Report from Europe. Things are not too rosy for lefties or even centrists nor the common citizen.
When the likes of Orban and Meloni are to a significant degree reinforced in their views and power base and the likes of Macron and Scholz are further weakened, it is bad. Bad for EU but also for the US and our non EU allies. I just returned from a few weeks in the Netherlands, Germany and the Baltic countries and I am not heartened. Posters and ads for the EU parliamentary election were everywhere, even in the quaint small towns, thankfully much more tastefully done than how we in the US go about such things, and the local news cycle was focused there as well. I wished I had had more opportunity to talk to more average folks but what I heard from those I did talk to and the American expat friends we visited was grim. Immigration is as much, maybe more of a key issue in the EU and the backlash over it was clearly going to affect the EU election. It was also troubling to hear the level of worry that Russian actions are a serious threat to stability and prosperity and that in typical EU fashion they would probably take 10 years or so to agree on some sort of plan to substantively deal with that. I did like a chalk board put out by a restaurant in Estonia that said in Estonian and English, "Hey Putin, why don't you just fast forward to the part where you shoot yourself in the head in a bunker somewhere?'. While Putin dying sooner than later could be a good thing, it does not cure the myriad of issues the EU faces directly and that need speedier than they seem capable of action. And this is one more serious complication for US state craft which would be even more worrying and problematic with the likes of Trump in the WH.
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