[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

[Username17]

I assume tomorrow we will find out that Canada is such a great place because it's a member of the EU as well?

Kaelik, you forfeited the right to be taken seriously in this discussion when you gave CETA (negotiation time 8 years and counting) as an example of how the United Kingdom could totally negotiate themselves some enforceable free trade deals in less than 2 years. Considering how much egg you got on your face, your reasoning for even mentioning Canada again defies ready explanation.

Are you just trying to get us to forget how badly you fucked up the Canada/Europe allegory earlier in this discussion? Because we totally haven't.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

I assume tomorrow we will find out that Canada is such a great place because it's a member of the EU as well?

Kaelik, you forfeited the right to be taken seriously in this discussion when you gave CETA (negotiation time 8 years and counting) as an example of how the United Kingdom could totally negotiate themselves some enforceable free trade deals in less than 2 years. Considering how much egg you got on your face, your reasoning for even mentioning Canada again defies ready explanation.

Are you just trying to get us to forget how badly you fucked up the Canada/Europe allegory earlier in this discussion? Because we totally haven't.

-Username17

Frank, I know you are waging your one man war against sanity, but it's okay to just not repeat your really stupid lies when they aren't relevant.

But... if there was the will and the political capital to do that they could just negotiate for the pony and not have to relitigate all the things they already have.

So what you are saying is, if Britain could convince France to sign a trade treaty, then it logically follows that Britain alone could completely rewrite the EU with no opposition... Oh wait, that... is not at all true.

Last I checked, Canada did not rewrite the entire EU, but did sign a trade treaty with the EU. Almost like one of those things is easier than the other.

Now, your argument that it is literally impossible to negotiate a treaty in 2 years because a specific treaty wasn't is of course, very wrong, for fucks sake, the entire Treaty of Maastricht took less than 2 years from Negotiation to ratification. Almost like the time it takes to negotiate treaties is related to the commitment and urgency the parties to the treaty feel.

But even if it were actually true, or even relevant to the claims made, it still wouldn't change the fact that no one was talking about the time frame at all. You claimed that having the ability to negotiate a trade treaty meant you had the ability to fix the EU, a point which is obviously wrong. No part of that involves me claiming that the CETA is evidence that the UK can do anything in 2 years, because how fast they can or can't do it was not even a subject of conversation, so obviously pointing to a specific treaty wasn't a claim of the UK being able to do it in two years, because prior to my mention of the CETA, you weren't even making absurdly stupid claims about how treaties always take more than two years to negotiate, you were just claiming that the EU would destroy the UK on purpose. That might even turn out to happen, but it still won't be because negotiating a treaty in less than 2 years is impossible.

But sure, keep making bullshit lies about everyone's position, if you just lie hard enough, I'm sure you'll become right eventually.

[DSMatticus]

Frank, this is fucking pathetic. Every part of that post is deceitful bullshit.

there are in fact protocols for when you simply deny treatment to tuberculosis sufferers and let them live or die according to the whims of their immune system. And it's not specifically because tuberculosis treatment is expensive, although it is. It's because Tuberculosis treatment takes half a year and the bug already has so many resistances that we already have to use quadruple therapy. Tuberculosis acquiring complete broad spectrum immunity is totally within the realm of possibility, and if that happens that would be bad. Like, maybe killing five percent of the population of the planet type bad. So patients who for whatever reason are unlikely to complete treatment regimens for TB, do not get treatment for TB. On account of the fact that we would rather not have an unstoppable plague that kills more people than World War 2.

This is completely irrelevant. The man in the article was not tested for tuberculosis. His tuberculosis was not tested for resistances. He was not provided with treatment to manage his symptoms and improve his chances of survival. He was kicked out of hospital - twice - with an active TB infection that he could have spread to any number of people. This specific case was obivously not an informed medical decision that, as a patient, he was too risky to treat and that they would have to let the disease run its course. This was a procedural decision that because he was an illegal immigrant they were going to save money by not treating him. This was not the result of a protocol carefully crafted by well-meaning medical professions attempting to save the most lives. This was the result of an irrational, harmful, and counter-productive cost-saving measure, and it's a cost-saving measure that you and I both know has the potential to lead to exactly the sort of devastating epidemics you describe.

