Rick's b.log - entry 2026/03/06

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Is this really the best we can do?

So, explain in really simple terms so I can understand, how did we end up with our civilisation structured in such a way that one monumental arsehole can break it? Yes, I'm speaking about Donald Trump. From his ever-changing tariffs to him dumping bombs on Iran while saying he might take Greenland by force if he feels like it, he has done a pretty good job at turning world order upside down, and I think a lot of it is to placate his fragile ego. The felon that filed for bankruptcy six times knows he can't actually win "The Art Of The Deal" because he has no idea how to handle a proper negotiation, so he plays by the alternative rule of Might Is Right. He will win the conflict in Iran, primarily because he has access to more things that go bang, but at what cost? The cost of demonstrating painfully clearly to the Arabs why The West cannot be trusted? At the moment everywhere that isn't Israel and Iran pretty much wants this done so things can go back to how they were. None of what is going on benefits us.

Of course, there is something of a paradox here in that many countries have structures that allow for a rapid military response, which is useful if the country is being attacked. Those same structures allow a reckless leader to act quickly. Even if, as has just happened, the sycophants in Congress approve his actions, their approval comes after the war had already started. Sorry, I mean "Special Military Action" because they don't use the word "war" any more.

As far as raining down bombs on Iran goes, I suspect the "strategic thinking" is along the same sort of lines as the "Shock And Awe" exercised in Iraq, to hit the place so hard that it makes it clear that resistance is futile. Unfortunately there are two factors at play. Firstly, Iran is something of a special case in that they will be every bit as belligerent as the Americans, and the actual victor (most likely the US) will emerge from the dust as the one whose weaponry stockpile didn't run out. And, secondly, remind me how things went with Iraq? Where were those weapons of mass destruction? Is Iraq now a shining beacon of democracy? Or was it left to pick up the pieces by itself?
I think one of the fundamental problems is that while both Iran and Iraq had problems and an oppressed populace, we in the west simply don't understand the cultural and political realities of the region. This is our mistake. I hope it won't be our undoing.

With respect to the role of Iran, it is worth mentioning that Iran is not exactly a victim. It is possible that the rather muted world response (as opposed to that in support of Ukraine) is due to a long history of confrontations with Iran's neighbours. Indeed, Iran and Israel throwing bombs at each other isn't exactly news or unheard of.
What is new, and what changes things, is that the United States has joined in. For whatever excuse, they have dragged "the West" into what before was mostly a long running regional conflict. Now, none of this excuses the behaviour of the Iranian regime, but bombing a country into submission rarely produces the stability that politicians promise in neat little soundbites. I refer you, yet again, to Iraq. Or, hey, how about Afghanistan?

For us, with our first-world problems far away from the chaos, the price of regular fuel at the pump today is almost the same as the scary price I paid on Wednesday in the dinky superette. This is going to have a massive knock-on effect. Electricity? More expensive. Toilet paper? More expensive. Why? Because there's transportation, electricity, and so on involved in the final price of a product. If diesel prices shoot through the roof, shipping (by boat, locomotive, or truck) all runs on diesel and all will cost more. Diesel goes into tractors (because petrol engines just don't achieve the sort of torque that tractors need). It goes into public transport. It goes into the little truck that brings the post. Everything is going to go up in price.
You know what won't go up? Our wages. We've only just managed to get things under control from the economic shitshow that was Covid. Inflation is still a thing but it is manageable now. We were looking at potential growth. Growth is good. Growth gives fiscal breathing room.
War, however, is not so good. Even if it isn't us chucking the explodey or being the ones that get blown up, in a global economy, a war has repercussions. And a war happening in the heart of the lands where the very fuel that powers our entire economy comes from? Well that's just effing marvellous, isn't it?

Oil markets, shipping routes, currencies, semiconductor supply chains, even the propagation of the food we eat - all of these things influence each other these days. That means disruption in one place has a very real potential to mess up everything everywhere.

Goodbye America

Well, this year they have done some of the same products, but they are now calling it "Picard Is In The Kitchen" (yes, in English) and it carries the slogan "I ❤ London". You can browse the selection here.

Very conspicuously absent, any reference whatsoever to America. You can see the creamy hash browns in the picture above. Here's what it looks like now (click on the inset picture of the packaging to view it larger).

Even stranger is the crunchy chicken tenders (here's a link) that you can see is the same overall light blue colour scheme as the Hello AMERICA products, only the slogan has been removed, leaving a rather blatant empty space at the upper left of the box.

I think it says a lot about people's sentiment towards the United States that a company has made the choice to erase mention of America and instead try to pass some of the stuff off as British. Granted, they have added scones and bangers&mash to their lineup, but do you really think of London when you think of bagels? Because to me that just screams "Welcome to New York, It's been waiting for you, Welcome to New York, Welcome to New York".

