King Bean

"This country was founded by a group of slave owners who told us that all men are created equal. To my mind, that is what's known as being stunningly and embarrassingly full of shit." - George Carlin

Tumblr (and Twitter, and all of social media) has a terrible tendency to conflate “asking for evidence and sources” with “purposely refusing to believe obvious facts.” This is not how things work. This is not how anything should work. The fact that this guy got fact checked is a good thing and now there’s a really strong article on Politifact along with a spreadsheet of their evidence (which is actually stronger than what’s used in the tweet, which often relies on wikipedia) so that if anyone tries to claim this guy was making shit up, there is a super-solid paper trail backing him up.

And I want to give you an example of that.

Over in the UK, Boris Johnson has announced his intention to renege on key points of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement that his government signed with the EU.

Part of this Withdrawal Agreement is ensuring that a "hard border", that is a walled and manned border with checkpoints, isn't erected between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

The lack of a hard border is a key part of the 1997 Good Friday Agreement, a peace treaty that ended several decades of civil war in Northern Ireland.

The reason why Johnson is breaking this agreement with the EU is because he wants a trade deal with the US, a trade deal that Trump has stated he will not give to Johnson unless he removes some product safety laws.

These product safety laws are also enshrined in the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, because the EU doesn't want sub-standard products entering the EU marketplace, and the only way to avoid checks on goods for these safety standards at the Ireland/Northern Ireland border is to have the UK to continue to uphold these standards.

But Johnson so badly wants this deal with the US, in order to "prove" the UK isn't dependent on EU Trade, that he's willing to break two legally-binding international treaties.

To compound this, both Democrats and Republicans have repeatedly stated that if Johnson breaches the Good Friday Agreement, he will not get a trade deal with the US.

Because Irish Americans make up 10% of the US population, and that is a group both sides want to appeal to. And Irish Americans generally like the idea of peace on the island of Ireland.

But Johnson knows that Donald Trump is willing to go against his party, and that the Republicans will fall in line with Trump's wishes. He knows the Republicans' threat of "no trade deal if you violate the Good Friday Agreement" is a shockingly empty one.

He knows that so long as Trump is in power, he can get what he wants, even if he breaks international law in doing so.

And this is just one of many examples of how US internal politics heavily affects the internal and international politics of other nations. Like it or not, the effects of your vote go well beyond your borders.

Donald Trump is not just bad for your country, he is bad for the entire human race.