Kate

A few weeks ago I had a conversation with an American who genuinely believed Europe and Canada would help the United States in its war with Iran. I asked him why he thought that, given that Trump had spent months threatening to annex Canada and seize Greenland. He went quiet. Then he said he had never heard of any of that. Not that he disagreed. Not that he thought it was exaggerated. He had simply never encountered the information. It had never arrived. This is worth pausing on. Because in every other functioning democracy on earth, that information would have been impossible to avoid. Not because Europeans are smarter or more curious. But because of how news works outside the United States. The BBC and The Daily Telegraph hate each other. Le Monde and Le Figaro disagree on everything. Aftenposten and Dagbladet have been arguing since before most of their readers were born. But they all cover the same events. A threat to annex Canada is not a left-wing story or a right-wing story. It is a story. It runs everywhere. You hear it on the radio driving to work. You see it on the newsstand. Your colleague mentions it at lunch. Facts are not a channel you choose. They are the weather. You step outside and they hit you. The only media ecosystems on earth that work differently are not political opposites of each other. They are North Korea and Russia. Not because the content resembles MAGA content. But because the architecture is the same. In all three cases, outside information does not get filtered or reinterpreted. It gets blocked at the door. A completely parallel reality is built inside, maintained by repetition, and sealed from correction. This is why the rest of the world does not just disagree with MAGA voters on foreign policy. It finds them genuinely disorienting to talk to. Not offensive. Disorienting. Like speaking to someone who is absolutely certain the building has two floors when you are standing on the third. Which brings us to today’s masterclass. And this screenshot says everything. A Trump supporter posted: “Absolute masterclass by Trump. He got the Strait open without any help from Europe and without any boots on the ground.” That post was written on the same day a refinery on Lavan Island burned for hours after the ceasefire was announced. On the same day Iran’s own official statement read “this does not signify the termination of the war.” On the same day Iran kept its toll system, its uranium program, its protocol over the strait, and walked away with sanctions relief and reconstruction aid. The post is not stupid. It is not written by a bad person. It is written by someone who received a completely different set of facts than the rest of the world did. And from inside that information environment, with only that data, the conclusion is perfectly logical. That is what makes it so unsettling. It is not ignorance. It is a sealed universe, doing exactly what sealed universes do. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

Right then. Let me explain something very slowly, because it appears some basic logic has gone missing somewhere over the Atlantic. No serious nation in the history of warfare has spent fourteen months insulting its allies, threatening to annex their territory, siding with their common enemy, and then knocked on their door expecting them to come running to rescue a catastrophe of its own making. That is not how alliances work. That is not how anything works. You abused the UK. You threatened Canada. You tried to grab Greenland. You called the EU an adversary. You praised Putin, the one man every serious NATO ally has spent decades preparing to fight. You hosted Kremlin officials in the Capitol. You undermined European elections. You abandoned Ukraine. You imposed tariffs on your closest partners. You did all of this loudly, proudly, and on camera. And now you are surprised that nobody is returning your calls. Here is a question worth sitting with. Why do you think that is? Is it possible, just possible, that when you treat your allies like enemies for over a year while cuddling up to their actual enemy, those allies might update their opinion of you? Is that concept too complicated? Does that require more working memory than is currently available? You did not plan this war with your allies. You did not consult them. You did not build a coalition. You started a conflict, watched it go sideways, and then got on your knees asking for help from people you spent fourteen months calling weak, corrupt and irrelevant. NATO is not what it was. Not because Europe changed. Because Washington made crystal clear which side it is on. And it is not ours. You want European boots on the ground? Start by explaining why America is more aligned with Moscow than with Brussels. Take your time. We will wait. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1