There's this impulse to "be informed" which means I read Twitter

There's some kind of basic category error going on here.

I'm waiting for the results of the election to decide if I'm moving overseas.

Maybe you can put this thread in the mix. Also, as much shit about bad things going on in Canada as you can manage. I haven't looked at recent house prices in the Canadian city I like best because it will just depress the fuck out of me.

Everything really is so bad.

It's not as bad as Twitter. I quit that when I started catching Pokemon.

How much of this is in reference to the bombs(?) sent to basically Trump's top 5 enemies list?

A close friend did move to Toronto last year for a tech job, but also because the U.S. was as it was. The fact that I haven't left yet probably means I'm not going to leave.

This is a very subjective, distorted personal perspective, and I'm aware that it's open to justified attack, but: if you put aside the Trump reality show element of this era (the rallies, the brazen lying and personal corruption, etc.), I'm struck by how it still feels to me like the Bush years, only a) things in Europe look a lot worse and b) everything here is several iterations further along. Foreign policy is also pretty different, apart from significant inertia.

Politics certainly keep getting worse, but the related idea that people keep getting stupider seems to have a good deal of counter-evidence, most recently http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/23/younger-americans-are-better-than-older-americans-at-telling-factual-news-statements-from-opinions/.

Although I'm sure the above link is helpychalk-signal.

Or Moby-bait, to set us straight on the age-period-cohort distinction.

I was told there would be no math.

What AcademicLurker said at 1.

Don't read Twitter. Read ThinkProgress, where you'll actually see good news from time to time (like when the Trump administration backs off this or that, a rare victory).

Maybe I'm outta my skull on this. But aside from moving -overseas-, it seems like the best bet is to move to California. We have more brown people here than white people: so no way some racist fascist nightmare happens here. And if America goes to shit, some massive percentage of all Canadians live 50mi from the border -- not like they aren't gonna be affected, and badly.

But I could be wrong.

P.S. And I know that it's expensive here. Heck, I could live a much, much richer life back in Texas where I grew up. But then I'd have to live in Texas.

Oh, that's rich.

I'm sure there are already four votes to overturn Wong Kim Ark -- one more and California politics changes drastically.

7 Bush was bad, got a lot of people killed, and I hate him -- but I never was afraid he'd suspend the constitution for citizen-opponents. Trump longs for dictatorship, and is building a faction that has no allegiance to the democratic tradition at all.

I agree. I was trying poorly to express how I feel about wanting to stay here vs wanting to leave (during the Bush years it was various places in Europe, not Canada, that were the draw). I remember arriving in the U.S. after spending time abroad in 2006 -- summer, before the elections -- and just dreading getting off the plane. It feels much more now like things may be worse here but the rot is everywhere.

This may be a function of getting older, but I think it's also a function of the Great Recession and my expectations of global resiliency after another one.

Also, as much shit about bad things going on in Canada as you can manage.

For example! The current premier of Ontario -- that bullying, Trump-lite buffoon who is also the brother of the late, and utterly disgraced and disgraceful, Toronto mayor Rob Ford -- is currently attacking labour rights, environmental protections, and "judicial activism"...

And Toronto housing prices are truly insane.

At least Ford was drunk and high. Trump does his shit sober.

I worry that Ontario's... issues... are a harbinger of something, yes. Maybe someone can organize the raccoon proletariat.

I thought about moving to Canada but the only places with jobs suitable for me are super expensive, and the jobs don't offer a proportionate increase in salary.

I'm still actively pursuing moving to Berlin, as many startups there sponsor visas. Would probably have to take a pay cut but cost of living is lower than where I am. Yes, I'm aware of AfD (every interviewer asks me this). But I think them having 14% of parliament is still a preferable situation to America's, where what is effectively the fascist party controls >50% of the legislature. Not to mention all the concomitant increases in quality of life that would come with living in Berlin.

I'm not going anywhere. Fucking fucks aren't fucking shoving me out.

I moved back from overseas after Trump got elected. Part of the problem of being overseas at this time is you feel so damn helpless to do anything. Of course, I feel that way now that I'm back in the US, too.

19- I know just the man for the job.

