Why does he always look like he’s simultaneously smelling something rancid and missing the punchline of the joke you just told him?

I heard he divorced his wife in order to stay true to his anti-corruption conviction. Something about her working for Orban and partaking in corrupt conduct, but I didn’t pay too much attention to it since I try to avoid the news these days.

I am however glad and hopeful for Hungary! Seems like a step in the right direction and we really need some right steps these days because sheesh this clown world can be demotivating sometimes.

A lot of things are going on in Denmark right now to move away from American influence. You just don’t hear about it. I think we should officially condemn the US as well as Iran, but I’m not a politician. All I know is what I see in my day to day life and the general discourse in Denmark and that is that we are moving away from America. Actions taken in recent times have shown that we are ready to sever ties with America, we just do it slowly as to not upset the orange monkey, because if we go out and make ourselves too visible to America right now, there is a actual real chance that we will be invaded too.

I trust that my politicians know what they are doing, though.

Remember, we are a very small country and we are under real threat of a US invasion so there is a lot going on behind the scenes right now that most of us don’t know about.

That’s not how it went where I lived. People were actively protesting the Iraq war in the streets in my country and very vocal about our involvement in those wars. We are also the country that lost the most soldiers per capita to fight a war that didn’t have anything to do with us because America demanded it.

Which is also why it was a deep insult when Trump and Vance decided to attack Zelenskyj for the world to see, then subsequently threaten my country to give up Greenland and calling us shitty allies and starting a tariff war with Europe as a whole. We literally bled for them and gave up our dignity for them - it was a massive hit to the Danish self image to join the wars in the middle east - and the thank you we get is to be pissed on and for them to shit on Zelenskyj, piss on the rest of us and threaten to annex Greenland.

My distaste for America’s entitlement and arrogant tactics that we had to adhere to for years with the promise that they would help us if we needed them, was turned into a raging fire the second trump and vance did that to Zelenskyj. Every other thing that happened after that has just kept that fire alive, but I lost any and all respect for America when they invited Zelenskyj to the White House to act like a couple of high-school bullies.

I will never forgive and never forget. Ever.

Yeah, I guess I should have explained myself better, that my issue is that I have felt for a long time that my culture has increasingly been replaced with American culture due to the import of American entertainment. So our language has been altered and we have adopted American traditions while slowly phasing out our own and it has bothered me for a very long time. That isn’t Americans’ fault that we began adopting these cultural things, but if we end up separating ourselves more from America, then my hope is that we will also maybe start looking for cultural influence elsewhere and start embracing more of our own old traditions again.

Yeah, and in my weakest moments of anger this January, I certainly had some not so nice thoughts in that area, but honestly, I don’t think most of the people who voted for trump understood or expected him to be this crazy. Hell, I was fully preparing for him to pull out of Ukraine, which I thought was the worst thing he could do at the time, but with the Ukraine issue alone, the way he treated Zelenskyj actually pissed me off more than when he threatened Greenland for the first time. Anyways, I expected him to betray Ukraine, but he has done so much more than that in a fraction of the time I thought was possible. I couldn’t even in my most anti-American thoughts, have predicted or imagined the reality we currently live in.

So yeah, I’m willing to give many of his voters the benefit of the doubt. They probably believed he would help with inflation and secure jobs and yadda yadda. They probably truly believed he would be the better choice even if they didn’t agree with him on everything or just didn’t want to vote for the democrats or whatever. I imagine many have bitter regrets now. Especially the farmers who supported him, lol. But yeah. I try to extend an olive branch because this timeline is a total clown show.

Things will get better, though! We just need to steap in for the next couple of years, and then things are going to get better. It’ll probably take America decades to repair what trump has destroyed in less than two years, but am confident that something good will come from this nightmare for Americans as well. Big hugs!

If it is any comfort to you, most of us know that the people of America are largely decent and just want to live their lives and not bother anybody. My main issue with America has always been with the country and the culture, not really individual people. It would be foolish to hate on millions of people who have harmed nobody and just happened to be born somewhere.

In essence, my biggest gripe with America has always been on the pathetic excuse of a welfare system you guys have. You all deserve so much better and it pisses me off that you’re being taught to eat crow and not only like it, but express gratitude and pride for it. Many of you are smart enough to see through the bullshit, but all of you are stuck living in one of the richest countries in the world while having third world social conditions. I cannot express in words how disgusted I am by that.

As for all the geopolitical and media stuff, those are institutions I feel disgust towards.

I hope that no matter what happens in the future, that you and your fellow Americans will have better conditions to live under and better, more responsible leadership.