The fact that people died of TB, or even died of TB at a higher rate somewhere than some other country or whatever, doesn't actually prove or even suggest that the big bad austerity fairy has fucked you. Even Nordic communist paradises have people die of TB. And beyond that, they have people die of TB after being denied treatment for TB. There are probably Swedes right now who have access to communist Nordic healthcare who have TB and aren't going to get ethambutol pills or streptamycin injections or fucking anything. And they are going to die. Probably because they started treatment and just decided to stop after having it all explained to them and now responsible healthcare professionals do not feel that trying to treat them again is worth the risk.

There is so much wrong with this I'm not even sure where to start.

My argument that the "big bad austerity fairy" fucked has fucked Greece and Spain is the massive budget cuts each country's healthcare system has been subject to. If I wanted to cherrypick statistics to support that claim, I would point to things like the tripling of the HIV infection rate, or that massive malaria epidemic they had awhile back, or the increase in emergency hospital admissions (which suggests less preventative care is taking place), or... well, let's just say I have a lot of cherries to pick from. But I'm not actually cherry picking. That article is not about one man's tragic case of tuberculosis. It is about budget cuts and illegal immigrants being denied non-emergency care. The man is a specific example of an illegal immigrant who was turned away, and the potential damage that turning him away could have caused (a tuberculosis epidemic). I've already had to explain that article to maglag. I love how you call me out for "pulling things out of my ass," but then when I link sources no one even reads them.

Maglag is the one who brought up tuberculosis rates, claiming that Greece's was better than France's. It turns out that that's not true, and I corrected him. This is the second time (the first being the GDP comparison) I've corrected maglag and you've used that as an opportunity to strawman me. Even though both times I was very explicit to point out that I did not think the evidence in question conclusively supported my case. Maglag has the uncanny ability to claim the evidence supports him when it doesn't. When I correct him, that does not mean that I think the evidence supports the opposite of whatever he actually said, but it does mean he's a fucking idiot who routinely embarrasses himself.

But then it gets even worse from there, because Greece is not an example of "tuberculosis deaths happen." It is an example of "more tuberculosis deaths happen after austerity." Even if I were going to use tuberculosis mortality rates as an argument for the failure of austerity, the argument would be "austerity happened, and then more people started dying of tuberculosis." Telling me "oh yeah?! Well sometimes people die of tuberculosis in Nordic communist paradises, too" isn't even a rebuttal. You set out to smack around a strawman and lost. And you would have known that if you had actually clicked the source I gave you and looked at the graphs, because they show an uptick in the tuberculosis mortality rate compared to France. Now, to repeat what I said in my original post, I am not using tuberculosis as an argument against austerity. I mean, yes, the timing is hilariously coincidental, but tuberculosis is inherently sort of random and it's probably not safe to attribute statistical significance to that uptick (even though it is quite large, in context, and hasn't yet receded back to previous levels). It's worth noting that maglag got the numbers backwards and therfore everything he said was fucking worthless (as usual on both counts), but that's about the end of it as far as serious discussion goes. I certainly don't need to use tuberculosis as part of my argument, because 1) you are not actually an austerity apologist, and when I say "austerity is killing people" you will presumably agree with me, and 2) if you actually are an austerity apologist and don't agree with me, I would have better evidence with much greater statistical significance to throw at you.

You remember that you brought up Spain because it was supposed to be a bigger number than the over fifteen fucking million Europeans living outside their home countries who will be denied non-emergency treatment when they lose their EU rights for healthcare, right? Right? And how some number less than a million is very much smaller than more than fifteen million and that you are still very much failing to make a coherent case.

"Denying illegal immigrants non-emergency care" is not the only part of the austerity measures. You already know that. You'd have been reminded if you could have been assed to read the article I linked, or do any research on your own, or even had any fucking common sense whatsoever. Budget cuts mean cost sharing and denied treatment and delayed/inadequate responses to outbreaks (whether that be outbreaks of HIV or TB or whatever), and that means a bunch of people who aren't illegal immigrants are also going to suffer from completely preventable illnesses. Remember: when we were talking about the healthcare crisis in Greece, we weren't talking about illegal immigrants at all. If you were going to ignore the budget cuts all along, then why did you even bother bringing up the Greek population? The comparison point you were looking for wasn't "11 million people vs 15 million people," it was "0 people vs 15 million people."

And it just goes on and on and on. Dishonest, bullshit arguments that fall apart - sometimes in more than one way - at casual inspection. I'm pretty sure the only thing that makes you more tolerable than PL is that I agree with you more often than I agree with him, because this is the exact same sort of shit that earned him a permanent spot on my ignore list. There are only so many mistakes you can make before it's obvious that they're not mistakes and you're just an asshole who finds it easier to take liberties with other people's arguments and hope no one figures it out.

We're very obviously not going anywhere with this. Part of it is because insofar as I can extract any actual arguments from you, our differences boil down to a disagreement about which option is likely to cause more longterm harm, and realistically neither of us can make a conclusive argument either way. I can point to the damage the EU is causing, and you can counter with the immediate damage caused by the dissolution of the EU. I can suggest that the corruption and incompetence of the EU is empowering fascists across Europe, and you could suggest that their support ceiling isn't high enough to be a concern or that dissolution wouldn't actually derail them or what the fuckever. I can point to the success of the later incarnations of the Treaty of Rome as an "ideal," and you can point out how difficult it would actually be to get back there. And who the fuck knows? I obviously think the EU is both undemocratic enough and terrible enough to turn itself into an ongoing catastrophe that will either end in collapse or fascism or fascist collapse, and you think we'll just barely be able to squeeze progress out of this stone and that infinitesimal progress is safer than starting over. But conclusive resolutions to this debate either way? It's fucking impossible.

But the other part of it is that we aren't even arguing any of those things anymore. You've decided that it's less effort to flail at strawmen and then get really huffy with anyone who has the sheer audacity to keep arguing with you after you've demonstrated such intellectual prowess. Alright, Don Quixote, I surrender.

[Username17]

This is completely irrelevant. The man in the article was not tested for tuberculosis. His tuberculosis was not tested for resistances. He was not provided with treatment to manage his symptoms and improve his chances of survival. He was kicked out of hospital - twice - with an active TB infection that he could have spread to any number of people.

STOP SAYING STUPID THINGS!

Look, you don't know shit about tuberculosis treatment. I do. I've done it. In different countries on different continents under different healthcare regimes. Whether you withhold treatment or not has absolutely fuckall to do with whether you tested the TB for resistances. You generally speaking don't test TB for resistances, and you certainly don't test for resistances before deciding what treatment you're going to provide or not. Testing TB for resistances takes a very long time. TB grows slowly, so traditional growth and susceptibility testing takes a long ass time. Specifically, it takes a month or two to give results.

Choices about whether to treat or not to treat would be made several weeks before any agar plates showed jack shit, which in turn would be some time before any resistance profile could be worked out. That's just how these things work. Every time you type words about this subject you make it very clear that you don't know shit about it. You grasp at weird details that don't say what you think they say and actually just prove your fundamental ignorance on the entire topic. Fucking hell, it's like I'm having a conversation with Donald Trump.

I am a doctor, you are not. Stop talking about medicine like you have any fucking knowledge of how it works, because you don't. The portion of this conversation that revolves around healthcare policy is one I win by default because you are unqualified to have an opinion one way or the other. It's not just that there are lots of things you don't know, it's that the number of things you don't know that you don't know are so large that it is merely infuriating to attempt to parse your gibberish arguments at all. Your "point" about resistance testing is not even wrong.

-Username17

[maglag]

But conclusive resolutions to this debate either way? It's fucking impossible.

But the other part of it is that we aren't even arguing any of those things anymore. You've decided that it's less effort to flail at strawmen and then get really huffy with anyone who has the sheer audacity to keep arguing with you after you've demonstrated such intellectual prowess. Alright, Don Quixote, I surrender.

Still insisting that you know more about tubercolosis and healthcare systems than the dude who's an actual medic that's actually treated tubercolosis across several continents, that's quite a strange way of "surrender".

[Kaelik]

But conclusive resolutions to this debate either way? It's fucking impossible.

But the other part of it is that we aren't even arguing any of those things anymore. You've decided that it's less effort to flail at strawmen and then get really huffy with anyone who has the sheer audacity to keep arguing with you after you've demonstrated such intellectual prowess. Alright, Don Quixote, I surrender.

Still insisting that you know more about tubercolosis and healthcare systems than the dude who's an actual medic that's actually treated tubercolosis across several continents, that's quite a strange way of "surrender".

Hey maglag, he's fucking not. That's the funny thing about reality, as opposed to Frank's delusions. DSM is saying that a guy with still infectious TB was banished from a hospital because they didn't want to waste time on him because a news story written by some kind of journalist says so. Frank counters that his medical degree allows him to make general statements that are not applicable to the current situation, because he doesn't know what the current situation is, and actively refuses to find out.

Even if all of Frank's statements about TB are true, it doesn't become relevant to the specific situation unless it actually is relevant (in this case, it wasn't) and it doesn't magically make Georgia a part of the EU.

[MGuy]

So, what I'm getting from Frank (other than him grasping at whatever straw he can) is that DSM wants to give the fascists what they want, replace the EU with nothing, or (now) claim that because he's a doctor that makes DSM wrong about a man with TB being kicked out of a hospital (somehow). Alright, so we're still on the page where Frank wants to keep the EU going. I may have missed it but has Frank or anyone supporting his tirade spoken about exactly how the Left is supposed to unfuck things while in an EU that refuses to turn from bad economic policies? Reading through all these responses I may have tripped over it but I still am missing the left's actual counter plan to stem the tide of corrupt officials that are making right radicals more and more popular.

[Kaelik]

So, what I'm getting from Frank (other than him grasping at whatever straw he can) is that DSM wants to give the fascists what they want, replace the EU with nothing, or (now) claim that because he's a doctor that makes DSM wrong about a man with TB being kicked out of a hospital (somehow). Alright, so we're still on the page where Frank wants to keep the EU going. I may have missed it but has Frank or anyone supporting his tirade spoken about exactly how the Left is supposed to unfuck things while in an EU that refuses to turn from bad economic policies? Reading through all these responses I may have tripped over it but I still am missing the left's actual counter plan to stem the tide of corrupt officials that are making right radicals more and more popular.

Eventually by magic or 50 years of waiting, all the people with bad economic views will die of old age, and then new governments will take over with good policies.

In the meantime, the good things the EU does (immigration, Health Insurance, probably some other things? I think there were some labor laws, and they curb the most shitty of member states facism) are worth struggling through the bad things (killing southern Europe with austerity).

There's also a fair bit of United Nations Globalism sentiment that goes something like "In 50 years the EU might be legitimately good in all respects, but if it is disbanded, then some countries are always going to be hellholes, even in 50 years, even in 100 years."

IE, in a comparative sense, if the US split, most states would be always terrible, even if some of them might be better off.

[DSMatticus]

Yeah, this is not Frank making a point about how medical treatment sometimes involves difficult choices. I listed a bunch of things that the hospital could have done that would have made it clear that a medical professional had sat down and actually looked at the case and made an informed decision that it didn't make sense to go forward with an anti-TB regimen, and then I contrasted that with what actually happened - which is that the hospital kicked him out without any kind of testing or symptom management and no apparent consideration for containment. And Frank bolded one part of that and declared "even if they had decided to treat the patient, that one part right there wouldn't have been a factor in treatment decisions!" Maybe not? Who fucking cares? Did that invalidate anything I said? Not even remotely.

Frank is flailing about desperately for an easy gotcha, and when it comes down to the minutiae of TB treatment there is no doubt that he can find things to correct me on. The question is whether or not those corrections weaken any of my arguments, and in this case they very obviously do not. If Frank had a real gotcha, he would be sitting here telling us all how it makes perfect sense for a man to show up to a hospital with tuberculosis and then be sent back to the home he shares with ten other people. I wonder if the doctors left him with any parting wisdom. "Try not to cough on anyone you care about as you're dying. We won't treat them either."

When I go looking for more sources, it gets even more hilarious. Summary: Alpha Pam knew he'd been in contact with someone who had tuberculosis, and decided this meant he should see a doctor. They told him to fuck off repeatedly because he didn't have a healthcard until finally he kind-of-sort-of got to see someone - a nurse, who diagnosed him with bronchitis. He did not see a doctor and he was not given any real diagnostic tests, despite his apparent exposure to TB. So what actually fucking happened is that the hospital's "spend as little time and money on illegal immigrants as possible" policy got in the way of successfully upholding their "tuberculosis is a big deal" policy, because it turns out that it's a fuckton harder to correctly diagnose someone when your instructions are to not spend resources diagnosing them. No doctor ever even knew Alpha Pam existed, let alone made any "hard decisions" about his tuberculosis treatment. He slipped through the cracks entirely, and all the signs point to austerity as the culprit.

[MGuy]

How's this eventual turnaround exactly supposed to happen though? Where is the mechanism for that? Right now members of the EU cannot make their own economic decisions and the people who are suffering from these bad economic conditions have no control over it.The people who benefit have all the control. What is supposed to happen in any number of years that actually changes these conditions? How do you keep the EU from splitting until then because of it kicking the shit out of an ever growing number of members? How are you supposed to get this change when radical right wing parties are becoming increasingly popular BECAUSE of the EU?

[Username17]

I listed a bunch of things...

I am going to cut you off right there. You keep listing a bunch of things. But since you don't know what you're talking about, those lists are gibberish and don't support your position.

I have not bothered to read up on your fucking anecdote of some dude who died of a disease in Spain. There's a whole bunch of reasons I didn't read up on it, mostly having to do with the fact that anecdotes aren't policy arguments, but the really really salient reason I didn't read up on it is because your attempts to introduce it into the discussion have been Gish Gallops full of fail.

Stop listing a bunch of things. You don't know what those things mean. Details you think are important and prove you right are often without meaning or undermine your point. It is fucking exhausting trying to even sift a kernel of a point to even discuss with you, because you are talking about shit that you don't understand. Tuberculosis is a very special case and it doesn't work like streptococcal pneumonia. Going through your rants and finding all the parts where the things you say are completely wrong takes too much text. It takes longer for me to even describe what's wrong with one of your list items than it takes you to shit out more list items. My last entire post was about how one sentence of your bullshit gibberish was meaningless poppycock if it wasn't an arrogant attempt to deceive. And as we've seen over and over again, me calling you on your bullshit just makes you list a bunch more gibberish.

Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Stop Listing Things.

The bottom line is Greatest Good For Greatest Number. Cutting the health insurance of everyone who currently gets their health insurance through the European Union would kill more people every year than all the murderers in the United States of America combined. I absolutely do not give two shits about whatever sad anecdote you have. And your understanding of the underlying issues is so poor that your storytelling of your anecdote is constantly undermined by your own manifest ignorance.

Unless and until your plan for blowing up the EU also credibly contains some system to save a commensurate tens of thousands of people every year, it's not serious and you need to shut the fuck up about it. But regardless, I am sick and fucking tired of you not shutting up about subjects you don't know shit about. If you keep listing things, I'm putting you on ignore.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

Frank, shut the fuck up. You lost this part of the argument because you decided to respond to a criticism of specific austerity policies (amongst other things a refusal to treat illegal immigrants) by attacking an anecdote illustrating the harm such policies can cause, and then you failed to launch any meaningful attack on that specific anecdote because the treatment knowledge you invoked was completely irrelevant to the case - something that was obvious when we started this argument and has only become doubly (quadruply?) so now that I've provided additional sources.

And because I am not actually kind enough to even leave the one remaining leg you are standing on unkicked:

It is not malpractice by health professionals that is leading to a lack of medical attention for thousands of people, resulting even in death, but the imposition of legislation that was approved without measuring the consequences it would have on people's lives and public health.

Those are organizations of medical professionals blaming Alpha Pam's death on austerity legislation. You officially cannot hide behind "I am a doctor" anymore. That leaves you with... bluster, as far as I can tell.

[Kaelik]

How's this eventual turnaround exactly supposed to happen though? Where is the mechanism for that? Right now members of the EU cannot make their own economic decisions and the people who are suffering from these bad economic conditions have no control over it.The people who benefit have all the control. What is supposed to happen in any number of years that actually changes these conditions? How do you keep the EU from splitting until then because of it kicking the shit out of an ever growing number of members? How are you supposed to get this change when radical right wing parties are becoming increasingly popular BECAUSE of the EU?