You want to get distemper? Because that's how you get distemper.

My single biggest takeaway from Tooze's latest is that the German political class is intellectually and morally bankrupt. They can't and won't act sufficiently even to fix European problems, much less global ones, nor even help anyone else do so. It's the US or nothing.

I have bad news there.

Move to Ohio. Not so hard.

I did seven years in Ohio

Don't tell me what's hard.

12.1 is hilarious.

21.2 is absolutely right. Not only that, but I have relative power, all things considered. No way am I going to abandon my country, which I love dearly, and my friends and colleagues, who I care about even more dearly and most of whom are more vulnerable than me. There is no force on God's green Earth that could get me to even joke about leaving the U.S.

Still not moving to Ohio. Not that determined.

Florida?

I currently live in a state just as purple and divided as any.

Kind of on topic: This seems relatively hopeful compared to what I would have expected.

I'm more or less where Witt is, but a smidge less earnest about it, but I mean that lovingly.

Years in Texas have destroyed your earnest.

At a recent fundraiser one Congressional candidate claimed that Pennsylvania is transitioning from purple to periwinkle. Whether or not it's true, she demonstrated that the conversation changes when the Democratic Party nominates more women.

I don't even know is that's an improvement.

Totally off-topic, but it's 40 comments now:

I'm looking for recommendations of where to stay in Houston in mid-November. Is it possible to find a hotel where I could walk to places to eat, and also be on the light rail? Or is it all sprawl everywhere?

It is almost all sprawl everywhere, but the light rail goes through Midtown and the Texas Medical Center. Midtown will have food, but there might not be many hotels. The Medical Center will be more like the opposite. Montrose has food and is not far from Midtown, but it's not on the light rail.

There's also downtown, of course, which is on the light rail and has restaurants. But it might be kinda empty outside business hours.

Thanks. Downtown seems to be my main option at this point, within my budget. Midtown looks good, but aside from not seeing hotels, isn't on the same light rail line of where I need to be (it's a work trip).

Huh. I didn't know there was more than one light rail line. Love that Texas can-do spirit!

Just opened a new line in 2015, apparently.

I'm moving back to Canada in about 5 days. So nervous, so excited...and so grateful for that accident of birth that entitles me to all of the rights and privileges, along with all of the responsibilities, obligations, and duties and etc., of Canuckistani citizenship.

But mostly I just want to go home.

31 is kind of where I am too -- also, I don't think going away really solves anything, if you're already part of US society. You can decide you're just not going to pay attention to US politics living in Baltimore as easily as living in Belgium. God knows lots of people are doing it. There's no where you can go where Trumpism isn't going to be fucking shit up.

46 is a big deal! Congratulations -- you've been away for many years, no? Do they give you the raccoon-charming flute when you cross the border? SAVE ONTARIO

I also would like to visit Houston. Thank you for the tips.

I dream of northern Sweden but then it's 35 years since I lived through a Swedish winter. And getting an Irish passport is just practical. But, although we have nothing as ghastly as Trump, the choices facing a British voter are all so palpably inadequate to the tasks ahead.

22 is how I feel living overseas. I moved for the job and other personal reasons though, not to get away from the hellscape that has become American politics.

20: Hi Ponder, I'm in Berlin! Though not in a position to do any hiring.

25: Can you point to Tooze's latest? I may have Views. (I had a quick look, but it wasn't obvious which of his writings you meant.)

My flip answer to your summary is, Do you really want Germans thinking big? Because that's been tried before.

More considered reactions to the summary: German political types have come up through a culture and selection process that values consultation and consensus. Thus their approach tends to be small-bore and incremental, punctuated by long meetings on everything.

But there are two other hands to keep in mind. First, the consensus tends to be really resilient. Tory Brexit fantasists (but I repeat myself) keep saying that German business is going to pressure Merkel into accepting whatever they have cooked up to have their cake and eat it too. German consensus behind the EU, especially at the elite level in business and politics, is really strong. The EU27 are not splitting over Brexit mainly because they don't have to, but secondarily because German consensus (and thus Franco-German comity) is not the least bit wobbly. So yeah, consensus takes a long time to forge (lemme tell you about two-hour class-level PTA meetings), but once achieved it is strong and durable.

