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.
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.
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.
Article about how the states is falling apart.
Uses picture of a house no middle class family could reasonably afford.
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
At the low low price of a few million brown people
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.
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 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.
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.
Don’t know, but this fucker doesn’t add to conversations.
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.
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.
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.
Didn’t Constantinople outlast the Persian empire by quite a while?
They did, and were so weak and ineffectual afterwards that they even got sacked by the crusaders. It was essentially a long decline.
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’.
1787 was less than 100 years ago? Because that’s when their Constitution was ratified.
Also their revolutionary war was 1776 to 1783.
How wrong are you willing to be?
They may be referencing the USA’s increased international hegemony starting after WWII rather than the founding of the nation.
Either way they are off
We are the dog.
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.
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.
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
Well, you have to drink the kool-aid because there’s lead in the tap water.
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.
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.
I’d say Direct Voting is the best solution if you care about democracy.
This “representative” bullshit needs to go.
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.
ESPN, famous for controlling who goes to the Super Bowl… Oh wait, they have no control over that because there are 32 teams.
They can’t even control who fans cheer for. Again, because there are 32 teams. And dozens of sports that aren’t football.
I agree that the media landscape is a huge problem that won’t be directly solved by a different voting system, but I think that a changed voting system is a reasonable step towards solving the wider constellation of problems. A fairer voting system is a far more straightforward thing to solve than the media problem, which is probably better understood as a web of lots of different, but tightly linked problems.
If we imagined a world where the media/propaganda problem were solved, then that wouldn’t make First Past The Post (FPTP) voting fair i.e. it would still be something we’d need to solve.
Of course, this isn’t an either/or thing. I agree that we shouldn’t expect Cardinal voting (or any other alternative voting system) to magically solve this fucked up situation, because problems like media will still exist. However, I do think that FPTP is reinforcing the problem of media monopolies and nationalistic popularism. Even if implementing Cardinal voting (or similar) doesn’t directly improve the media problem, it would change the shape of the problem, such that we could tackle it on new fronts.
I think that a changed voting system is a reasonable step towards solving the wider constellation of problems.
If we’re forming a governing body from scratch, I agree. No reason to start the democratic process suboptimally.
But we’ve experimented with alternative voting schemes in the US before. Eric Adams was elected under Cardinal Voting, ffs. The rationalist theory of voting doesn’t work in districts or elections where one candidate has an outsized war chest or media presence.
However, I do think that FPTP is reinforcing the problem of media monopolies and nationalistic popularism.
I would argue it’s a symptom more than a problem. Systems that favor incumbents and reinforce entrenched interests are going to be championed by incumbents.
Past that, I don’t really need ten mid candidates. I need one good one, with a coalition ready to rally behind them. Raising the intensity of competition and the number of competing factions makes for better TV drama than an election system.
I think the biggest problem I can cook up is that it’s sort of hard to campaign on cardinal voting, especially at the federal level, because it’s sort of an apolitical and nerdy topic that people don’t know about and don’t give a shit about. You’d probably have to campaign on giving people healthcare, or, responding to the economy, or any number of other issues that might come up in that particular cycle. You’d have to pass it as a total footnote to something else, which, at the federal level, probably wouldn’t happen, precisely because it would threaten the power monopoly that both parties have as different sides of the same cardboard cutout. You’d get no votes congressionally to get that passed. You’d probably have to do a bunch of legislation before that, leading up to that, probably you’d have to get rid of citizen’s united, yadda yadda. If you were the president theoretically you could add a lot of rhetorical pressure to specific members of congress, but that’s more useful if you have like, a narrow margin, if you’re outweighed by most then you’d probably ironically end up doing a lot of what trump is doing right now even though he has a majority.
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.
The Roman Empire fell because of a series of invasions by “barbarian tribes.”
I cannot take this author seriously after they wrote this. It was, you know, just a little more complicated than that.
I don’t think the author meant that seriously. You see the quote around “barbarian tribes”? I think he considered this notion sarcastically, as this is “barbarian tribes” is often used by people less knowledgeble abou the topic.
And for the US to implode within a few weeks, there must have been considerable rot inside. I am really not sure where precisely it started, but I consider Bretton Woods (both the system and it’s breakdown), Nixon with the final breakdown of honor in politics, Reagan and his “trickle-down economy” lie Reageanomics, and Bush Junior with his Gulf War key milestones in that process. Notice a trend? They were all Republicans. That Trump puts the final nail into the US’ coffin is only consequential.
