-y. When you say Torment Nexus, that makes me think of Thiel’s Palantir, but this is not something we do collectively as a society - is it? To me, that is exactly the anti-democratic stuff pushed by a few specific people that we as a society need to rein in.

In my country, there is a barrage of Russian propaganda trying to relativize our shitty experience with the communist regime. They keep flooding the zone with claims about democracy being flawed, weak, bureaucratic, meaningless, and decadent. And it is working. People appreciate democracy a lot less than ten or twenty years ago.

Sure, there is a time for the self-criticism of the flaws of the West. I just think now is not the time. Democracy and freedom are under serious threat worldwide. Now is the time to keep reminding ourselves how great it is what we have built. Now is the time to be absolutely clear that the flaws of democracies are not in the same category as the flaws of authoritarian regimes.

I still remember what it was like living in a totalitarian regime - and I was living in a soft totalitarianism nearing its collapse. I am not old enough to remember the hardcore Stalinist era. And still, it was so bad that whatever you believe is bad about capitalism is like 1% of how bad it was. Which is why it bugs me so much when people talk about the flaws of both in one breath as if they were even remotely comparable.

Look, I am a pessimist. I think there is a very real chance that the US is turning into a Russia-like state. I hope not, but if that happens, very bad things are likely to happen in Europe too. We will all live it once again. If you still don’t understand what I mean, I suggest this: let’s bookmark this discussion and get back in 5 years, if we are still alive. Then, you will tell me what you think about optimizing conversion and engagement metrics. If you still think it is a problem worth mentioning by then, I will be very happy.

Where did you get those numbers? I remember reading about one survey where the number of people with previous regime ‘nostalgia’ was around 50%. That survey had flawed methodology, and the results were probably mostly about nostalgia related to the times when we were young, and our backs did not hurt (obviously, Russian bots in my country keep blabbering about it ad nauseam as if it were actually about the quality of the old regime).

Let’s focus on the numbers that matter - the election numbers: in the 2025 elections in my country (Czechia), communists did not even get over the 5% necessary to get to the parliament. So, I guess what people actually remember here is communism not being better.

I grew up in communist Czechoslovakia, and claims like this really bother me. As if it is somehow comparable to being forced to serve in the army of a dictatorship. What is wrong with working on optimizing conversion and engagement metrics? It can be interesting and useful. People are not forced to do it. It is just one of many jobs that one can do in a free society.

I believe that one of the reasons why authoritarianism seems to be on the rise in the US and around the world in general is that it has somehow become fashionable to belittle and disparage what we have in the West... and how good it is, despite its imperfections. I fear that we will only realize this once we have lost it.

I read this recently on Hacker News, in a discussion about "They Thought They Were Free" (1955) [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45321663