Second, improve a little here and make things a little better there, and in due course, things are quite a bit nicer than before. It's obvious, but not mentioned enough. Examples from Germany include the amount of renewable energy going to the grid in a country that is not exactly known as bright and sunny. Packaging and recycling are another long-term example. It looks like Germany is going to get on the bandwagon to require that all new vehicles from a certain date (2030? not following closely) be electric (or possibly hybrid, again, not following closely). Journeys to Rome and all that.

It's true that policy people in Germany do not think in big terms in the way that American counterparts tend to do, but that is a long way from morally and intellectually bankrupt. I've been in or near the think-tank scene since I've been here (1998-2008, then Tbilisi and Moscow through 2012, back in Germany from 2012) and thinking at global scale does not come naturally. Honestly, the folks I have found closest to the Americans in this regard have been Russian. Fifty years as a superpower and the rest of the time as a gigantic country have an effect.

I'd be interested to see what examples Tooze has in mind for German ineffectiveness, especially for European issues. One of the key things to always keep in mind, though, is that active German policy generally works very hard not to be seen that way. "Pushy Germany" still leads to a visceral reaction in many parts of Europe, for very good reasons. One of the few times that Germany really truly put its foot down was over the location (and thus by implication the character) of the European Central Bank. Germans within the EU have, I think, learned from the example of Americans within NATO. One of the measures of your power within an organization is your restraint in using it. If you are smart about using it, explicit shows will be rare, and it will be more like gravitational influence shaping the whole setting.

And holy hell, consider some of the other possibilities. Imagine the migrant wave of 2015 with a conservative German government that wasn't led by a pastor's daughter with a scientific background. Back in the early 2000s, much of the conservative establishment wanted the execrable Roland Koch as Chancellor. Part of his rise to power in Frankfurt's state was on the slogan "Kinder statt Inder," the idea that Germans should have more kids instead of hiring computer experts from India. Consider a Germany led now by a nativist natalist. There wouldn't be an AfD because the CDU would be filling the neo-fascist role.

Anyway. It looks like I had Views, even without reading any new Tooze.

52.2: I presume he meant Tooze's latest book, "Crashed"?

Germans within the EU have, I think, learned from the example of Americans within NATO. One of the measures of your power within an organization is your restraint in using it. If you are smart about using it, explicit shows will be rare, and it will be more like gravitational influence shaping the whole setting.

Would that we had Americans in power in the US that still remembered that.

53: Oh, that makes sense.

Googling that book makes me annoyed all over again that the merged publisher is not officially called Random Penguin.

Anyway, is there an article version for people who probably won't read the book? I probably won't even read The Fifth Risk (Michael Lewis) or Moneyland (Oliver Bullough), and I really like those authors' other books.

Plus the general tendency of current affairs books to be better in the articles that led to the book contract in the first place.

Yes, Crashed. The short form is on his blog in entries called "Framing Crashed" plus others on the 2008 crisis generally. (Reading those collectively does essentially make the book redundant.) Argument later.

56: Thx.

(Also looking forward to argument later.)

Stocastic Auk would also be great.

ALEATORAUK

54: Right? I don't get the need to be seen to be pushing people around.

I'm not sure Canada is much better politically. But 3/4 of my immediate family has Canadian citizenship and sometimes the news makes me think that they really do have options, don't they?

I'm surprised by the **** Ford thing in Ontario. I could look up the numbers (but won't) but I figured that the plurality of people in Ontario lived in Toronto, which would be a bulwark against conservatives (the Illinois/Chicago model, basically) but either Toronto is less liberal than I thought, or there are way more people scattered across the frozen tundra (and in the suburbs) than I imagined.

I'm not sure Canada is much better politically

I don't know. My kids had their first active-shooter drill a little while back.

If they don't practice, how will they learn to spree-kill.

Don't let your kids grow up to be campers.

63: Gun control and health care is 99% of it.

62: iIt was a combination of the suburbs--many/most of which are part of the municipality of Toronto--and having the left fragmented in a FPIP system. The NDP, Liberals, and Greens combined got almost 58% of votes, while the Conservatives only received 40.5%. FWIW, the truly frozen part of Ontario went NDP.

