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PM Carney declares U.S. ties now a ‘weakness’ in address to Canadians (www.ctvnews.ca)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[–] 5 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

Fully agree. Trump is a symptom of the American cultural response to this decline, not the source.

USA very much followed the pattern of the Spanish Empire. Found a golden goose that turned their currency into the world standard, and proceeded to import themselves out of self sufficiency.

That being said, on May 26th 2016, I was laughed at by my entire work office for saying that Trump winning the GOP nomination (At that time we all assumed Hillary would win) would be noted by future historians as the beginning of the dissolution of the united states. Trump is a snowball, not snowfall.

And honestly that's what were seeing with California filling the void left from defunded federal agencies like FEMA, FDA, EPA, etc. I honestly predict that the USA will splinter into several factions depending on what states participate.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    It's also likely that if he had won the 2020 election, his second term wouldn't have been like this, since he wouldn't be so aggrieved. It would likely have been more like his first term, where he was basically a standard republican but with no decorum.

    It took the democrats setting him up as an "easy to beat" opponent in 2016, getting beaten, flailing uselessly, torpedoing bernie for biden and beating him in 2020, assuming that he was vanquished for good, trying and failing to punish him for January 6th (thus setting him on the warpath), then enabling the Gaza genocide and completely fumbling the 2024 election, to put this specific version of Trump in power at the worst possible time. It's kind of like a feedback loop or a cascading failure. It's perfect in a way.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago*

    his second term wouldn't have been like this

    I think its hard to say either way. Definitely something I've been thinking about as well.

    Like on the one hand, it's pretty obvious project 2025 was the product of them having 4 years to screw in a single light bulb between themselves. I don't think they would have accomplished everything in the bill even with the extra term.

    On the other hand, what kind of power could they have consolidated with the extra 4 years of continuity? If things had gone "according to plan" I could see Trump magnanimously passing the presidential torch to a sycophantic successor who'd allow Trump to retain his Cult leader status.

    It took the democrats setting him up as an "easy to beat" opponent in 2016, getting beaten, flailing uselessly, torpedoing bernie

    I know you're referencing 2020, but IMO the DNC snubbing Bernie in 2016 incentivized a lot of "nihilistic" or "accelerationist" votes. To a degree they had a point. Hillary undeniably would have been more successful at perpetuating American Hegemony. So many people voted for Trump because they underestimated how much the decline of US global supremacy would effect them directly.

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