…ten bucks says Trump and Putin are quietly planning on divvying up everything above the Arctic Circle between them…
Put that way it does have a kind of twisted logic to it.
Both men are shamelessly opportunistic, both have no respect for anyone who disagrees with them, and both seem to put money, power and nationalism (their own country) above all else. The only difference between them seems to be that Putin will go as far as killing others to achieve his aims, while Trump doesn't quite go that far - as far as we know. Yet.
It's an amazing turnaround, when you think that for decades America - and Republicans in particular - were probably the staunchest opponents of Russian Communism and its expansionism and manipulation and control of narratives, as represented most starkly by its dictatorial leaders and the aggression used by its armed forces. Can you imagine an Eisenhower or a Reagan patting Putin on the back and offering him more slices of Ukraine, while making threats to allies like Canada and countries in western Europe?
Now we have a Republican US President who considers not one but two or even THREE Communist dictators (Putin, Kim Jung Un and possibly Xi) to be people he respects and possibly even friends and allies he wants to work with.
As for the EU, I've felt for many years that it is destined to fail. That's also why I've always supported the principle of Brexit, even though the UK Conservative governments which finally had the guts to allow the people to vote on the issue messed up the implementation (with the help of prominent Remoaners and the EU itself, of course). The cracks in Europe have been there for a long time, especially since it overreached itself with rapid expansion in the 1990s, trying to absorb so many former Soviet countries, and also enforced monetary union and a single currency zone.
The EEC was an understandable and commendable idea at first (to bond neighbouring countries torn by war into a trading union so that they would never fight again), but it was overtaken by the usual greed and hubris of politicians and bureaucrats and mutated into what is now the EU - a misguided attempt to make a European superstate. The combination of Putin's "special military operation", an immigration crisis and the current bizarre twist of fate in American politics is simply hastening the EU's demise by bringing the cracks to the surface even faster.
It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.