62: Toronto is way less liberal than you thought, in part. They elected Rob Ford, after all. And the current mayor-- the supposed antidote to Ford-- is a former leader of the provincial Conservative party whose last name is (and I swear I'm not making this up) "Tory."
But also, Ontario politics are deeply weird. For instance: Doug Ford is definitely racist, and his policies will be terrible for people of colour. He was happy to have his photo taken recently with prominent neo-N/azi F/aith G/oldy. But like his brother before him, Doug Ford and the Conservative Party won lots of votes in racialized communities. He more or less swept the Toronto suburbs, which are probably the least white communities in Canada. So while there are some Trumpian populist things about Ford, and living in Ontario for the next 4 years will be awful in lots of ways, his isn't a government of avowed white supremacists for white supremacists in quite the way Trump's is.

63: My Canadian kids have active shooter drills every year in their very safe public school system. It enrages me.

Are you close to the border? Because American sociopaths have cars.

We're all close to the border.(90% of all Canadians live within 100 miles of the US.)

Canada has had quite a lot of school shooters, sadly. All homegrown. No need to import them.

68: it depends what you mean by "Toronto." If you're talking about the political entity that is now called "Toronto," you're absolutely right. But that's because "Toronto" gobbled up a huge number of its suburban remoras about a decade ago, consolidating a gigantic metropolitan region and making itself into a far less progressive place in the process. But the city of Toronto (the part that urbanists would consider the urban core and its environs) continues to be incredibly lefty and is, I'm told, only growing more so.

I'm also a bit surprised--but only because of a failure of imagination on my part--by the nationalism expressed in this thread. I guess it makes sense that people here have real affective ties to the USA, but I think I must be rootless enough and suspicious enough of institutions that I mostly don't. I love many people who live in this country. I like many things about this country, especially its geography. But I don't think I love the country, as a country, itself--mind you, I don't hate it either; I'm just not emotionally invested either way--though I've devoted my career to thinking and writing about its history. Regardless, I'm still not planning to move, because my options are very limited and not particularly appealing, but I certainly do think about whether expatriating my family would be better in the long run for my kids and their as-yet-notional kids.

I'm very, very emotionally invested. These fucking shit fucks aren't just doing horrible things to other people, they're trying to change the definition of something I am a part of in ways that I am hostile to.

Finally--good comments come in threes, you know--I never really started with twitter, and I'm very glad of that non-decision. I recognize that it works well for some people, but I'm definitely not one of them. Add to that, I've drastically cut back on my time spent online and on my consumption of political news of any kind, and I do seem to be measurably less miserable about the state of the world than I used to be. What seems to have happened is that I remain as engaged politically as I once was--I give money to candidates, phone bank weekly, will travel to Nevada on election day to drive people to the polls, etc.--but I don't know what's happening, other than big stories, on a daily basis. It turns out that the world keeps spinning even without my monitoring its progress. And it's an enormous relief not to pay any attention to absolute bullshit like polling.

Spineless shit fucking rats.

74: the doing horrible shit to people part is an outrage, and I care deeply about that. But the "America" part doesn't really resonate with me, because, I suspect, I've never actually felt like its mine or I'm part of it.

Well, you should try because I don't have the temperament to engage in this political fight without calling the other side shit-covered dickless asswipes, but I'm pretty sure that would be counter productive.

I was just in Canada for a week and it really was relaxing not to be in the US. It's just nice to not have to wonder every time you interact with a stranger whether they voted for Trump. (Yes I know Canada, and especially where I was in Alberta, is full of people with awful conservative opinions, but voting for Trump is different.) Also nice that the airport has CBC news instead of CNN (and at a much lower volume).

I'm with Moby. I want to go around and knock the word "America" out of some motherfuckers' mouths. The Real America is Hollywood and NYC and Boston. It's the City of Broad Shoulders plus the City of Brotherly Love plus the city of "Keep Austin Weird". It's Toni Morrison and William Faulkner. It's NASA and TCP/IP. It's millions and millions of immigrants. It's everyone one of you who is an American. Even you, von wafer.

And the rest? The Trumps, the nativists, the Republican hacks? The rest are a bunch of blood-sucking ticks along for the ride, trying to take credit for how fast the horse is galloping.

Have we talked about the Google/Toronto thing here yet?

I mean, the world is largely headed for dystopia going forward, and fantasies based on the relative golden ages of the last 50 years are made of nothing. I still think it's possible to calculate about better and worse places in the near term, and I think I have the opposite reaction to Moby's: it pisses me off to think that I'm morally obligated to stay put and clean up whatever wreckage Trump scatters behind him. Often that feeling is softened by a positive sense of patriotism; often it's not. It's complicated. But this is all feelings. Then there's the rational calculation about whether life would be better in favorite-Canadian-city or not, which isn't all that different from wondering if I should move to the Northwest or whatever.

77: But you defend it so strongly when I say, welp, time for that experiment to end. Let's all go our own ways.

I think Faulkner must be dead by now.

That's what they want you to think.

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.

The only true American is Gritty, the Flyers new mascot. And he hates Trump.

Everything really is so bad.

So bad. Constant impulse to say "things are very bad", constant recognition that it's been said so much now that saying it is almost the same as not saying it. I stopped listening to the news on my commute but need to cut more things out. Took a month off fb, should do that again. I just asked Bave "so did we ever decide where we would go if we decided we actually had to leave the country?" but the question never feels 100% serious even though it is perhaps 50% serious. Possibly it does not feel serious because there is no good answer. Things are fucked in a "we'll all go together when we go" way. GLOOM I AM MADE OF GLOOM.

52:
Short answer, read the book, at least the eurozone section; flip answer, sins of omission are also sins.
1. My 25 is not actually directed to Germany, but mostly to non-Germans like me who hoped that a German-led Europe would pick up America's slack.
2. I may not represent Tooze's arguments perfectly, I didn't take notes.
3. No-one has anything against incremental improvements.
4. Development of consensus is great, resilient consensus is great; but resilient consensus is also inertia. If that's inertia in favor of good policy, that's good; when in favor of bad policy, it's terrible.
5. Making good decisions slowly is fine, except when decisions need to made rapidly. The 2008 crisis developed incredibly quickly; massive decisions had to be made in hours, repeatedly. The ECB and EU were incapable of acting that fast, where other states were; of course Germany is not solely responsible for EU governance, but Germany did consistently prevent and delay very urgent responses to the crisis. Some problems develop slowly, like climate change. Some happen much faster, and for those crises Germany will at best be absent, not exercising responsibility commensurate with its strength.
6. As you point out, the Germans were insistent on the nature of the ECB; they insisted that it lack the power to act as lender of last resort or to buy sovereign debt; in effect that the euro have a central bank lacking key powers of a central bank, with no mandate beyond inflation control. When by 2010 the ECB's powers were manifestly insufficient, the Germans spent years blocking reforms, and the ECB's basic problems remain only partially resolved. Consequently the eurozone crisis dragged on for years, and the major banks remain undercapitalized and overexposed to this day. For contrast, the Fed and Treasury assembled the US bailout in a matter of days, and it was passed in IIRC weeks. The US financial crisis (not recession) was essentially over in months. Central banks all over the world also acted very rapidly; the ECB was uniquely crippled.
7. What the Germans did do was bail out their own banks (which had in fact been even more reckless than the Americans') and impose austerity on everyone else in their reach. Consequent to this (among other things, granted) southern Europe is sitting on 30-50% long-term youth unemployment, and some of eastern Europe went through much harsher recessions than it needed to. There's a whole other clusterfuck around Ukraine I won't go into.
8. Not thinking like a superpower, as you say, may be a fair cop (though ISTR Germans talking about multipolarity for decades, which demands at some point policy to match words). But Germany has severely mishandled the euro, a very local problem.
9. I say intellectually bankrupt because the cause of all this disastrous policy is essentially commitment to pre-Keynesian economics 100 years after Keynes: deflationary, pro-cyclical fiscal policy, in the face of all evidence and all consequences, with all the consensus and resilience you describe.
10. I say morally bankrupt because what that austerity and moralism and parochialism amounts to is fuck you, I got mine. For an extended demonstration of that argument I recommend (as I have before) this lecture by Mark Blyth.
11. WRT non-pushy Germany, a point Tooze makes repeatedly is that Germany effected its policy, or lack of policy, not by action but by veto, or by sheer delay; it imposed on Europe Germany's inertia and Germany's misguided consensus.
12. Your final point is in itself only a point in favor of Merkel; if as you imply Koch could plausibly have been chancellor in her place, that doesn't say anything good about Germany.

