In my experience, how many people vote tactically massivelly depends on the voting system and whether it’s a presidential system or not.

The kind of utilitarian votes that sees one vote for somebody one does not like is not quite an Americanism because it doesn’t happen only in the US (for example, the UK, even though it doesn’t have a Presidential system, has a lot of tactical vote because they use First Past The Post for Parliament so each parliamentary seat is like a mini-presidential election where thare can only be one winner), but it’s not really common in other countries.

As I said, I was involved in Politics in two countries, including canvassing and leafletting, and from talking to people (as well as observing how my family, friends and party colleagues did their “politics”) voting it’s far more often an affair of the hearth than of the head, starting by how people chose which politicians to trust given that they all promise nice things to them.

The cold and rational pondering about who to vote is not actually that widespread and many of those who try are still being swayed by emotional factors (for example, via who they chose to trust and how much) and people tend instead to vote on who they like and trust (or dislike and distrust all of them hence refuse to vote).

Further, even the cold and rational pondering is often not that rational because when it comes to such complex subjects with such a high level of uncertainty and misinformation, most of what one choses to believe as informations and one’s own most favored forecast, is chosen based on less that scientific proof. (There is so much misinformation, disinformation and outright lying that chosing not to chose - i.e. not to vote - might be the most rational option of all).

What I’ve learned from decades of trying to go at things in a rational way is that we can never be fully Objective so it’s a good idea to be aware of and keep track of the Subjective elements in one’s decision making. Sure, it’s valid to try, just don’t decieve yourself that you have a perfectly logical decision making process and that everybody should be reaching the same conclusions as you.

From were I stand, your idea that you have a valid tactical approach and that it THE superior approach without question is just you misleading yourself about the nature of your information gathering and your thinking processes, hence you passing judgment on others for not going through the same obstacle course you do to end up making a decision which was de facto contaminated by subjective elements such as your choice of what information to trust and what forecasts you judged more likely, is like the blind criticing others for not seeing.

You really are not standing on top the moral high ground you think you’re standing on.

Not just me. This is common in other countries. People most definitely do not treat their vote as an endorsement. You can believe me or not or say I am bad, but this is a matter of fact.

Being from an “other” country, having lived in another 3 of said “other” countries, an even having been involved in politics in 2 of them, what you wrote is complete total bullshit.

Plenty of people do indeed have an utilitarian view of their vote, but lots of people, maybe even most, treat their vote as an endorsement.

In fact from my own experience in various countries the utilitarian view is more common in countries with less Democratic voting systems with few actually electable choices, similar to the US (so, for example, Britain) whilst the endorsement view is more common in countries with highly Democratic voting systems with lots of choices (such as The Netherlands, which has Proportional Vote).

I’m sorry but whilst you having an utilitarian posture is perfectly valid, your idea that it’s the only valid posture and other people don’t have different postures is complete total mindless self-centred bollocks.

Israel is literally a “Nation for Jews” in its constitution were it says roughly that all Jews and only Jews are entitled to Israeli nationality, hence why any Jewish person can just land at Tel-Aviv, ask to get Israeli nationality and get it.

That said, Israel, pretty much uniquelly in the World, separates Citizenship from Nationality and assigns different rights to both, so non-Jews can get Israeli Citizenship but not Israeli Nationality.

Limitations on the rights that people get from having Israeli Citizenship without the Nationality include, for example, limits to where they can live.

Appartheid in Israel is already officially implement, since the very beginning, so even if the Palestinians were given Israeli Citizenship (highly unlikely given Israel’s track record on this: for example tens of thousands of Arab residents in Jerusalem have for decades been refused Israeli Citizienship even though they were born there and lived there their whole lives), they would still have less rights than Israeli Jews or in fact any Jew in the world if they came to Israel.

Both of those things are the same: Liberal Politicians are just pro-Oligarchy (i.e. anti-Democracy) types cosplaying as pro-Equality using a highly hypocrite construct (not really Equality, which is equal in all dimensions, but rather one that only defends “equality” for some people or things and not for others, especially not for anything involving Wealth) and hence morally bankrupt.

