In three weeks, Donald Trump has imploded whatever positive image the United States might have had internationally.
hahahah it’s NOT April FOOLS YET!
Trump is creating a lot of enemies. Even turning allies into enemies. The reputation usually mostly recovers when there’s a Democrat in the WH, but since American voters walked right back into the same chaos again, eyes wide open, it’s going to be a lot harder to recover this time around. There’s just very little trust and credibility left.
fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me
By repetition, trust has been eroded beyond elections. For security or even trade partners, it’s bad to be erratic, violent and self-harming.
The American peoples have been played and fooled, much like it happened in GB. Hyped by fairytales of economic and nationalistic wonders, by stories of sovereignty appealing to the imperialistic dim-witted, in the misunderstood attempt to make their country “great again”, they flushed it down the toilet, cheeringly.
Apparently, both forgot how much of their power came from being central parts of powerful networks. Isolating yourself, alienating everyone else surely makes you lose these privileges quickly, makes you lose influence on so many scales. Wether these losses can be compensated by any means remains to be seen, I’m doubtful.
And as much as I enjoy seeing imperialist nations falling apart, the power vacuum they create seems to invite even more imperialism. Like they say, even more dangerous than an evil person is a stupid person, because the latter is unhinged. You never know how much they will fuck up next time, and you cannot even trust them being restricted by self-preservation or “common sense”.
I guess if it can happen to two nations from the West (and not just any two), it can potentially happen to any and all. They sure try.
Article about how the states is falling apart.
Uses picture of a house no middle class family could reasonably afford.
America’s wealth is tied up in perceptions. When the rest of the world views America the way I currently view Tesla, we’re going to have some very big economic problems. And of course we already have huge security and safety issues as blow back for turning on our allies. It’s impossible for me to imagine this isn’t all a deliberate attempt to destroy America. And we all know which world leader Trump worships who is very very interested in causing that.
Not much to add, other than I too am another person who sees the current affairs as the destruction, dismantling and sabotage of America as a country. I am not confident the country will make it to the end of this presidential term without splintering.
Part of me thinks life is gonna get really hard but some other part is more optimistic, thinking the fracturing of the states will lead to better lives for people, far far down the line. You gotta burn the old growth so the new can flourish. I wish we could just improve what we have now but it seems impossible to make progress with the current, very corrupted system.
Not to mention the way America is fucking with it’s own people. There’s bound to be some domestic “terrorism”.
Look the U.S. was kind of past our prime already, and we were settling into a slow decline. President Elon and his lapdog Donald just decided to shake the table so all the dominos fall at once, instead of slowly over time.
Yes, but I was looking for another generation of decline during which we could wake up and correct some things
We are the dog.
The United States is imploding. The reign of Donald Trump is not only challenging and threatening the very foundations of its constitutional democracy, it is calling into question the U.S.’s post-World War II hegemonic role. Empires or hegemonic powers rise and fall. Often they are defeated by emerging powers. Sometimes their decline takes place over time. But rarely do they self-destruct as spectacularly as the U.S. is doing. The U.S. implosion is dramatic in its intensity and rapidity. In just over three weeks, Donald Trump has been able to redefine the United States’ position in the world from a global power to an international outcast. Despite whatever military and economic power the U.S. still has, its image and global leadership have been undermined by President Trump’s foreign policy decisions.
I just want to take a short, though probably unpopular, note that while you present it as something negative, to some people on the world, that’s actually something positive. There are communities all over the world who have suffered tremendously through the US’ global hegemony; and these people (me included) are sometimes actually in a very good mood about the news that have been coming the last few weeks.
Yup, I’ve mentioned in another comment that if I hadn’t moved here, and I was watching this from an anti US lense as I saw things when I was younger, I would be ecstatic.
While I absolutely agree that America has and continues to do abhorrent things overseas (and domestically), I fear that there currently exists no significant world power in position to replace them as #1 that isn’t considerably more exploitative, sadistic, and cruel. We’re currently in hell and have nowhere to go but down…
This is always my thought when I hear that kind of response too. “Replace US hegemony” great. With what? China? Russia? India? Iran? Maybe the EU would be better, but I don’t see an EU hegemony replacing US hegemony successfully any time soon. I feel like in a lot of ways the US dominated world order is/was a lesser of 2+ evils… We might be about to find out what the greater ones are :/
The thing about the EU is it doesn’t want to be a hegemony power like the US was, at least not when it includes military. Those who want are Russia (openly) and China (through the backdoors). Don’t know enough about India.
Even with the current push for more military, the maximum I see from the EU is securing its most important trade routes and otherwise project soft power through economical influence.
I feel like in a lot of ways the US dominated world order is/was a lesser of 2+ evils… We might be about to find out what the greater ones are :/
Based on what metric, exactly? Vibes? White supremacy?
When the Americans came to put up a base in my country, we didn’t have to hide our women like when the Soviets did. They also let us travel and usually don’t shoot our prime minister.
This may come as a shock to you, but the USSR hasn’t existed in a quarter century.
And that’s good, but the Russians sure try to pretend otherwise.
It must be hard for you, trying to get through life without being able to follow even basic chains of thought
Social mobility.
So vibes.
Also, even if it was true that the USA had better social mobility, that doesn’t make it the lesser evil for dominating the rest of the world, now does it?
I think you have to be engaging in some serious American exceptionalism to believe that. In real terms, America has been much more exploitative, sadistic, and cruel than China - the main contender for next hegemon - and the argument otherwise is mostly just based on vibes.
In just over three weeks, Donald Trump has been able to redefine the United States’ position in the world from a global power to an international outcast.
This is exactly what people uttering “Make America Great Again” were asking for when they chose Trump to be the figurehead. None should be surprised.
As a European I’m all for it. Fuck up your own country for once and leave the rest alone. Nobody needs the corrupt self-declared policeman of the world
In just over three weeks, Donald Trump has been able to redefine the United States’ position in the world from a global power to an international outcast.
As a European I’m all for it. Fuck up your own country for once and leave the rest alone. Nobody needs the corrupt self-declared policeman of the world
The Schadenfreude resonates with me, but that power vacuum scares me more. All kinds of potentially violent forces, who have been constrained by US hegemony, will test what the new limits are in the coming years.
At least, a corrupt policeman still has to play and pretend, which somewhat aligns her with the designated role. The Mafia, on the other hand …
What I mean to say is, you cannot step down from that position “and leave the rest alone”. It causes ripples across the world.
That requires Europe to step up to the plate and actually spin up their own security industry. The United States has been subsidizing it since WWII. In spite of Russia starting a war at your door step Europe still hasn’t managed to get their act together.
At the low low price of a few million brown people
Mate aside from the whole global instability part of it from Australia Im happy for Mango Mussolini to be my president if he crashes the dollar and makes American products cheap as chips to buy
That’s a bit of a selfish view to look at it for your own profit. Really curious, what US product do you desperately need and are also costly? And LOL at the Mango Mussolini. He probably doesn’t know who that is.
Sorry I should of known the sarcasm wouldn’t get through. Honestly I’m scared shitless
Could you be quiet then?
Is the US upset people have an opinion on it after a century plus of meddling in every facet of everyone’s lives?
The dude you replied to is from the Canada instance.
tons of bootlickers up in Canada who think cheeto speaks for them.
I feel like saying it’s normal for empires to fall due to external causes is not accurate? It’s usually the exception. Maybe the external factor is the final kick, knocking over a rotting house of cards, but the cause is almost always division, internal conflict, or unsustainable growth. An empire is much more likely to collapse under its own weight than it is to have Alexander the Great kick its teeth in. The Ottoman Empire was called “The Sick Man of Europe” for a reason.
