Trump was right about one thing, we are a nation in decline, but it’s not for the reasons he’s claiming.
this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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Democracies grant immense power to the electorate. Including the power of suicide. Democratic systems are inherently capable of ending themselves because ultimately their survival depends on enough people believing in the system and holding the integrity of the system to be more important than any particular democratic outcome. That is lost in the US. Most voters don't care.
That truth alone makes a decent argument for US being in decline. It will take a long time , but it's beginning.
The US isn't a democracy though, it is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, where every election we get to select which group of oppressors will wield state power against us until the next one.
Also decline is caused by anticolonial resistance and the logic of capitalism breaking down. I would suggest reading Lenin's "imperialism" and Fanon's "wretched of the earth"
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Corrupt democracies should be suicided. Electoral college, first past the post, gerrymandering, partisant suprene court, gridlocked house and senate, bankers running money, wallstreet in charge of the commons, and that's just for starters
It is difficult to get Drezner to understand that American exceptionalism is already dead when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
Why does Will E Coyote look so much like a Swastika here
End? It was always a myth?
Right? But American mainstream media would not admit that.
The End of American Exceptionalism
But not the end of them claiming it regardless of the reality.
Then again, their claims of being the bestest ever at everything have been false for a very long time already.
"I live in the best country on the planet!"
"Have you ever been to another country?"
"Well, no. But why would I do that when I'm already in the best country!"
This doesn't apply to just the US...
Traveling does wonders to people. Shame not a lot of people can afford it and even those who can not all travel.
You have a point. After I wrote it I thought of 2 things. Firstly, even those that are lucky enough to travel will never travel everywhere. So, how can they claim the best without having seen all possibilities? Secondly, there are ways to learn and /or experience things without being physically present, like read about it in a book, or watch a documentary. That counts for something.
Now I think about it, I could have changed it to:
"I live in the best country on the planet!”
"Really? How do you know? How do you measure that? What evidence do you have to back that up?"
But, it would probably go all downhill from there, as the original one inevitably would....😆
Maybe even the start of Americans engaging with reality, I'm not holding my breath though.
Even though we will admittedly never engage with reality, you may still consider holding your breath around us to be prudent. We smell awful from all the obesity.
They aren’t exceptional. They’re just like Russia.
I'd argue we're a lot more like the British empire in their glory days- exporting authoritarianism, subjugation, and hate globally, for as long as it serves our material benefit.
We learned from the best 🤷♂️
We are not just like Russia.
We aren't exceptional though, you got that right. America hasn't been exceptional in decades.
Oh, it has… just not in the ways anyone would desire to be considered exceptional.
Given that Russia has a competent government and isn't on a verge of a civil war, not sure in what way America is like Russia.
You call competent a government that pulled the "special military operation" and led hundreds of thousands of its people into death for not much of anything? You must be trolling.
Yeah, I call a government that defeated NATO in Ukraine and manged to grow the economy despite the sanctions competent.
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Typical of American exceptionalism to stand other country on the verge of existential crisis and when they react call that "for not much of anything"
There is a chance that Trump will inadvertently weaken the US long term, but nothing is certain so until it happens I am not getting my hopes up. The article though is neocon propaganda, they don't even mention the genocide in Gaza or pogroms in the West Bank.
There is a chance that Trump will inadvertently weaken the US long term
He already did that the first time.
This time he'll double (or triple) down on that.
We can really only hope.
I view FA as an arena for American political elite to build legitimacy for their ideas.
That, combined with an expected surge of corrupt foreign policy practices, will leave the United States looking like a garden-variety great power.
I'm surprised to hear such strong language out of FA. I normally expect boring policy-style language.
He believes that the U.S.-created liberal international order has, over time, stacked the deck against the United States.
I've perceived that things have never been better for American international order than under Trump/Biden.
he will likely use Schedule F—a measure to reclassify civil service positions as political slots—to force them out.