How are you supposed to ever accomplish any positive change in anything? Old assholes die off and fewer of their kids are assholes, you shame assholes into being less assholes, whatever.

The EU reforming versus individual countries reforming is just a question of time versus scale. Reforming the EU takes more consensus, which presumably takes more time, and then affects more people. Maybe that trade off is worth it, maybe it isn't. Maybe Germany never stops being cockheads and the EU explodes. But any path towards improvement of any kind is speculative when the Rightwing idiots won in the UK and Greece (and run Germany, and run everywhere else). Yeah, if you can get the left wing back in charge of Greece, maybe they can pull out of the EU and fix Greece, on the other hand, if you can get the Right wing out of power in Germany and France and UK and Greece and Hungary and whatever, you can reform the entire EU and usher in a utopia, or you can compromise a little bit on the utopia because some of the countries are still Right, and even the Left that is in charge isn't that Left, and get something that is just a drastic improvement for the continent.

Making things better is hard and speculative, welcome to the shitty world we live in, the cake is a lie, and you don't get a box of chocolates on valentines day.

Arguing about how to make things better is sometimes worthwhile, and sometimes not, with something like this, where it has absolutely no chance, it's not worthwhile, it's basically arguing about whether Elizabeth Warren of Clinton would make a better President.

But it sure doesn't help that the Clinton supporter is committed to refusing to make good arguments because strawmanning bullshit is more fun.

[DSMatticus]

Syriza is still running Greece. They caved completely, but the snap election in September only cost them four seats (and their coalition partner three). Together they still have 154 seats out of 300, barely enough to keep their government afloat. The reason Greece is still in the EU is because Tsipras was bluffing all along. He'd made no preparations whatsoever to actually carry through with Grexit, and so when the Greek economy was collapsing all around him (seriously, at the height of the bailout negotiations businesses were using scrip currencies because the country had for all intents and purposes run out of euros) he just had to accept that he'd lost the game of chicken.

Very few political parties on the left have shown a willingness to even discuss exit, and those few that have have shown no willingness to actually go through it. That is one of the reasons I am skeptical of any leftwing plans to improve the EU, because it requires bargaining from a position of pretty extreme weakness. "Germany, you need to stop fucking shit up." "Nein." "Well, alright then."

EDIT: And on the topic of fixing Germany, the Bundestag has 630 seats and five parties:
CDU (254 seats; Angela Merkel)
CSU (56 seats; basically another wing of the CDU)
SPD (193 seats; Sigmar Gabriel)
The Left (64 seats; exactly what it sounds like)
The Greens (63 seats; exactly what it sounds like).

And here is where I crush your dreams:
CDU + CSU = 310 seats.
SPD + The Left + The Greens = 320 seats.
CDU + CSU + SPD = 503 seats. This is the current ruling coalition.

Yes, Angela Merkel is in power because Germany's mainstream "left" would rather she be in power than coalition with actual leftists to form a government. Germany is just... the best possible thing you can do with Germany is not let them in your treehouse. Ever. Under any circumstances.

[Kaelik]

Syriza is still running Greece. They caved completely, but the snap election in September only cost them four seats (and their coalition partner three). Together they still have 154 seats out of 300, barely enough to keep their government afloat. The reason Greece is still in the EU is because Tsipras was bluffing all along.

I knew he was bluffing all along, I thought they lost an election after they revealed that their Grexit vote was a ruse to further cave to Germany. It wasn't specifically that I expected the Greek left to Grexit, just that a Greek Right Grexit would make the country worse, and a Greek Left Grexit might hypothetically improve the country.

Yes, Angela Merkel is in power because Germany's mainstream "left" would rather she be in power than coalition with actual leftists to form a government. Germany is just... the best possible thing you can do with Germany is not let them in your treehouse. Ever. Under any circumstances.

Yes, I am, unfortunately, far too knowledgeable about Germany's politics for an American, because I have regular correspondence with some German lawyers about Civil vs Common Law systems and contract jurisprudence. But my point is purely talking about hypothetical 50 year changes, which could of course, be anything.

[hyzmarca]

Germany is just... the best possible thing you can do with Germany is not let them in your treehouse. Ever. Under any circumstances.