Anacyclosis, Polybius was motivated by the fall of the Hellenistic society. When Rome conquered Greece it was unfathomable to them that they could ever even be conquered, let alone so quickly. They were swept aside in such a rapid fashion that it was a cultural shock.
The US has this image of being unassailable, but the reality is that apathy is the greatest enemy we have ever faced. We have no faith in our leadership, and we’re short on supply of actual warriors despite what the keyboard warriors would have everyone thing.
All the gun toting rednecks driving large pickup trucks shrink when they’re actually confronted with anything, and we’ve devolved into a system of cowards.
The day America stands up and puts the ruling class heads on spikes, that’s the day the rest of the world should fear, but the rest of the world can just live comfortably knowing we’re all weak and worthless.
Seriously, just look up “peopleofwalmart”, that’s the insanely low bar we go by these days.
but the cause is almost always division, internal conflict, or unsustainable growth.
I refer to it as atrophy. Once it becomes easier and more profitable for the empire to exploit its own populace instead of others, this is what we get.
LOL empire. They haven’t lasted for even a century. It will be a footnote in history.
The US…?
This fucker just swings at everyone.
I think someone shit on their waffle this morning.
yes
Damn and they say American education is bad.
Well then, enlighten me and tell me exactly from when to when you consider them an empire?
Probably from the moment of our emancipation from England. Occupied more territory than most European states ever had at that moment.
If you want to be pedantic about it how about when we occupied the width of an entire contenant? September 9th 1850
We didn’t spring fully formed from Zeus’s forehead to fund the destruction of the Reich.
from the moment of our emancipation from England.
I was asking from what year, decade even to what year. This is as vague as it gets. If I wanted to be pedantic I would ask what a “contenant” is. That date you mention is about California? I think you don’t get what being an empire means. It’s not having a really big country.
But it’s been around for more than two centuries?
As a country. Britain, Spain, Portugal have been around for much longer as a country. That period is not as long as they have existed in the capacity or form of being an ‘empire’.
It’s absolutely not. It’s their very internal policies that force them into destroying themselves. They start believing their own propaganda. For both Rome and Constantinople it was wasting huge amounts of it’s power on fighting Persia and trying to extend its borders in ways that outran it’s logistics capacity. For the Ottomans it was the rise of nationalism and their ham fisted attempts to combat it. For the modern Western imperialists it was the base fact that direct colonial rule was always a monetary drain for the state and only made businesses money. Making these stupid decisions was because each empire had created a web of political commitments and internal propaganda that was unsustainable.
Didn’t Constantinople outlast the Persian empire by quite a while?
The Roman Empire took centuries to eventually collapse and a lot of it was corruption, hyperinflation, and complacency. It’s happening here but at a much quicker rate.
Maybe the external factor is the final kick, knocking over a rotting house of cards, but the cause is almost always division, internal conflict, or unsustainable growth.
Rome was a place where power consolidated, but the various eras might as well have been different empires.
The system collapsed, dissolved, reconstituted, and expanded several times during the 1400 years it existed.
Same with China. 5000 years of history emerging from Beijing, but each dynasty was distinct.
Even the US has reinvented itself several times over by now. Antebellum America might as well have been a different country. New Deal America was radically different from it’s Coolidge Era predecessor. Reagan’s America became it’s own thing in turn. Trumpian America is a new thing, not an end point.
The US falling apart would implicate that it was once whole, which it never was. It is just reaping the harsh fruits of half a century of aggressive 2 party campaigning.
All due to Ordinal voting. First Past the Post is the simplest Ordinal system, and completely broken if you have more than two candidates.
The only solution is a Cardinal voting system. Cardinal systems can handle two or twenty candidates without issues. Approval or STAR are the best options.
The sad part is, in 1780, First Past the Post was the only system available. It had to be adopted before mathematicians could look at it and say, hey shits broken.
The first was Condorcet. A French Mathematician who noticed the first problem with Plurality in the 1780s. But if you know your history, you’ll know that being a French Nobleman in the 1780s was not the healthiest thing to be, regardless of how fucking based you were.