Smearcase! I am less gloomy for having seen you.

81: Yeah, that's kinda where I'm at. I find myself thinking--if I were to actually flee overseas, am I part of the problem--a hypothetically good person leaving a powerful entity to be even further controlled by bad people? I'm personally safe. Is it my responsibility to use that safety and stick it out, to stay here until the last possible moment? Or by leaving am I just making a reasonable decision about my part in a sometimes monstrous project, getting out while it's possible? It's easy to imagine a future where I and my family are not safe.

Main difference being that I'm fantasy-shopping for housing in Dublin. I've always enjoyed my time in Canada, and a lot of aspects of the Canadian project seem like better versions of what I'm used to, but it's a bit too close for comfort.

Well, let's see how the midterms go.

Comment 12 obviously makes me insane. Sure, California is minority-majority. Guess where else is? Texas. Turns out that doesn't do what you think it does.

In any case if I had to choose between living in California for the rest of my life or living under fascism I'd have some thinking to do.

The trendy Bush-era fantasy of escape to New Zealand seems much less common now, IME. I don't think anything has happened to make NZ less appealing as a polity, though, unless I'm forgetting something?

Smearcase, did you ever explain why you're stuck in California? In the past I (mis)read it as a weird self-punishing inertia, but I don't know the real story. I'm extremely glib about this stuff generally: don't stay in places you hate! Don't stay in relationships that make you unhappy! Quit your crappy job! I'm a born ditcher. Approximately 99.5% of the time it is useless and annoying advice.

This margin is too narrow, etc. With apologies, file it under "it's complicated."

91 did come out meaner than intended.

82: because sundering the Union would fall directly under the "doing horrible shit to people" thing that I find so outrageous.

p.s. hi Mossy Character. I guess I've mostly vanished but comment every other month!

93: I understand. I hope you at least have a choice in the matter of living here for the rest of your life, as you say. (About living under fascism too, obviously.)

California's become pretty transparent to me by now. It has treated me very well, so there's a halo. I bond with places (and people) slowly but deeply, so I'm sure if I pulled up roots now it would be more traumatic than I can imagine. I think I could probably do one more major relocation voluntarily; maybe I will just know when the time is right?

California got me drunk and fed me well, but it's probably different when you're there for more than a week.

I AM A WHORE, IT'S TRUE.

IT'S A SHITHOLE. NO WINE, NO SPIRITS.

I'm not sure Canada is much better politically.

And yet it is certainly different.

95 Megan is a communitarian/libertarian, she doesn't give a shit about anyone outside of her immediate community.

Going to the Bob Weir concert last night got me thinking about my California interlude. California didn't really take, but I got some things from it that have real value.

I think I could probably do one more major relocation voluntarily

Not me. I've used it up to the point of saying that the next move I'll be *in* a box. I guess we'll just have to see whether I last long enough to need assisted living.

I don't think anything has happened to make NZ less appealing as a polity, though, unless I'm forgetting something?

Well, they did sell citizenship to Peter Thiel.

I don't seen any reason why California, in the long run, would be immune from becoming one of those places where a minority rules. There's a clear goal in Trumpian policies to blunt or reverse the demographic trends that have made California what it is today.

102: if I remember she doesn't even give a shit about other people in her immediate community (refusing to turn down loud music late at night because she likes listening to loud music late at night and so that's what she's going to do).

Jammies showed me something where multiple people are complaining that they voted straight ticket, and then on the confirmation screen, the computer had switched Beto to Cruz, and now I'm terrified that I didn't check my confirmation screen closely enough.

I feel like this has to be user error, because if you were changing votes, why would you write code that reveals it to the voter? I suppose if you just literally wanted to sow discord.

