when you're at the point of opining banning your opposition (Germany), cancelling elections after losing them (Romania), or dissolving parliament because you are about to (France), it's not really that big of a step to complain that somebody can afford to buy more stickers for candidate you don't like than you can.
in fact you can even just skip the pretense and go directly back to being a monarchy, which would save on european hypocricy and a lot of bookkeeping in general
@icedquinn For Romania you can also add banning people from running as candidates in an election. It's not as bad as banning an entire political party like Germany is thinking about, but we're trying our best. (by the way, the reason we had 2 candidates banned from participating is basically that they criticized EU and NATO, and maybe vaguely insinuated the possibility of leaving these alliances).
@icedquinn So the latest in the story is that a local TikTok influencer, named Bogdan Peșchir, spent almost $1 million on bribing people (through 265 intermediates) to buy votes for the now banned candidate Călin Georgescu. I guess the insinuation is that the money he was spreading around might have come from Russia, but so far I haven't seen it proven. But we do know that another ally of Georgescu was contacting a Russian military official, so we might end up with something eventually.
That being said, while there are some serious crimes here, and lots of people are gonna end up in jail, based on the evidence we have so far, it's still hard to argue that the fraud was the decisive factor in getting Georgescu beyond the 1st round of presidential elections. Or in other words, cancelling the elections hasn't been justified yet, imo.
@icedquinn Until a Trump or Vance lead USA decides to step in and conquer us.
@icedquinn No, but we can always hope that they won't stop at Greenland, and will MAGA straight to Europe. Add another 27 states to the glorious USA.
@icedquinn Wouldn't that be more the Middle East?
early christians overlapped with stoics a bit but they still screwed it up (and then screwed it utterly to hell by creating the catholic church.)
@icedquinn Still, Christianity wasn't born in Europe, and at least Western Europe is actually far less Christian today than US. Eastern Europe IS more Christian than US, but across the EU, we probably average out somewhere at American levels. Though, at least in my country, we're less fanatical than those mega churches over there.
@icedquinn I forgot who I heard that was speculating that Trump was an atheist. It was some recognizable atheist figure, but I forgot who. Maybe the atheist community is starting to cope too. I remember when people were confidently saying that Obama was one too.
@icedquinn I know. But I wonder why some people need this in their life. Are they trying to validate the atheist movement or what? Like the obsession with trying to get Jordan Peterson to say he doesn't ACTUALLY believe in a god the way the Pope does. Who gives a shit?
@icedquinn I wonder if it's more of a conquering/imperial mindset. I would expect tribalism would be Jordan Peterson being rejected and expelled way earlier than he was. But instead prominent atheists kept trying for years to convince him to call himself an atheist.
For Obama it kinda makes some sense, since he is in the same left-wing political tribe, and they were hoping he was in their religious tribe too. But they hate Trump. Why would you acknowledge even the slightest possibility that he's one of yours?
It almost feels like they want to conquer big personalities and maybe afterwards they hope to be able to profit somehow from it.
