Nathan White 🇬🇧🇪🇺🌊

My heart goes out to the bereaved in Russia, whose loss was just as pointless and needless as those in Ukraine, and doubtless just as painful - but without any salve of dying for a good cause, or for any better reason than to massage the ego of an old KGB goon...

I get why people bemoan the polarisation of politics. But I think we misidentify the cause. Politics is polarised mainly because those who are on the wrong side of an issue tend to be wrong on almost *every* issue. You can cleave people pretty neatly, so the middle ground would just be a mess.

Why does it always fall to liberals to conserve things? Isn't that the whole point of conservatives?

I remember laughing at my country post-Brexit for trying to boast about FTAs because they couldn't land any actual deals, and were getting internationally ghosted. It's certainly come to something when the President of the World's Biggest Economy is reduced to doing the same.

Whenever I see Trump, or anyone who is proudly MAGA, or indeed any example of AI slop (which the right have embraced so eagerly), I am reminded that Nazism and kitsch were the closest of the allies. Tastelessness might seem trivial, but it is the hallmark of fascism.

There is a non-zero chance that Trump is just a highly committed performance artist who has selflessly dedicated his life to viciously satirising American self-pride.

Watching JD Vance play international statesman is like watching Pee-wee Herman play Bond.

Someone says "I'm not really a cat person", and you have to act like you're still listening while you mentally cross their existence out of your universe.

Someone should synthesise Liz Truss' self-belief and sell it as a street drug. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I'll be honest. I feel like America always defaults to blaming liberals and progressives for everything. "Why haven't they come to our rescue?" I dunno, maybe because every time they tried in the past you killed them.

I made the mistake of stroking his sister.

When I look at what is happening to the academic credibility of the US, I can't help thinking that Trump is the Shih Huang Ti of the 21st Century. Except Shih Huang Ti actually succeeded in building his great wall - as well as burning all the books, and burying the scholars alive.

I suppose I should wait to see the data on DOGE's activity. But I'm pretty sure Elon's dad still doesn't love him.

This. Just draw a shit stick-man with a biro and add explanatory labels; hell, shamelessly plagiarise whole chapters from published authors for all I care; just don't outsource your talentless unoriginality to a homogenising robot as if that somehow absolves you.

Trump has certainly shown us the fragility of liberal democracy, and the rules-based order, and fundamental principles like universal rights and rule of law. But he has also shown us how precious they are; and how facile it was to sneer at them.

I suppose Starmer, like Carney and Macron and so on, is a bit of a lucky general. Trump has lowered the bar so far that we are forced to recognise that we should be glad to live in functioning liberal democratic states. Maybe we got complacent, and America sadly shows where complacency leads.

NEW 🧵 The number of people travelling from Europe to the US in recent weeks has plummeted by as much as 35%, as travellers have cancelled plans in response to Trump’s policies and rhetoric, and horror stories from the border. Story: www.ft.com/content/6dc1...

The way the EU targeted Red States with their retaliatory tariffs was smart, and in my view points the way forward. It was always Blue States carrying the flag anyway. Who doesn't want to do business with California? Conversely, who gives a fuck about chlorine-bleached chicken and fake whisky?

Sorry to be a species traitor, but there's something about cats. Everyone would know what you mean if you said 'he was a lion among men'. But frankly, no one would have a clue what you mean if you said of a lion, 'he was a man among lions'.

China may well suffer more in a trade war. But they endured the Great Famine. American tolerance is rather less tested.

As a Brit I would say this. But Sterling only stopped being the global reserve currency after Britain bankrupted herself fighting two World Wars. And if Trump is hankering after the Gilded Age, that can easily be arranged. Make Sterling Great Again.

If you view all human history through the lens of "humans have always been jealous of cats like lions, and high-status humans the world over have tried to claim lion-ness", everything you see in museums suddenly makes startling sense.

Loving William James' account of that one time he got high on nitrous oxide. He suddenly thinks he can understand Hegelian dialectics and notes down his revelatory insights. "By George, nothing but othing! That sounds like nonsense, but it is pure onsense!"

Quite surprising to see Trump himself become a never Trumper.

While I see all your conspiracy theories I regret to inform you that the horrible truth is that an old man with a tariff obsession has been given almost unlimited power in the world's richest country.

MAGA: We've got the Democrats cowed and outnumbered! They're running to the hills! *Entire world appears over the hill* Entire world: Come on then.

Harvard Law seems to be the Oxford PPE of America. Not a compliment.

I have a simple axiom in political philosophy. Never subscribe to any belief that you can't imagine Sesame Street doing a song about.

"Only through struggle, have states and the world become great. If one should ask whether this struggle is gruesome, then the only answer could be: For the weak, yes, for humanity as a whole, no." - Speech delivered in Essen, 1926. "ONLY THE WEAK WILL FAIL!" - Post on Truth Social, 2025.

I don't want to hear about how MAGA policies are hurting MAGA voters, as if *that's* what's wrong with them. It implies that it would have been fine if they had succeeded in putting America first, at the cost of all the world's huddled masses. MAGA would have to die of dysentery before I care.

I mean, it's cool. Americans can stick to Bud Light, we'll drink Budvar. Americans can drive Fords, we will drive Mercedes. Americans can have Jack, we will drink actual whisky. I'm sure we'll manage somehow.

The world's poorest (and penguins) were punished the hardest by Trump's cruel exercise of pain-inflicting power. But four countries escaped Trump's tariffs completely. Russia, Belarus, Cuba, and North Korea.

Republican representatives are acting like history books won't get written. Good luck with that. You won't be writing them, but you are in them.

In all honesty, to many countries like mine America is still the new kid at school. And I was always one of the first to defend him. He seemed cool. But it's barely half way through his first day, and he's decided he can steal our lunch money?

A paper published in The Lancet (the UK's foremost peer-reviewed medical journal) forecasts that nearly 3 million HIV deaths could occur by the end of the decade due to foreign aid cuts. Elon Musk would be responsible for a death toll well above that of Pol Pot.

Plunging economic confidence may well be the death of MAGA. But if so, the fact it wasn't fascism confidence could be the death of America.

Ask any historian. Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time, any more than Trump made eggs cheap.

Nobody wins a trade war. But if I had to bet on a loser, it wouldn't be Europe.

America is Sesame Street. Maybe MAGA can destroy it. But they can never be it.

Someone should tell Trump that we're not buying German cars just to spite America. We're buying them for the same reason we prefer to buy chickens that taste of chicken and haven't been tortured, diseased and bleached. Sorry for the trade imbalance or whatever, but we're picky like that.

JD Vance visiting Greenland is like Putin visiting Ukraine.