The last time Europe tried that Germany decided that it wanted Poland's treehouse.

[Stahlseele]

And lookie there, this time everybody else is going right and germany is trying to keep going left, because we still remember what happened the last time we went to war. Might fail at that actually if we are all very unlucky.
Back in the 20's/30's, the right wing states actually worked together. Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Hungary. This time they are going to go at each other i suspect.
Because this time, ironically, the right wing attitude actually means blaming and attacking everybody else it seems, and not working together with the other states with the same attitude.
Wonder if we might see another european war in our lifetime. Probably with US/UK/Russ keeping out and just trying to swallow up what's left afterwards.
And then it will go UK/US vs Russland and whatever it managed to snatch up from the ashes of old europe.
Maybe even US/UK/China versus Russland and it's european ruins.
And whoever wins that will at some point start looking at africa, india, oceania and ausfailia i suspect. So, in probably round about 200 years of warfare, there might actually be a united earth under who ever won control.
Or if the conventional war fails:

Justice? Justice is coming to all of us, no matter what the fuck we do. You know, mankind's been trying to kill each other off since the beginning of time. Now, we finally have the power to finish the job. Ain't nothing gonna matter once those nukes start flying; we'll all be dust. And the victor here will be the smartest man on the cinder.

Even if the only thing the EU did was to stop another war in europe from happening, that would still be reason enough to actually keep the EU around.

[Kaelik]

A) You sure are pessimistic. Or alternatively optimistic if you think there is any chance of 200 years of war actually uniting the world under s a single government.

B)

Even if the only thing the EU did was to stop another war in europe from happening, that would still be reason enough to actually keep the EU around.

I think the main point is that most anti-EU people don't believe it is actually doing that.

[Stahlseele]

Not much reason to be anything but pessimistic, don't you think?

[DSMatticus]

Germany is just... the best possible thing you can do with Germany is not let them in your treehouse. Ever. Under any circumstances.

The last time Europe tried that Germany decided that it wanted Poland's treehouse.

The rise of Nazi Germany looks more like what the EU is doing to Greece than any act of political exclusion. A not-yet-hostile, not-yet-Nazi Germany kept insisting that their economy was in no shape to continue paying reparations for WW1, and Europe kept finding new and creative ways to remind them how much worse things could be. And then there were Nazis.

As far as diplomacy goes, "carrot and stick" seems to work much better than "hammer and anvil." If there are no good options on the table, eventually someone's just going to flip it.

[PhoneLobster]

There are a number of issues with the "generational change" strategy.

It's not just unreliable, but the right has a history of getting pretty desperate and damaging in it's last gasps, aside from simply dismantling democracy to prevent it from inevitably unseating them they also have this strongly documented (and currently in process) trend towards empowering fascist grass roots by exploiting them for political support... until those grass roots get too strong and take power for themselves.

It also means things WILL get worse before they get better. Workers rights for instance are crumbling around the EU right now. The UK labor party's current argument for remaining in the EU is something rather odd like "Workers rights would worsen if we leave the EU, but the while in the EU our workers rights worsened already, and if we stay in the EU without electing a labor government workers rights will very soon worsen again under the EU... so we need to stay in the EU (and elect labor)."

The neoliberal agenda has taken some SERIOUS fucking hits credibility and power wise world wide in the last decade or so. Actual public resistance and even a few parties openly resisting it HAVE now emerged. But it retains it's grip on power and it's insane destructive agenda marches on and has not even paused as it's credibility and mandate crumbles. It will keep marching on, keep making things worse until power is flat out taken away from it.

That very well may require waiting for generational change. But if it does, things are going to get REALLY bad over the next 20+ years in a lot of places, Europe especially.

[hyzmarca]

It also means things WILL get worse before they get better. Workers rights for instance are crumbling around the EU right now. The UK labor party's current argument for remaining in the EU is something rather odd like "Workers rights would worsen if we leave the EU, but the while in the EU our workers rights worsened already, and if we stay in the EU without electing a labor government workers rights will very soon worsen again under the EU... so we need to stay in the EU (and elect labor)."

Makes perfect sense to me.

