Is the Sun Slowly Setting on U.S. Power?

[applegrove]

Last edited Mon Apr 29, 2024, 12:55 AM - Edit history (1)

Is the Sun Slowly Setting on U.S. Power?

April 28, 2024 at 7:45 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 150 Comments

https://politicalwire.com/2024/04/28/is-the-sun-slowly-setting-on-u-s-power/

"SNIP.............

David Ignatius: “The United States might be stumbling toward a decline from which few great powers have ever recovered. It has many of the tools of national recovery but doesn’t yet have a shared recognition of the problem and how to fix it.”

“That’s not a quote from a MAGA or progressive leaflet. It’s a summary of a startling new study by Rand that was commissioned by the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment. It should serve as a loud wake-up call for America in this crucial election year.”

............SNIP"

Applegrove:

Only the Trump cult diminishes the American Government by making it less important than Trump. Making a democratic government, and its people who it represents, less important than a leader is fascism.

[Shellback Squid]

1. we need " shared recognition", is TSF and MTG just a symptom or a permanent mindset?

[harumph]

2. The few obscenely wealthy are only looking at the short term.

Market manipulations and interference with everything from politics, medicine and education all with a short term mindset
- is killing us slowly, making us unhealthy and dumber. They look at us like we're cattle, nothing more.

[Silent3]

3. Certainly no country can currently trust that agreements reached with the US will be honored

They all know if Trump wins, all agreements and treaties with the US are worthless.

Even if Biden wins we're going to be in a weaker position for a long time, not recovering fully until other countries can trust that the MAGA movement has been safely extinguished.

[applegrove]

4. We know Biden is good as his word. We adjusted quickly and happily

to a real proponent of democracy and government of the people, by the people and for the people.

[Silent3]

6. Yes, we do know Biden is trustworthy. But what we can't promise any other country is that Biden will remain President...

...and that Biden's successor, and that successor's successor, will be reliable partners in foreign relations.

While there are, of course, never any absolute guarantees about any country's future conduct, stable foreign relations require a level of trust that Trump and his ilk are very, very far from being able to provide.

[Ponietz]

5. The sun is setting on the planet

Focusing on U.S. power seems trite to me. The question is whether we are all in this together, or whether billions will die in the not too distant future so the killers can inherit the earth. The status quo is untenable.

[applegrove]

7. USA is indespensable as the leader in good governance.

[Ponietz]

9. That's not saying much

as far as the planet is concerned.

[applegrove]

10. Why do you say the USA is not important to the free world?

[Ponietz]

14. What difference does it make?

To what end? We’re the world’s largest CO2 emitter and weapons manufacturer. That’s not going to change anytime soon. Besides, I’m not sure many around the world agree with you that the U.S. is an indispensable leader in good governance.

[applegrove]

15. To the end that we have a vision for the world so that

Trump doesn't win the election. Biden has been an environmental President. To what end do you think doing nothing will help. Or not promoting your country's strengths. Are you a nialist? Who do you want to win the election?

[Ponietz]

17. Go ahead and misconstrue

then, attack my loyalty. That’s how it goes on the internet.

I’m a fatalist. There’s no way out. Biden 2024!
Good night.

[Celerity]

11. I am going to pass on the US model being exported to the EU.

[applegrove]

12. Most of the world goes for Parliamentary systems of Democracy.

The US ensures little countries are not attacked by bigger ones. That Fascists do not spread their evil ways. It is not actively exporting it Constitution so that not a problem. Constitutions like Canada's that were written in the 1980s are popular to be modeled on. US is indispensable at ensuring Democracies flourish and governments are good. Good governance.

[Celerity]

13. It is not just the lack of a proportional representation parliamentary system, I say hard pass because of

multiple other fundamental long wave-flawed parts of the US Constitution (Electoral College, 2nd Amendment, the very nature of the US Senate, the very nature of the SCOTUS, etc etc) plus the role of money (both open and dark) in the US elections, plus the utter centrality and primacy of the profit motive up and down the US society and economy (US healthcare being the biggest example), the massively over-militarised, hyper violent police forces at multiple levels, etc etc.

[Celerity]

18. that is not germane to any of my comments on this thread

I made no comment about Biden whatsoever. I replied about the US model overall in terms of its domestic outcomes of governance and economic/social infrastructures.

[applegrove]

20. You are correct. I got you confused with another person. I'm sorry.

I will delete my post.

[Celerity]

23. All good!

[Yavin4]

8. "Slowly" ? Try "Rapidly".

For the past 45 years or so, most US economic policy has been based on the principal that if we give rich and powerful people more money and more power, they would in turn create great jobs for all us. The idea was that govt is big, bloated, and corrupt. Where private corporations were lean, mean, and full of our best and brightest. Surely, lower taxation and de-regulation would kill government and give these geniuses the power to improve all of our lives.

The exact opposite happened. We have a wealth gap larger than the Grand Canyon. Our situation is on rapid decline.

[Metaphorical]

19. US Hegemony is absolutely decreasing

Many factors, not least of which being the shift away from oil. We "inherited" England's empire in the 1950s after WWII, and having dual coasts on the Atlantic and Pacific both help, but the reality is that the US military is becoming redundant in an era of drone warfare (sadly, warfare becomes more affordable with technology, not less), and without that military, US hegemony is also decreasing. We've also pissed away a lot of power by outsourcing our manufacturing, and while robotics may help equalize that somewhat, we're definitely in the waning days of Empire. it doesn't mean the end of the country, but it does mean that we're likely to lose a lot of the poisonous exceptionalism that has caused so many problems for the last fifty to sixty years.

[IcyPeas]

21. Saudia Arabia may take over... step by step, inch by inch.

[no_hypocrisy]

22. It used to be whichever country had the most assets, the most military, and

had "The Bomb". By those standards, US power has been diluted.

[lark]

24. It's not ending slowly. If tsf wins, it ends instantly when we back Russia over Europe.

It's definitely not stumbling towards fascism, it's being pushed and pulled that way by greedy billionaires - both foreign and domestic.