Isn’t it crazy for Nixon to be a point of honor? Recent presidents have gotten away with a lot worse, but there is no resignation in dishonor, there are no consequences, nobody cares any more
This is actually a big part of what keeps pushing me farther left. The party of righteousness, fairness, strict legal enforcement, strictly adhering to the constitution, was always dishonest but they’ve completely dropped any pretenses in favor of outright criminality, corruption, throwing out the constitution, enriching their corporate benefactors. They no longer even pretend that oppression is about family values anymore or that we will be trickled upon
What made Rome fall?
It’s a rather complex topic, but the short answer isn’t barbarian invasion.
The simplest correct answer is the Roman elite became less interest in preserving the Roman state and more interested in increasing their own personal wealth and influence.
Hey that sounds like the USA
We’re doing the thing! Yay!
high five
What’s wild is that “being Roman” persisted a lot longer than the tax system and patronage networks that had collapsed. It wasn’t until a large portion of the people who thought of themselves as “Roman” were invaded by the Eastern Roman Empire that the Roman identity was broken up, to be replaced by the regional identities that people rallied around to defend themselves.
I feel like if the ERE’s leaders had taken a different approach, they could have stitched the Western Empire back together, but they broke it.
Also people stopped having enough kids
That’s potentially a global problem. It’s not specific to the US as long as we keep making ourselves an attractive destination for immigrants and keep welcoming them ………… crap
define “enough kids” for me please.
do you mean enough kids that their parents can’t feed them off their own little farm, and the kids had to be sent to the cities as slave / poor workers, so that the machines can keep churning for the sake of profit?
edit: sorry but i’m pissed and angry now. “not enough kids” like what? not enough kids to make sausage of them? not enough kids to burn them in the kettle of capitalism? not enough kids to flood the labor market with undervalued workers?
i tell you what, it’s capitalist propaganda that “people should have more kids”, because they think it makes the wages fall. what it actually does is create poverty, mass unemployment, working poor, and civil unrest. may the empire be intoxicated by its own poison. may the corporations fall due to the civil unrest that they helped create.
Like the birth rate was too low overall.
Of course more people makes wages fall. That’s why immigration is so popular in western world.
There are whole books on that topic, but this article gives a very basic explanation of some of the major factors that were involved.
Thanks
It all started with the reform known as the Pax Romana. Rome stopped waging wars that kept the influx of slaves, which were fundamental for their economic model. They didn’t realize the implications of such a decision and didn’t design a viable alternative in time.
It was the barbarian tribes, the kids are just being pedantic lmao
it took 100 or so years to really collapse and effective organization and leadership were big factors in that process. They didn’t lose a war and poof, everything was over, they were always fighting several other civilizations for dominance, they started consistently losing when the soldiers started showing up in rags.
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Take a history class.
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I feel bad for the innocent Americans who are gonna suffer… people who honestly didn’t ask for or want any of this.
We may not have wanted any of this, but none of us are innocent. We all play our parts whether that’s the sociopathic capitalist or the empathetic commoner, with the consequences of our actions/inaction causing harm and suffering to the world. The very devices we’re having this discussion on were created with suffering.
We’ve collectively destroyed this entire planet - that was intended to sustain us all - so none of us are innocent, except the children who’ve no idea yet what right and wrong even mean. As for the rest of us, there are very real degrees of guilt and also sincere ignorance, and also repentance… if not, we would all deserve to just lay down and let evil roll over us.
I mean the conservatives definitely asked for this, as did the democrats who didn’t vote, and the majority of Americans who don’t vote at all.
So you don’t believe there are any Americans who don’t deserve to suffer for what’s happening?
There is a minority who didn’t directly contribute to it, yes.
It was something like 48.5% of voters, maybe over 49% depending how you count third party voters
Ok, so we at least partially agree.
I mean, everyone who voted for Hillary/Biden in primaries wanted this.
They would rather have Trump than Bernie, so that’s what they got.
It’s like watching an old friend sink into senility. The person you know is slowly being replaced by something else and you are powerless to stop it.
Living in it is like that individual, but that individual is head of the household, has all the money and keys, has locked the door and is wildly armed.
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