PS: I wrote “Liberal Politicians” because a lot of normal people who see themselves as Liberals haven’t actually deep dived into analysing the ideology whose superficial slogans they parrot to discover its fundamental contradictions - starting by how it classifies people by characteristics they were born with (hence not of their choise and not reflecting them as people) and then treating them based on the prejudices one holds for or against the one of such classifications those people are deemed to belong to, as well as the whole "NEVER, EVER, EVER talk about Wealth Inequality and the inequality of treatment based on Wealth) - so genuinelly think they are defending a moral and ethical position whilst in fact being the useful idiots of the Neoliberals who just to divide the Left into a neoliberal-style competition were people, driven by Greed, fight against each other but claiming to do it for the “group” rather than for themselves.

Zeleneskyy voiced support to Israel right after 7 October and has been completely silent about the whole thing since.

Sounds a lot like how a lot of Jewish people (and not only Jewish people) reacted to it and subsequent events afterwards - they first saw Israel as a victim and supported it but over time changed their minds seeing what Israel was doing using that attack as an excuse and possibly as additional information about Oct 7 that was not straight out of the Israeli Authprities emerged.

It certainly doesn’t sound at all like a Zionist (for example Biden or most political leaders in Germany) have reacted: those have very vocally continued their “unwavering support” for Israel.

If Zeleneskyy morally supported the actions of Israel even once it became clear they had gone from self-defense to committing a Genocide, he would have kept voicing unwavering support for Israel, yet he has stopped talking about it altogether, and since Ukraine requires the support of the US and Germany, both countries were all main parties support the Israeli Neue Nazis and their Neue Holocaust, saying nothing at all is the smart balance he found between Morally being against the actions of Israel and doing what is best for Ukraine.

Good old German power elites: there has never been a Holocaust they didn’t support…

I lived in the UK back during Brexit and the only people who said that “the BBC is Leftwing” were the English Far-Right - in fact that kind of stuff started (or at least became “mainstream” enough to be noticeable) at around that time and then was picked up by the Far-Right populist side of the Tory Party during the Leave Referendum.

They’re a posh kind of Rightwing, so far more subtle than loudmouths like Farage, Boris Johnson and Trump, but it didn’t take me long after coming to live in the UK (a decade before Brexit) to notice how much to the Right they were (not even Center-Right) from their fawning coverage of the Monarchy, almost invariably positive spin on the “upper” classes and the ultra-wealthy and heavy nationalist take on all foreign affairs (they almost invariably spinned it as “other countries are listening to Britain” when the same news in foreign media barely if at all mentioned Britain).

Certainly the core message from the BBC was always that “the System is good as it is, be proud of it” and “don’t make waves”, in a country which is highly unequal and has pretty low Social Mobility when compared to the rest of Europe.

Also remember how, well before they had any meaningful impact, the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson got way more airtime in the BBC than, say, the leader of the Greenparty.

Brexit didn’t happen by chance: the fields were Far-Right Nationalism flourished had been long plowed by amongst others the BBC.

But, but, but … the propaganda bot here keeps telling us the BBC is Leftwing.

How could they be Leftwing and have a bias in favour of ethno-Fascists, the farthest Far-Right there is?

Surely the BBC employees are wrong!!!

Yeah, because of this situation the dark unreformed underbelly which is the thinking about people as “ethnics” that was one of the core foundations of Nazism, has been brought to light - very much alive and well - in the power structures of Germany and its power elites.

Non-Jews defining what being a Jew is, denying what actual Jews said about it, is exactly the kind of thing Nazis do (both the literal, historical Nazi Party members and supporters and present day ethno-Fascists)

The real anti-semites are the ones who accuse of anti-semitiesm people who are against Genocide, since that is logically equivalent to saying that commiting Genocide is a Jewish trait.

Couldn’t agree more.

The Economy (namelly GDP) is a deeply flawed metric when what one wants is The Greatest Good For The Greatest Number (the basic Leftwing principle), since it’s a Trade-centric metric hence measures just one part of the human experience and even that done in a pretty unrepresentative way - either countrywide numbers that ignore the proportion of it per people are used or when we do get per-capita numbers they’re based on mean values (that suffer from the “if 1 guy has 10 chickens and 9 have 0 chickens, then in average each has 1 chicken” problem) never the mode which is the one that best covers most people’s experience.