Here's the report. It does seem to be a real thing although rare, and there's autoplay at that link.

109 Twitter thread by someone who experienced this with their ballot.

88: Argument! Thank you!

Hope to be back later with responses. Time zones and all.

How many bombs have to be sent in a short time frame for it to be a terrorist conspiracy instead of a lone nut? Assume a spherical "centrist".

107 is a remarkably uncharitable (anonymous) characterization.

108 is disturbing.

I'm also a bit surprised--but only because of a failure of imagination on my part--by the nationalism expressed in this thread. I guess it makes sense that people here have real affective ties to the USA, but I think I must be rootless enough and suspicious enough of institutions that I mostly don't.

This sort of stuck in my craw - it is definitely not what I meant when I took the "stay and fight" side of things.

For me, "stay and fight" is out of a sense of loyalty to the people in my immediate community who are most vulnerable. I feel a real sense of obligation not to bail on collective action solutions, even if they're doomed. There's nothing else besides collective action solutions. If everyone who is progressive and has resources bails, then there's just nothing that will stop the looting, racism and decline. It's not a sense of patriotism or the idea that I just love the good ol' flag.

110: That's the thread that Jammies showed me! I have no idea if I would have caught the name-switch - I'm terrible at proofreading and always see what I expect to see in this kind of situation.

AIMHMHB, this is a problem my very own 3rd-world kleptocracy has overcome by the amazing expedient of having people draw little crosses on physical pieces of paper.

I mean, when you show up to vote, you get a little receipt already printed out. (Not by the machines, but by the election worker.) The tweak to the process to create a paper trail is so wildly minimal that it's just straight-up desire to steal elections that prevents anyone from implementing it.

92: NZ is as appealing as ever. I think when the Lord of the Rings travel promotionals stopped coming out, NZ kind of dropped back off people's radars.

I don't seen any reason why California, in the long run, would be immune from becoming one of those places where a minority rules.

Not immune certainly, it was probably the case in the 80s/90s, but it would be pretty difficult at this point. Like, ICE-arrests-all-Democratic-party-officials difficult.

I'm not American so the 'it's my g*ddamn country' sentiment has no pull with me. I actually applied for citizenship >1 year ago but of course nothing's happened on that front yet. Not that citizenship would make me feel like I belong; I want it only for practical reasons.

Plus, some of us aren't trying to leave just so that we can pay *less* attention to American politics. We're trying to leave because we're part of minorities that are actively being persecuted.

120.2 There's no doubt at all that for some people, leaving the US is essential for survival. Such people, imo, make up a minuscule portion of those who theatrically said stuff like 'if Bush gets re-elected, I'm moving to New Zealand!' Remember when Rush Limbaugh said that if some sort of healthcare reform passed he was moving to Costa Rica?

He probably didn't because it's harder to abuse prescription medication there.

121: It depends on what you mean by 'survival', but I don't think Latinos and LGBTQ people are a 'miniscule' portion of the population.

114: I wasn't actually talking about you OR being critical. I was remarking on something that surprised me, given my impressions of unfogged commenters, then realized I was being dumb, and finally thought for a second about why I don't have a deeper sense of attachment to the United States as a nation. But by all means, feel free to think this song is about you.

Not a minuscule part of the population, but a minuscule part of the people making theatrical claims. You disagree?

Since I need a little levity and perhaps others do too, a belated follow-up to Walt's 86:

The only true American is Gritty, the Flyers new mascot. And he hates Trump.

Did you see the fabulous resolution about Gritty that Philadelphia City Council just passed?

124: what a bitchy last sentence!

I wish I could say I'm staying put to help the helpless but as a childless loner it's mostly because fuck these shitheads.
OTOH, if the all the Thiels off the world are moving to NZ...

126: That's fucking amazing.

Gritty would never cross a picket line.

Sometimes I think that the only good thing that has come out of 2018 has been Gritty.

127: I wasn't talking about you in the first instance and didn't mean to be "bitchy" in the second. I was literally saying that, when I wrote the comment that offended you, I wasn't thinking of anything you said, but also that I probably couldn't persuade you otherwise if you were convinced otherwise. Anyway, whatever. People are in enough pain at the moment that I'm in no mood to fight.