As an aside here, Condorcet was fucking based. He was antislavery, and argued for full suffrage for both women and the slaves that he wanted to free. He argued for universal education for all, and thought it would solve so many problems.
Anyway the next guy who saw the problem with Plurality was another French Mathematician and political scientist named Durverger. He proved that First Past the Post voting will always result in two party dominance. And he proved this in the 1950s. So not much to be done about it.
The next guy to put his name to voting science was Kenneth Arrow, an American who in the 1970s, showed that all Ordinal voting systems were flawed.
But again, the data came in far too late to easily fix things.
So here we are. The saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was 20 year ago, the next best time is now. So call your local representative and ask them to sponsor a switch of voting system to Approval or STAR.
No technical system of voting resolved the problem of monopolized media and a population stuffed full of nationalist propaganda.
Implement Cardinal voting at the Vatican and you’ll still end up with a Catholic Pope
Fun fact, the Vatican did use Cardinal voting (Approval) for a few centuries, until some rich assholes took over.
But aside from that, your comment is useless.
The reason why the media can control the narrative is because of the voting system. See, it’s super easy to control two sides. Two teams.
But if you have a dozen teams, it’s much harder to control the narrative. And with a dozen teams, some of them will be on our side and will break up the media monopoly. Hell, we had Trust busters under or current system, we can have them again.
But I guess defeatism is comfortable for certain people. But it doesn’t get anything done, so fuck that shit.
The reason why the media can control the narrative is because of the voting system.
The media exists independent of the electoral system.
you have a dozen teams, it’s much harder to control the narrative.
ESPN would argue otherwise.
defeatism is comfortable for certain people
It’s only defeatism when you assume Cardinal voting is the only viable solution.
Obviously, that’s not the case.
If there was anything the US was good at, it would be marketing. Creating the image that it’s the greatest nation on earth, influencing mainstream media to tell their version of the story, keeping up appearances of a strong nation.
The moment these smoke clears and the mirrors break, that is when we see the real US. I think we have Trump to thank to show it to us.
Like, as much as i have to complain about the US meddled in other countries, i have to disagree that they only were good at marketing.
Lots of technology have been developed in the US, primarily computer chips and everything that has to do with it, including the internet. That can be a good invention, depending on what you use it for.
You should be fair and give credit where due, and part of the US’ power was because of technological proficiency. Of course, other countries also achieved good technological developments, like the Chinese with their solar panels, and the Europeans with lots and lots of scientific groundwork and cultural developments.
Once, the US was actualy very food at funding innovation. The shit that Bell Labs alone discovered are things that shape the world today. But in the nature of US capatialism, if discovery can’t turn I to profit, why bother? It’s easier to market 2nd or 3rd place as 1st, then to actually be the 1st, especially if the Chinese are constantly breathing down you neck.
One of the stories about the US that I find inspirational is how, during the space race, NASA relied on various experts from somewhat unconventional places. It’s what I always think about at times like this, because it’s a snippet of what I consider to be genuine greatness, amongst all the propaganda and geopolitical awfulness.
The first example is how the Apollo spacesuits were sewn by seamstresses from an underwear company. This was because they needed craftspeople skilled enough to be able to reliably cut fabric and sew seams within a margin of error of a fraction of a millimetre. Whereas in regular garment manufacturing, you can typically tear out incorrect stitches and try again, this wasn’t possible for the spacesuit, so they needed to be perfect first time; many of the fabrics they were working on were so cutting edge that they needed to be locked away in a safe when not working on them. Synthetic fabrics were still fairly new, and this partly explains why an underwear manufacturer had seamstresses who were up to this challenge — the group of sewists who worked on the spacesuit were probably among the most experienced people in the world at sewing synthetic fabrics, and this experience allowed them to be an active part of the design and manufacture process for the spacesuits.