The point about housing is especially puignant because it’s how a lot of GDP “growth” was fabricated during the last couple of decades: house prices go up which is counted as more raw GDP but the house price Inflation (which is the entirety of that price raise, as there was no actual improvement of the houses themselves) is not counted in the Inflation index used to Deflate the raw GDP to create the supposedly inflation-free Real GDP (the official one) so house price increases make that figure which has been made politically important look good whilst the thing is not at all good - the value of a house has no utility value for those who live in it (who would have to sell the house to realize it but also buy another one at equally inflated prices so ultimatelly gain nothing from high prices) whilst it presents a massive problem for those who don’t own their own house (also because rent prices follow house prices) with, for example, the situation in Portugal that the average age a person leaves their parents’ home is 34 and half the people who graduate with a Degree leave the country because salaries are low and cost of living (which for a recent graduate is more than half housing) are very high in proportion to it, something that’s also causing lower birth rates in one of the most aged countries in the World since people have children later and don’thave as much available money to pay for the costs of them, hence have fewer (in average below the number that’s necessary to keep the population number steady).

GDP goes up but homeowners saw no improvement since their house is not in fact any better and in some cases are even worse of because if they want to get a better house - say, to get a room for their children - the difference they have to pay in price between the old one and new one is larger, whilst those who do not own their house have to pay larger rents, so have less free money for other things since salaries have not gone up anywhere as fast. Only “investors” are better of from this, and they’re a tiny fraction of Society (and here in Portugal a large part, if not most, don’t even live here, so they’re not even in this Society).

And this is just one thing were The Economy and how it’s measured is unrepresentative. Don’t get me started on Ecology and how Nature is treated in this has having little or no value for people.

Alfred Nobel never created a Nobel Prize for Economics.

Instead what there is is the Swedish Central Bank Prize For Economics In Honor Of Alfred Nobel, which is not a Nobel Prize but they convinced the Nobel Committee (using a lot of $$$) to treat it as one.

Now, I don’t know if this guy is right or if he is wrong, but trying the whole Appeal To Authority thing using a “Nobel Prize” which is no such thing to throw some generic criticism on other Political models has a strong whiff of Propaganda.

PS: Also his arguments are very much cherry picking. For example I’m Portuguese and calling European Integration a “remarkable success story” for Portugal is hilarious - the actual reality was that Portugal grew massively when it kicked out Fascism (and the country was very Leftwing back then, so for example invested massively in Education and created a National Healthcare System) accelerated a bit when it joined the EU (because the money the EU sent to help with integration of what was then one of the poorest countries in the EU added up to a significant fraction of the GDP), then braked hard when the EURO came to be, culminating in the aftermath of the 2008 Crash with the country’s Economy significantly shrinking and the Troika coming over and forcing Austerity (which later even Cristine Lagarde admited was “the wrong thing to do”) and forced Privatization of actual profit-making state companies creating veritable anchors around the neck of the Economy in the country (for example, Telecoms are compared to average incomes very expensive in Portugal, a “rent” borne by the rest of the Economy which pulls down for example small businesses and kills business opportunities that rely on widespread digital access). Looking back all the best things that were done for Portugal were very much Leftwing such as investment in quality Public Education, a National Health Service and large programs of public housing (which were stopped decades ago, so now we have a giant house price bubble).

It wasn’t Capitalism that pulled Portugal out of the shitter, it was kicking out the Fascists and basically Social Democracy (and I don’t mean in the Portuguese Social Democrat Party, who are hard right with have nothing at all to do with the actual ideology in the name of the party), topped up with charity from the EU (in a way good while it lasted but then again went into all the wrong things, so the country has disgracefully bad rail-service everywhere but the North-South between the two main cities but lots and lots of underused highways built with that money).

Yeah, well, the most racist Western states (such as the US, UK and Germany) all support the Last White Colonialist State in the World against the “violent” locals who “don’t have Western values” (i.e. are not White).