I am, however, still glad that my country as well as most other European countries are moving away from the USA. It was not an equal and fair relationship in many ways and both sides have been at fault to some degree. I think we are better off separate and I think that the US as a whole is also interested in this separation to look for new alliances. I for one, am thrilled about Europe’s future, even though this transition period is going to be tough. We will be stronger in the long run without the US.

As a Dane, I cannot underline enough how fucking done we are with the US.

I’m almost grateful that he’s being this obnoxious, because it means that we might have way less American influence in Denmark in the future and that is something I have yearned for since Bush.

A girl can dream.

Like you mentioned, many of those videos are doctored to make common Americans look stupid. I would even venture a guess and say that some of them are straight up fake with people probably being paid to act as stupid as possible.

As for Europeans’ ability to place countries on a map, I believe it varies in the same way it does in America. Some will be super sharp at it, others, probably most, will know some and then blank on the rest. Few will be entirely ignorant about geography.

I have a flags of the world app that I use once in awhile to train myself to recognize flags from different countries. There is an option to also try and place flags on the map and you work your way through one continent at the time. I absolutely fucking suck at placing flags in Africa and Polynesia. I have gotten to a point where I recognize most of their flags, so there is that, but I am still hopeless with the map part. I have a few blind spots in Asia and South America too. I am pretty strong with Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia at this point.

For me, I started practicing with the app years ago exactly because I realized how terrible my geography skills were even inside Europe. Later on it became a matter of rebellion when the Ukrainian war went into full swing and I wanted to give a big fuck you to the invisible wall that still stands between western and eastern Europe. Many people I know have always been geographically blind to eastern Europe, but that seems to be something many of us have worked on in recent years.

Now it is just a longterm goal for me to take some time once in awhile to practice. Can’t hurt to learn some basic bitch geography.

Ironically, the one thing I’m worse at placing than African countries, is American States, but they also aren’t a part of my flag app, so I haven’t actually practiced them. Similarly haven’t practiced the German States since I was in 7th grade so I only know a couple of those and blank on the rest.

I have a moment to reply to you now, so hopefully this will suffice:

I’m actually not only talking about transwomen vs bio women. I’m also talking about transmen vs bio men. I’m especially concerned about combat sports and similar where people could get seriously hurt due to a physical advantage/disadvantage. There are definitely sports where the skills needed aren’t depending on gender in the same way as others, but for me it’s always been about making sure that everybody has a fair chance and is safe. In disciplines where that isn’t an issue, I don’t care. I only care where there the advantages/disadvantages are a factor.

I also think I need to clear up that I don’t run around talking about trans people in sports all the time. To the best of my memory, I only brought up in the thread where I was permabanned from most of Lemmy because the thread claimed that all people who hold the opinion about trans people in pro sports are MAGA and I wanted to share that, that wasn’t always the case. I never really got to explain myself, just got labeled and banned and that was my main point in my original comment about how extreme Lemmy is and how difficult it is to foster a healthy debate forum when people are just as, if not more aggressive here than they were on reddit.

I’m not “unwilling to educate myself”. I just shared an opinion once and brought it up here as an example of how Lemmy is a terrible place for people to have talks and diverse opinions.

To me, it isn’t so much the opinions people have on here that disgusts me, it’s the way they communicate and debate. It is on an infantile level and it almost always in bad faith. That was my point in my original comment.

I frankly don’t give a damn what people do with their lives as long as they are happy and safe.

Also, I didn’t know you were trans and it doesn’t really change much for me either. I simply don’t agree that my view - not views - was transphobic. It may be uneducated since it’s not a topic I know everything about, but for something to be transphobic, it implies actively wanting to hurt and exclude trans people from society. You’re not gonna find me stating either anywhere.

I believe the most productive way to open people’s minds to the world isn’t to immediately go on the offensive and assume the worst about them when they say something that makes you go “Hm, I didn’t like that.” Most of the time it forces people into a very defensive position and closes them off from the points you’re trying to make and that is unfortunate.

I’m guilty of that myself, but I work on it and always try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt until they no longer deserve it. The latest example we had in the community I hail from was a guy who became increasingly unhinged in his views and we tried talking to him until the admin had to ban him when he crossed the line and started arguing for lynchings. The first couple of months he just seemed to have some unpopular opinions that we tried to understand where he was coming from and in the end he just turned out to be nuts, which is a shame. I know the cultures are different in different communities here, but I do like it best when we try and understand one another and not carry over the social engineering the big tech bros instilled in us to be hostile and trigger happy toward everyone we meet online. That is why I left mainstream social media. I want a social media where people can actually connect and see each other as human beings underneath one opinion you or I or they don’t like.