Another example from the same era is when NASA engineers were having difficulty getting the honeycomb insulating material they were using to adhere to the shuttle. This part of the program was happening near Seal Beach, in California, and when it was discovered that the local surfers were already experienced in using a material like this for their surfboards, NASA hired a bunch of the surfers to work with their engineers to figure out the problem. There’s a quote I absolutely adore from Donald Binns, a Project Engineer with North American Aviation[1]:
“[The surfers] did a great job with it. The only downside of those guys was that when the surf was up, there was a big absentee problem — they were out there doing their trick.”
I just find this incredibly sweet, because it captures both the strength and the difficulty of working with diverse skill sets. If ever there was greatness to be found in the US, we can see it in stories like this. I think this spirit of innovation has been lost over the years, due to the pressures of capitalism on individuals in particular.
Edit: forgot to add link for quote citation
[1]: Quote is from episode 1 of the 2008 documentary “Moon Machines”, accessible via the internet archive. Insulation section starts at around 16:45 https://archive.org/details/moon-machines/Moon+Machines+Part+1+The+Saturn+V+Rocket.mp4
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Unfortunately they believe their own bullshit
The education system has one goal: teach people critical thinking. In the US they deliberately did the opposite, that’s why there’s so many idiots. That and the fact that mass media is amazing at spewing propaganda
As it should. The rise of fascism shouldn’t go unnoticed. The United States is capable of better but, the rot of capital needs to be expelled first.
It’s a cultural problem which is why Americans would rather have Trump over Bernie.
Even liberals prefer this because Trump isn’t going to make any effort to reduce the disparity in wealth.
say what you want about the brits, but they wouldn’t have voted for brexit twice.
They kept voting for the conservatives for a while after Brexit. They kept voting for Boris fucking Johnson.
This comment section is a fucking shithole.
Worst comment I see is yours.
How so? Please explain. I’m down for a discussion. Are you referring to my comment here?
It could be so much worse
good, let it rot in hell where it belongs
I don’t understand this take. A lot of us didn’t ask for this? A lot of us still want a better country to live in and are actively protesting against the fascist government here. Instead of telling us to rot in hell, why don’t you help and support us?
Unfortunately for you, whatever happens in the US will also affect the world.
It’s hard not to be happy about this when your country has been subjected to American imperialism, I feel for you and I don’t have anything against the American people (except the retards who supported this)
And while it’s unlikely at this point, America relinquishing it’s power might open a pathway for meaningful change rather than keep us stuck in this perpetual cycle of sucking billionaires off.
Hang in there and if you can, smack a Nazi for old times sake.
It did not start with that fascist government. USA is stirring shit since decades, and democrats were absolutely not better for the outside world. Sorry for you, but this is a bit your responsability too. Trump just have to whine for a minute and all his braindead supporters invade a gov building. What is the opposition doing ? Absolutely nothing that matters apparently. Now the link with europe is being destroyed in a way we would never have expected. Time to wake up if its not already too late, or else good luck to make the fascists go away when your only allies left will be russia and north korea.
We are doing what we can. Protesting. Spreading awareness. Take a look at what Sanders and AOC is doing.
You don’t understand? For a large part of the world it really makes no difference if it’s D or R ordering invasions, regime change, cripling sanctions, drone strikes etc…
Imperialist wars to steal resources, unconditional support for israeli genocide, tax cuts and bail outs for the rich, less regulations for banks, oligarchs and multinationals. Those things are understood to be a bipartisan concensus since forever. Seen that the vast majority of Americans also vote for this since forever I really don’t care.
It does make a difference though? I’m not saying the US is a good nation, but with all it’s wrongs, Democrat leaders have had policies involving foreign aid (USAID, Ukraine, etc.) every year. If you look at just 2023, the US has spent almost $71.9 billion in foreign aid. All of that has been cut by Trump and DOGE for tax cuts on the rich.
Like, what do you personally think about the idea of, say, some blue states seceding from the US?
Would that make sense in your mind?
It’s not a trick question, there are no right or wrong answers, i’m just trying to understand.