Interesting precedence if so. Having career civil servants keeps things from changing too fast, and turning them political could enable instability. I'm curious how this interacts with the Hatch act.
The first is the inevitable corruption that will compromise U.S. policies.
I'm surprised at the emphasis on "corruption" language, especially in FA. This type of language gets people labeled "troublemaker" as Chomsky might say.
I've perceived that things have never been better for American international order than under Trump/Biden.
The last few cycles have been a weird time for NATO, as the escalating Russian aggression revitalised the alliance, but the unreliability of Trump vastly diminished the status of the US. Europe is now actively trying to get out of the military subordinate role.
The alliance may have been revitalized, but have the member countries been revitalized? You must have your nose buried in stock market-based numbers rather than quality of life, true consumer price inflation, housing costs, and personal debts. The western world has greatly burdened itself in the hopes of bringing down the Russian standard of living, and it sure isn't conclusive that is working, and it's undeniable it has failed to achieve the political goals NATO countries shot for, especially weakening the great necromancer Putler himself.
IDK what your point is. NATO being revitalized is not a "good thing" that makes us live nicer. NATO and rearmament is a fever, Russian imperialism is the sickness.
NATO is not an economic alliance, it's a military one. The sole goal of NATO is keeping Russian soldiers outside NATO members' territories. And as someone whose home country has suffered immensely under Russian occupation, seeing Russia draw troops down from the Finnish border right after they joined the alliance makes me happy that we are NATO members.
Europe wouldn't be doing better outside NATO, it has no bearing on economics. Trade disruption with Russia certainly has to do with it, but ironically that's because during the 00s and the 10s Europe extended a friendly hand to Russia, and got into deep trading entanglements with it, which Russia tried to exploit to force geopolitical concessions.
You are contradicting yourself LOL, you say NATO has no bearing on the European economic situation while admitting in the next breath it has huge implications for energy prices due to trade with Russia. Europeans have been debating their quality of life drop, and your countrymen have been calling me blind drunk screaming about how they have no money and they can't decide if they hate the Russians or you anti-Russian zealots more. You are simply unaffected by the actual damage because you are economically insulated and 100% of your political leanings are based on oversocialization. They have no connection to material conditions in Europe. Basically cope and go buy one of your state manufactured vodka seltzers you underwear drunk idiot.
What the actual heck are you talking about?
NATO has no bearing on the European economic situation while admitting in the next breath it has huge implications for energy prices due to trade with Russia.
Energy prices went up since Russia is conducting a military invasion on the country transiting said energy, and as a result of EU/US sanctions that are the result of war crimes, crimes of aggression and genocide. The only thing NATO does currently is ensure that can't spill over to more countries being attacked. NATO didn't do jack shit yet. Individual countries, and the EU, did.
and your countrymen have been calling me blind drunk screaming about how they have no money
Our countrymen should look for their money at Hatvanpuszta or Mészáros & Mészáros. Russian puppet Orbán stole all the money and the future of the country, Russian puppet Orbán made it impossible to have children, get sick, or die, with dignity, he is responsible for producing the highest real estate inflation, the highest food inflation in the EU, and it's all because he'd rather take Russian cock to his throat than have less corruption kickbacks.
A ruszkik meg igazán hazamehetnének végre és foglalkozhatnának a saját országukkal ahelyett hogy mongol módjára fosztogatnak és erőszakolnak nyugatra.
LOL I like how you skipped over the cause and effect of the energy prices: the sanctions and Nord Stream bombing. You just started venting your Orbán Derangement Syndome.
I won't try to press you to use logic regarding how US energy companies benefit. You're clearly too emotional to process it. European racists are the most pathetic.
Blackrock will take the world you intended for your children from you. Glad you learned to treat it as a positive thing.
the sanctions and Nord Stream bombing.
I wonder what might have caused that. Not a genocidal fascist Russia, right?
I won’t try to press you to use logic regarding how US energy companies benefit.