Because I’m pretty sure most of us are pretty chill and friendly people when we aren’t stuck in that loop of aggressive communication.

I have to dip again, but I hope some of my novel here helped give some context.

I hope you have a nice and way less busy day than me @,@

Sure, as long as it is safe for everybody. My main concern is combat sports where I don’t know if trans men and biological women wold be safe against an opponent who has been born with male musculature.

That is not the same as me wanting trans people to have no rights at all. It’s not black and white.

You called me a liberal. That must mean you’re talking through the American lens. You’re acting obtuse and aggressive for no reason. I feel no need to converse with you any further.

First of all, the original thread that caused me the ban was suggesting that all people who were critical of trans people in pro sports were MAGA. I shared my view point in order to disprove that notion. I’m very well aware that there are MAGA people with crazy views who make up crazy scenarios and that’s why I mostly don’t bother talk about the trans people in sports issue because that is not what is important right now.

All I wanted to do with my original comment, was to show that not everyone who question this specific issue is MAGA and that it is silly to claim so.

Second of all, where did I ever claim to want to take trans people’s rights away? Please stop putting words in my mouth.

Third of all, I am not a liberal and I’m not American. You couldn’t know that, but not every person on the internet is American nor do they live their lives through the American lens. That is also why lumping people like me in with MAGA is not only stupid, it is also a self report on how limited a scope one has on the nuances of perspectives people can have outside in the world and outside the US.

Happens everytime. I will say, though, that the people criticizing my comments here are pretty chill and normal compared to some of the batshit insanity I was met with early on when I joined Lemmy. So if anything, this is an improvement.

Just a heads up, it’s been a busy day and I’ll have an even busier day tomorrow, but I’ll try and reply to your comment when I have a moment to collect my thoughts. :)

That and also being agnostic, which I am as well. Holy shit the hatred both religious and atheist people have for the agnostics. Religion and politics really pushed me far away from most ideologies where groupthink is required for you to be accepted and total intellectual obedience is a demand. I have seen a bit of everything at this point in my life and I don’t want to be anywhere near groups like that.

I fully disagree with you there on my views being transphobic. If so, then the bar is in hell for what should and shouldn’t be considered transphobia. I reserve such term for actual oppression and hatred of a group where the hater actively wants to remove their ability to partake in society. It’s also not sexist to not have men and women box each other in a boxing ring, but instead keep them separated for safety and fairness.

I don’t mind disagreeing with people on different issues, but I resent whenever someone throws a label on their opponent instead of trying to talk about the issue in good faith. The rhetoric you use is a good example of why people can’t talk about anything with one another anymore without extremism being brought into it. It’s unproductive, fuels division among people who are otherwise likeminded and it creates echo chambers where no one ever has their views challenged. That is not the way if we want a normal and balanced society where everybody can talk with one another in good faith.

To me it looks like the democracy is working. Imagine if it was for a cause you are for. Then it’s nice to know you can have more than one attempt to get your cause implemented. That said, there probably should be a limit to how many times the same issue can be pressed before it has to be put in a sort of quarantine period for an agreed upon number of years. Maybe they already have that. I don’t know. I’m no expert on the matter.

Good, I’ll put my gun away now.

I was once permabanned on a couple of subreddits I had never visited before because I had commented on a thread in a sub they apparently didn’t like. It was called Kotaku and I had never heard of it before. Just saw a movie thread and commented because I love movies. The thing I hated the most about reddit was the expectation that everybody were as terminally online as the mods were. Not my fault a sub pops up in my feed and I decide to comment on the topic.

Was likewise permabanned from the true childfree subreddit for making a post where I wanted to talk to people about the thoughts and doubts that comes with being childfree. I was going through some things at the time and just wanted to talk to likeminded people. Permabanned for “trolling”.

And finally was permabanned for racism on a sub where the topic was the little mermaid remake and I mentioned that I thought Halle Bailey deserved better than to work for Disney. Had followed her and her sister’s youtube channel on/off since 2014 and really liked their voices and I didn’t want a young artist to be chewed up and spit out by one of the worst entertainment companies ever. I still love her and Chloe’s cover of Say Something and think it is better than the original.

So yeah, sometimes you get permabanned for literally no reason or a made up reason. I had no sad feelings when I left reddit. I absolutely hated the mods on most subs. None of them seemed to have lived in the real world for years.

I agree as long as you agree with me.