If there’s one thing this has shown is that the power elites in some Western countries still have the very same values as they did back in the late 1900s (which in the case of Germany is the same kind of thinking that fueled Nazism).

I saw the whole Brexit thing first hand and I also saw how EU Membership was sold in my home country of Portugal which was way poorer, and the arguments were anchored on completelly different things.

The whole argumentation in Britain was anchored on quite massive Delusions of Grandeur (i.e. “Britains and Britons are better than the rest”) amongst most of the population (even Remainers used the argument that “we can better change the EU from the inside”, a viewpoint anchored on the idea that Britons knew better that everybody else) whilst in Portugal it was almost the opposite since one of the attractions of EU Membership was bringing better laws to Portugal from Europe (back in the 80s there was this whole idea that everything from richer nations abroad was better, which in this specific subject turned out to be mainly true).

Also on the Economic side of the argumentation, in Britain which is a much wealthier country the argument that “we lose money because of the EU” (which, by the way, was total bollocks) was easy to believe, whilst in Portugal it would be a crazy hard sell since the country is much poorer and the only natural resource it has is the sun, which is hardly something that could be claimed that the EU wanted to steal ;)

Then there’s also the whole “big” (relative to the rest) country and “small” country side of the argumentation - being part of a big group is a massive protection for small countries in a World were medium side and bigger countries will invariably bully smaller ones, not always in peaceful ways (just look at what Russia, China and the US do, the latter sometimes via proxys as is doing at the moment via Israel).

So I strongly suspect that in Moldova the arguments were similar to those in Portugal and not at all like those in Britain.

If there’s one thing I learned from observing Brexit first hand as an EU immigrant in Britain, is that the vast majority of people don’t really care about the EU unless they are or see a way to directly benefit from it (as I benefited from Freedom Of Movement) and even when they do care they don’t understand how most of the mechanisms which are the point of the EU affect their lives (hence Brexiters only saw immigration and not how an island with no natural resources and a Service-centric Economy can’t just default to WTO rules for exporting Services because WTO Treaties don’t cover those, whilst even Remainers couldn’t see the whole “together we’re stronger” side and kept claiming that Britain could “better change the EU from the inside”, which is not a teamplayer position).

So EU membership ends up being sold to the public on pretty generic promises of improvement of their own lives and on single sides the EU’s many-sided nature, a message which is far easier to distort and even use in reverse by anti-EU actors.

I bet Bliken will go there personally to rebuke them, since that’s the only way he can give them a wink and a nod along with the stern warning.

Putin isn’t even able to overrun Ukraine who have been getting mostly equipment from 1 generation ago, mostly late and with a ton of limitations imposed on its use, and has a much smaller population than Europe (and a tiny Economy next to it), and you think he would be able to overrun Europe?

Poland alone would probably suffice to stop him.

You’re right.

I checked the dictionary definitions and the words have indeed a somewhat different meaning than I thought, including in the detail that Nepotism is familiy and friends whilst Cronyism is only friends.

So thanks for that correction!

What the US politicians think, decide and legislate is irrelevant: the US actually targetting EU nations would directly yield counter-sanctions from the whole of the EU because that’s a core part of the EU Membership Treaties (so, not the kind of thing that can just be blocked by a veto from a US-friendly EU member nation), and those would seriously impact the US Economy, not to mention the indirect impact on the US’ broader geostrategical influence from treating the EU as an adversary.

For the EU it would be something like Brexit - even if the EU loses from a hard posture, it cannot afford to let the other side get away with it without very painful consequences because that would result in them doing even worst things later and would incentivise others to do the same - only in this case the EU would suffer way less from playing hardball with the US than it did from doing it with Brexiting Britain.

For the US it would basically be comitting Trade Suicide at the feet of China.

If the US Congress and Senate are too stupid and actually pass those laws and POTOS too is too stupid and actually uses it, all without the companies that are going to get screwed the most by counter-sanctions (mainly Tech) lobbying that proposal away into nothing, thats a lot more a US problem than an EU problem and there is no way at all that the upsides are close to even just begin to justify the downsides.

(Sure it would hurt the EU, just a lot less than doing nothing about it would).

Personally I would love for the US policians to try it and find out.