It's a shit situation, but still better than genocide.
You just started venting your Orbán Derangement Syndome.
Nice to see you using the same lingo as the American fascists, you know the ones that support an additional genocide in the Middle East as well as the one Russia is perpetrating.
Blackrock will take the world you intended for your children from you.
Thanks, but Orbán already took it and sold most of it to Russians. Not much left to steal anymore.
That's really not true brother. 😅 You have so much more to lose. Don't say you weren't warned. You begged for the Western financial class to enact more punitive measures that you just acknowledged are contributing to an energy and cost of living crisis in Europe. You can lose so much more than cheap heating in the winter. So much more.
Slava Ukraini. Oh no, I just jokingly repeated the words of fascists. 🤣
Orphans are being quite literally raped with government support, healthcare is nonexistent with hospitals not picking up the phone and entire wards closing, the infrastructure is failing with trains derailing daily, wages are a joke and are being artificially repressed, housing prices are skyrocketing, all with government support.
That's Orbán's reality, that is the proximate threat, that is what the Russian puppet is doing to the country. Wall Street idiots and incompetent neoliberal politicians are of course annoying and we should work against that as well, but give me a fucking break.
And just please stop doing the American exceptionalist idiotism yourself, the world is more than genocidal fascistic Russians and genocidal fascistic Americans. You don't need to lick the boot of Putin to show you don't support Biden.
You literally only use White House approved sources. I don't approve of anything you are talking about because it is made up to justify the West supporting neonazis. This is a narrative you have no actual evidence for. All of your ideas come from the state department and from Kiev. They're liars. They even told you they were winning the war moron.
Okay, are you seriously a bot? What White House approved sources?
Orphans being raped were acknowledged by the Orbán government, the rapist and his accomplices were convicted in court, then the accomplice was pardoned because he was a personal friend of the Orbán family. That this happened is not even disputed by Orbán himself either, he's just trying to pretend that he has no sway over his own Minister of Justice or the President he nominated. Some in his inner circle are still on the side of the guy who enabled the mass rape of orphaned children.
I am not informing myself about hospitals from "White House approved media", I've been there and lost multiple family members there to entirely preventable causes. I wouldn't wish the experience of visiting a hospice that looks like a literal horror show to see a loved one for one last time as they die from treatable diseases. Or being told that a loved one has died since the ambulance didn't arrive at all. For days.
Please go outside and wake up to the reality that the biggest problem affecting Hungary at least for the past 20 years has been the idiotic, incompetent and utterly corrupt in all senses of the word Orbán government that is being supported by Putin for the sole reason of creating chaos in the EU.
BTW today's news is that this is how a bathroom of a home for children in state care looks like in Hungary, today, after countless amounts of EU money given to and stolen by the government:
Dawg why the fuck are you lecturing me about Orbán like that has anything to do with the Ukraine War we were originally talking about? Do you think I support Orbán? Are you stoned? I thought by orphans you meant the White House claiming Putin is stealing Ukrainian kids (literally evacuating children from a war zone) to indoctrinate them. Was really not clear, maybe my bad?
I am aware Hungary is fucked up, and I would be totally happy to listen to whatever details you have on the elite child rapists there. Seriously. But you're turning this into some QAnon shit that won't even deal with the problem.
The thing is USA, Japan, Belgium, the UK, and Ukraine (like the entire NATO side) are all child rape capitals of the world as well. Look up Marc Dutroux! If you want to get rid of corrupt politicians in your country, conspiracy theories about how defeating Russia (you can't) will make them crumble to dust and solve all your problems are not helping. Don't you see why Orbán and the far right get more support when their only opposition is people like you who are pro-war? Fix your fucking problems at home and stop blaming Russia for everything.
People like Orbán and Trump don't even care about Russia they only use their politican instincts to realize the war is unpopular and they can grandstand about it. Neither one of them will actually help Russia.
Exactly what pootin wants
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