Cultural sentiment usually shifts before political structures do, and while it would be unfair to think that this means "Frenchies hate Americans", it does show that somebody in marketing felt that the association could become a liability. If it's potentially bad for sales, it'll be dropped. And here we are, with a big empty space on the box where the slogan used to be.

I think it's going to take a while for Americans to realise exactly how badly the current administration has messed up. For starters, the message has been received by Europe - even if it looks like we're all in denial - that we may be on our own in a conflict. Germany is dramatically growing their army, something that until recently was unthinkable. France has just announced their own nuclear proliferation, as well as blatantly telling the world that there will be no further information provided on France's nuclear capabilities - you'll find out if you're dumb enough to attack. The two European nuclear countries (France and the UK) are looking to include local allies (such as Germany, etc) under their protective umbrella. Possibly in return for allowing military hardware to be present in their countries.

More starkly, Europe has a longer term ambition to kick foreign dependencies out of their military systems. It's no good having a super-sexy fighter jet if a command from America on behalf of Russia, say, could render it a flying brick with the aerodynamic properties usually associated with the thing houses are made of.

We Europeans also have ambition to kick Americans out of our IT and corporate systems. Well, that's the plan, we just need to get bloody von der Leyen to shut the hell up about AI and concentrate on shit that actually matters - such as how there's literally no EU based cloud solutions whatsoever that isn't a part of an American outfit (like an AWS centre). Being American, they'll be subject to the US Patriot Act, and I remind you that in a French court last year Microsoft admitted that they would hand over any EU data, hosted in the EU, that Uncle Sam demanded. Why? Because there's nothing Europe could do that would be as bad as what the US administration is liable to do if told "no".

It will happen. As is typical with the EU, it's a hulking mass of red tape and bureaucracy - which is why there's no Silicon Valley on this continent - but governments and companies are slowly starting to wake up to the problems of having all of their eggs in one basket "because it's convenient".
In practical terms, take a look at Gaia-X for an EU based cloud infrastructure "in progress". I could mention the GDPR here, but I won't as one half of the EU commission wants to make it stronger, the other half wants to water it down to the point of being useless because AI and because "the police need to see all your files". I am reminded of the well intentioned Cookie law that has evolved into a "Buy your privacy" and all that "legitimate interest" crap.

I wish to specifically say thank you to JD Vance and Elon Musk here, because their portrayal that "free speech" trumps everything else (including to the point of trying to pass off Grok's AI undressing children as some sort of freedom of speech issue) has helped to bring into sharp focus the sort of problem we're dealing with. Clearly unbeknown to both of them, Europe does have freedom of speech. But it also has consequences. And it has sensible limitations that balance one's ability to blather nonsense (like that which you are currently reading) with people's ability to exist. There are certain things I cannot say here, partly because it is unlawful (in the EU), and partly because it's just morally wrong. Racism, discrimination, hate speech. I don't need to give examples, suffice to say that if you think hateful racism is okay because "free speech" then, my dear, you are the problem.

But, I digress. What is getting clearer day by day is that America's influence is waning. Trump pulled up the drawbridges on a lot of the global "soft power" initiatives. His rhetoric and Vance's bullying of state leaders did the rest. For a while we were like "calm down, this idiot will be gone in three years". But now? Now we understand that even if Trump goes, somebody just like him could be voted in. For decades we enjoyed a special relationship with the US, even turning a blind eye to a lot of their "we're gonna do it our way" behaviour. But, hey, they traded with us and we traded with them. Americans came and squeed at the Eiffel Tower and London Bridge, we went to Disneyland.
And then Trump 2.0 came along.

It's going to be slow and arduous (and mostly because that's just how the EU does, well, everything), but little by little, more and more, we're going to wean ourselves off of everything that's tied up with America. We don't need unreliable allies. And if this unreliable ally is happy saying that we may be on our own, well, then we don't need them at all.

Empires rarely realise that they are declining while it is happening. There are plenty of examples. We might mock Napoleon and France, but actually he was on the way to making quite a French empire, he just tried a little too hard a little too quickly. And speaking from a more personal viewpoint, where are all the pink bits on the maps? Britain, it was said that the sun never set on her empire. Now we have a bunch of Commonwealth countries that look after themselves, and far too many Independence Days in honour of when we got kicked out.

Y'all should have been careful what you wished for, as changing the slogan on a box of frozen chicken pieces is just the beginning.

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Rick's b.log - entry 2026/03/06

Is this really the best we can do?

Goodbye America

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