This was supposed to be “the log from your own timeline then you can see clearly to remove the speck from your neighbors” but I got distracted halfway through
His trajectory is v weird to me because hes like just some comic book guy and while ive liked some of his takes i would not describe him as notably insightful wrt politics
He did live in the US for many years, iirc. He only moved to Europe a few years ago.
Germany, specifically, will break your brain wrt the US. Their own exceptionalism takes hold. I've had multiple friends move there and forget basic things abt US culture, history bc of the narrative there.
Not deeply. It's just strange to have someone you know, whose history you know, sit accross from you and confidently misunderstand or misread basic concepts about US politics and culture when you know they knew these things a year or so back.
It comes down to the same thing every time. "Well, in Germany...," or "In Europe..." when they know our gov'tal system is not from the same origins. Across age groups, the same.
Then watching the cognitive dissonance as they're comfronted with info they used to know.
the thing that got him the most notoriety in Canada was being a walking encyclopedia of Canadian Literature and introducing a lot of US audiences to weird trivia about the past century of our writing
like, e.g., responding to the Walrus short story about owl-fucking by talking about Bear:
