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?
hindus see gods and are like oh if i play by the rules i can get promoted someday
christians see gods and hiss because only THEIR patron gets to torture them every day for no reason
buddhists are like if i sit and don't think for long enough they'll forget i exist
stoics saw gods and were like
do things for me
nyo
going to punish you until you do
bring it bitch
we're actually doing this indeed
@icedquinn Look, clearly Talos is the one true god, and Elves are heretics we need to conquer.
@icedquinn Yes, but they also wanted to undo Mundus. Don't know how well you know the lore, but human or not, Talos was the embodiment of Lorkhan (kinda like how Christ is God in Christianity). And since in TES, gods gain power and exist based on people worshiping them, if you stop the worship, the god ceases to exist. And since Lorkhan is basically the creator of Mundus, getting rid of Talos/Lorkhan allows you to undo the world.
except the daedra who didn't commit cosmic suicide. though there is a limited totality of daedra star-stuff, so they are unable to ever grow in numbers.