I'm not either. It's been a miserable weekend/month/semester.

I thought you were saying that the people who were "stay and fight" types in this thread were expressing nationalism, and since I'd been one, I wanted to clarify, because I don't feel particularly nationalistic, and "nationalism" is kind of pejorative. But if you were intending to refer to an entirely different group of commenters apart from the "stay and fight" subset, then I misunderstood.

The part where you were reflecting on your own lack of nationalism didn't bother me.

You both suck.

But in your own special way.

I'm a noble virtuous elfin thing who only sucks occasionally.

Sucking is good.

The very first reflex.

The reflex is an answer with a question mark.

Try-yi-yi-yi not to bruise it.

Although 140 is the perfect ending to this thread, I feel that I owe a reply to 88, so please consider this an afterword, a coda, an appendix.

I agree with the flip answer.

A lot of 88 has to do with the ECB and the 2008 crisis, so I'll add a few thoughts in and around those subjects.

In nearly anything regarding the euro's shortcomings, I think it's important to consider the state of European monetary policy prior to the establishment of the eurozone. The main points were semi-fixed exchange rates via ERM and interest rate policy set by the Bundesbank. (Parenthetically, I have the sense that some people [unf, can't think of citations off the top of my head] who bang on about the sub-optimal nature of the eurozone are also nostalgic for Bretton Woods and would like to see a Bretton Woods II; that's a very odd combination.) That was certainly the state of play post-Maastricht, even as that treaty set up the mechanisms for the euro. And a common currency had been a stated goal of the European institutions since, what, the late 1970s? Of course Thatcher and Soros showed the limits of diverging policy and exchange rates.

Anyway, the key takeaway is that the alternative to a common European institution in Frankfurt is an all-German institution in Frankfurt. And the Bundesbank would have barely more reason to consider Greece than the Fed considers Ecuador. An über-Fed was not really in the cards.

I'm willing to be persuaded that, say, between 2002 and 2006 or 2007 there was a significant push to give the ECB even greater powers than it had at its inception. I was not following its development closely then. What I recall from EU-related debates at the time was that energy was mostly being put into reforming the European institutions (failing to pass a constitutional treaty, for example) and preparing for/dealing with eastern enlargement.

On those questions, I think that German leadership was engaged, forward-looking and successful. Poland inside the EU with a PiS-poor government is aggravating and sub-optimal; Poland, Hungary, Czech, the Baltics, and all the rest stuck in a permanent gray zone between Putin's Russia and an EC frozen in 1993 would be far worse. Enlargement is a big deal. Reforming institutions that were designed for six such that they work reasonably well for 28 isn't small potatoes either.

Anyway, another point on on 2008 is that it was widely understood at the time that Greece was fudging like hell to get included in the eurozone on the initial roster in 1998. Italy was fudging things, too, if not as egregiously as Greece. Interestingly, Belgium was also seen as a problem for the Maastricht criteria. Their debt-to-GDP ratio was (or had very recently been) on the order of 120%. So it's not just southern Europe that was required to change policies to join the single currency. So Greece was fudging, but allowed in on the understanding that they would take steps to bring their finances into a state that was compatible with a euro-denominated economy. What did their policy makers do with the decade between 1998 and 2008? In arguing for the shortcomings of Germany's political classes, you're veering awfully close to the claim that none of the other actors in the EU have agency. I would also at least look at how the Baltics responded to 2008 and their situation now to consider how small economies have/should react to crises.

As for Koch vs Merkel, I think (1) Germany got lucky; (2) every European country is going to have a conservative government at some point, so what kind of leaders do their conservative parties throw up; and (3) May, Orbán, Kaczynskis, etc.

I feel the need for a summary. You're right, Germany's political culture is not (yet?) producing people able to fill the role the country sometimes aspires to (e.g., permanent Security Council seat, key node in a multipolar world). Reunification and EU enlargement were immensely important, and were on the whole handled very well. Enlargement continues to be a very powerful force for positive change in the western Balkans. That is not wholly due to German leadership, of course, but Germany has been more engaged on enlargement than the other big EU countries.