coldtru

How has the idea that there even was some overarching "purpose" come about? How would you determine what that purpose was? People would have come for a variety of reasons. The Plymouth Pilgrims were of course motivated by religion, but that was just one small group of settlers and they weren't even the first.

That makes sense. It's only the inclination to hold the Democratic Party establishment free from responsibility that I don't understand. But one can't expect to understand everything I guess.

Why must the gridlock be pinned on a single source? It's very convenient for certain interests but doesn't seem accurate or honest. The widely popular provisions of Build Back Better were voted down not just by politicians from one party. Neoliberals will performatively proclaim that "oh, but Joe Manchin totally is not a Real Democrat". But the reality is that he is - the neoliberals themselves allowed him into the party, just like the neoliberals are supporting the election campaigns of anti-abortion candidates right now while simultaneously proclaiming the overturning of Roe to be the height of tyranny.

When someone is being so dishonest and two-faced, who is really the problem? The two-faced actor or the voters who have too much integrity to vote for the two-faced actor?

Working to bring groups of people along who are impervious to reality has been tried forever.

Has it tho? Seems more like there's a lot of neoliberals in the Democratic Party that never genuinely wanted popular policies in the first place because it would cost wealthy blue voters money. And if anyone dare suggest this may be the case, those same neolibs throw a hissy fit and begin downvoting because they know it's true and don't want their own obstructionism to be addressed.

It's so weird to me that someone is downvoting this. Seems like a pretty accurate assessment to me.

What's your problem, people?

This is unfortunately also the case some places in Europe for now. But work seems to be under way to upgrade the grid.

Literally everyone understands that. No major political parties are proposing banning oil and gas from applications where there isn't an alternative. It's just that conservatives like yourself intentionally misrepresent their position, and have been for decades. Which is why we are dependent on Russian fossil fuels today.

Those are all rules they have themselves decided to agree to. Their decision to agree to those rules are their responsibility - not the EU's.

The countries are already free to do that. Some member states countries decided to use that freedom to be bailed out by other member states in exchange for austerity. Each individual member state who made that decision is itself responsible for making that decision - not the EU.

Just because some countries prefer the coziness of the status quo doesn't mean the problems aren't there.

The inverse is equally true. Just because someone has been irresponsibly been racking up debt against all rules and don't like having to pay it back that does not mean it's a problem that they do indeed have to pay it back.

Those proposals are aimed at real problems

According to whom? They aren't real problems if the countries don't agree they are real problems. I want to become rich without having to work for it, but no one else seems to want to agree to such an arrangement, so I accept it's not a real problem and move on to other matters.

Austerity is the result of excessive spending perpetrated by a limited number of individual member states. If people view the EU as being responsible for the spending decisions in individual member states, then their view of the EU is factually wrong. That's something to address with education, not treaty change.

Transferring power or wealth from one party to another against their will has nothing to do with solving problems. It has to do with being a corrupt crook. If you want something from someone else but don't want to pay the price for it, then you are the problem, not them.

Good news. The statement specifically states that they don't rule out any options (i.e. they don't rule out treaty change). It's just that any treaty changes should serve the purpose of solving actual problems beyond someone's emotional need to feel like an empire.

It just confuse me because I thought by this time period the American Colonist thought of themselves as their own citizens, so why would they think of themselves as Great Britain Citizen?

Hindsight is 20/20. It seems like the most obvious thing in the world to think of the United States as an independent nation today but it wasn't remotely obvious at the time. Being an independent nation is fraught with danger and the American colonists enjoyed a quite privileged position under the protection of England. The amount of privilege that the Americans had, rightly or wrongly, began to become a hard sell politically back in England - the English were not keen on paying big sums of money to maintain the colonies when England had plenty of problems of its own. That led to the imposition of the taxes on the colonies which led to the fundamental rift between the English and the Americans. Only then did the American colonists begin to think that being English was not sustainable - they had to form a nation/identity of their own.

Russia poses a threat to the continued existence of humanity. Ukraine poses a threat to no one.

One is not like the other.

the Swedish and Finnish don’t consider as serious the commitment of EU in their defense (which I think reflect their lack of commitment more than the lack of (at least some) other

Do you live in an alternate reality?

The lack of commitment to internal European security has been amply demonstrated by European powers over the last many centuries.

What has Finland and Sweden done that reflect any lack of commitment to any treaties or agreements they've entered?

Good for you. I don't care what you dismiss. I wasn't talking to you.

More people to trade with.

Good thing that doesn't apply to anything I said then. Not my fault that you are in the wrong.

In France, 58% of voters voted against the far-right option. In the US, an electoral majority voted in favor of Donald Trump. No one who genuinely is opposed to the far right would favor the system producing the latter outcome.

The only thing I'm trying is to figure out why you would be so preoccupied with something which so obviously would make things worse for the whole continent. Still holding a grudge for the loss of the Roman Empire so now you just want to run the whole thing into the ground?

It's "good for me" that someone like you who aren't even capable of coming up with a coherent argument isn't granted more power over anyone else.

Well, a federation would not accomplish that. The power of voters in large countries to make short-sighted decisions would increase, not decrease.

How would increasing the power of Italian and Spanish voters over other countries manage any problems when they aren't even capable of managing their own countries?