Skip to main content

Trump's America is attracting boycotts

The USA's position on the world's stage has taken a dramatic, shocking turn away from the rest of the liberal democracies.

Consumers are reacting with boycotts.

It is one thing to say that Europe must spend more on defence, that it must be able to carry its own weight in NATO, and that it has not been doing enough. I have said so myself. I get it, and I fully agree with the US on this.
Another thing is to shamefully attack a man, a victim, representing a country at war, who is desperate for help to save his nation, when he is willing to sign away his countries' resources to stop Putin from coming back for more of his country every few years. Zelensky is the victim here. Let us be crystal clear: Putin is a dictator who doesn't deserve a shred of our sympathy. Whatever you think of Zelensky, his country has been invaded by Russia. These are the facts: if you cannot handle them, you are in denial.

Calling Zelensky a dictator, inviting him to the oval office for a humiliating display of power, almost making him beg and worship the "leader of the free world", whom Zelensky should apparently thank every other word, every time he speaks: these are all part of a broader pattern of selfish, entitled behaviours that will keep people studying Trump's psychology busy for centuries. I'll leave the thrilling task of a medical diagnosis to the experts, but for now I think it's safe to say that Trump's erratic behaviour is rooted in a sense of superiority that makes him unfit for the job. Any job.

It isn't just Trump either. The whole administration is a constellation of insufferable personalities -- from Elon Musk to JD Vance, it is hard to imagine how all three of them could ever sit in a room without one's ego suffocating the others'.

People all over the world are watching how this administration is taking the side of the oppressor, blaming the victim, and working full time to dismantle democracy in their home country despite the many "checks and balances" that American political pundits have been claiming make "the US the greatest democracy in the world".

People are watching, and they are reacting. When tariffs were announced on Canadian imports, Canadians started boycotting American products at the supermarket. In Europe, Tesla's sales are down 45% on the year prior, and its share price is down 24% in a month -- numbers that make you wonder if he's still the richest man in the world, after all.
Social media users are promoting the boycott of American products, and a quick search on Reddit shows just how many engagements they're getting. The boycotts might turn out to be short-lived, but a lot depends on whether the perception of the current US administration will change. Musk's call for the US leave NATO is certainly not helping the case, and if the situation isn't deescalated quickly we might see anti-American sentiment spread further and reach concerning levels -- with banks ditching US stocks and, most importantly, US debt. I wouldn't put it past Trump to end the dollar's supremacy one mistake at a time.

Popular posts from this blog

The UK needs more, not less, austerity

  First of all let me say that this is a hill I’m willing to die on. In fact, when I hit “publish” and Starmer’s thought police inevitably come knocking on my door, I will proudly tell them that I regret none of what I’m about to write. My goal with this article is to divide my readers into two groups: the ones who love austerity (most of you will fall into this category by the time I’m done brainwashing you) and the ones who never have, and never will, understand the intricacies of primary school maths. Let’s start with a definition: what is austerity? Austerity is a broad term used to refer to policies that reduce the deficit/debt of a country, either via spending cuts, increased taxation, or both. The objective is to drive the deficit (and ultimately the debt) down, something that can hardly be argued is a bad thing to do, especially in countries that face the challenges of a rapidly ageing population. Quick note for everyone: the deficit is the difference between what the state...
Read more

Introduction

Each one of us has a set of guiding principles that shape our thought. These may be principles we have blindly inherited from our family, surroundings, or cultural exposure, or they may be ideas we have spent countless hours actively thinking about and debating, maybe even changing our mind a few times along the way before ultimately settling on a set of core principles we felt comfortable with. Regardless of where your principles come from, or how you came to holding them dear, I believe that the vast majority of us have at least some of these in common, and that it is very rare for someone to have a completely unoverlapping set of core beliefs with the rest of the population. Extremes do exist, of course, but I (maybe naively) believe that most people are good-natured, and that at least on the theoretical plane common ground can be found with almost anyone. Before we get to my core beliefs, I should say three things. The first is that core principles can translate differently into ac...
Read more

Italy’s love for the big state is a cultural remnant of fascism

 Today we are going to make Italians mad. And no, we will not be breaking spaghetti – something that my Italian family has been doing for generations, no, centuries, before TikTok videos started circulating claiming that Italians don’t break spaghetti. We do, in fact, break our spaghetti, just like any sane person with a functioning brain would do when the spaghetti clearly doesn't fit into the pot. I actually used to sometimes not break my spaghetti, but now I always do so out of spite: it gives me both physical and emotional pleasure to know that the Italian gods are frowning upon my heartless breaking of spaghetti. As much as I would love to talk about how only people living in a hopeless country could get brutally angry about other people’s freedom to break spaghetti, and how this relates to Italy still being a fundamentally fascist-loving country at heart, the topic I suggest for today is the following: the link between Italians loving the big state and Italy having experienc...
Read more