Lets say that you're a prostitute, and you work as an independant contractor at a high-class brothel. You have to buy all of your own stuff from the brothel, and you have to give the brothel a cut of your pay. That's not good for you, at all.

On the other hand, the brothel has security cameras and armed guards monitoring them, so your clients aren't going to get rough with you. And they're not going to insist on going bareback, because condom use is mandatory and a large man with a gun will escort him out if he does. Also, it attracts a wealthy clientele so you can charge a lot more money.

On the other hand, there's a Pimp named G-Money who wants you to work for him. If you did that, you'd be hustling on the streets, without any of the protections that the Brothel provides. And though G-Money promises that he will provide even better protection and even better clients, that sounds rather dubious. The only real benefit is that he'll take a smaller cut of your income.

Other hand, some of the girls at the brothel want to unionize, which would go a long way towards addressing the power imbalance between the brothel owners and the workers.

[Mechalich]

Here's a question: I accept that the continued existence of the euro specifically and probably the entirety of the EU generally, is awful for Greece and related southern European economies with pretty much no room for improvement unless there's some unprecedented sea change in domestic German politics. Given that, how does a Brexit aid those economies? That's the part I'm not seeing.

Brexit clearly has mixed outcomes for the UK, but England is both not one of the countries being totally destroyed by the Euro like Greece or one of the little prosperous countries like the Netherlands that theoretically benefits the most from being part of a large combined market. The UK will adjust and survive, even if it ends up in a horrific recession because of the Brexit consequences.

I'm just not seeing a straight line connection between Brexit and destruction of the EU as a whole. If anything, such a move would seem to make Germany even more powerful within the context of the EU. And really, if Brexit does trigger a horrible recession in the EU - and even mildly punitive trade actions would certainly help cause that - I'd imagine that would scare the crap out of any other country thinking about leaving, even if the underlying economic conditions are vastly different.

[Kaelik]

Here's a question: I accept that the continued existence of the euro specifically and probably the entirety of the EU generally, is awful for Greece and related southern European economies with pretty much no room for improvement unless there's some unprecedented sea change in domestic German politics. Given that, how does a Brexit aid those economies? That's the part I'm not seeing.

Brexit clearly has mixed outcomes for the UK, but England is both not one of the countries being totally destroyed by the Euro like Greece or one of the little prosperous countries like the Netherlands that theoretically benefits the most from being part of a large combined market. The UK will adjust and survive, even if it ends up in a horrific recession because of the Brexit consequences.

I'm just not seeing a straight line connection between Brexit and destruction of the EU as a whole. If anything, such a move would seem to make Germany even more powerful within the context of the EU. And really, if Brexit does trigger a horrible recession in the EU - and even mildly punitive trade actions would certainly help cause that - I'd imagine that would scare the crap out of any other country thinking about leaving, even if the underlying economic conditions are vastly different.

1) I don't really think a Brexit does.
2) If the UK leaves and negotiates reasonable treaties, and nothing particularly bad happens to them, then it sets a precedence of not starting a Civil War, and then Greece would feel a lot better, and then might leave. Hence Frank's claim that Germany will absolutely destroy the UK to the point of WW III to make sure no one else leaves.
2.5) It seems pretty likely, all things told, that the first part of 2 is at least as likely as the Horrific Death Recession that people committed to the EU believe is inevitable.

Other hand, some of the girls at the brothel want to unionize, which would go a long way towards addressing the power imbalance between the brothel owners and the workers.

It's a lot like that, so long as we presume you are in a right to work state, and the EU will laugh at your union and fire you all while laughing.

[PhoneLobster]

Makes perfect sense to me.

Your weird arse prostitution fantasies are irrelevant and stupid and frankly a pretty piss fucking poor choice of hypothetical in general both on theme and your ultimately misguided particulars. I would point and laugh at them, but I feel it's more a matter of looking away in distaste.

The only thing about the labor campaign on the topic that makes sense is "...and elect a labor government" bit. That WILL, especially under Corbyn, benefit the workers, or at the very least harm them less.

...but it largely is the right choice completely separate to whether or not staying in the EU is the right choice or not. The labor party's argument itself concedes that the EU has been bad for workers rights and is about to become worse, and without the EU the labor party is pretty much free to do what they like on the matter, or at the very least certainly no less so than they are with the EU.