No matter what happens, I believe the author is correct. Europe will not trust the US in a long time. Trump actually has managed to destroy the image of America in the entire world, in a few months.
I do agree that Trump managed to destroy the image of the US in a few months, he’s not actually the sole reason. It’s the ~33% of the population that voted for him again that really destroyed the image of the US.
The world has known for a while that Americans are dumb, but the fact that we not only let him run for president again, but let him get elected again is the real loss of trust. We (in the broad sense, probably not any of us actually in this thread) voted for a felon, and as far as anyone can tell democratically elected a man who had already made us the laughing stock of the world in the past. They graciously forgave us once, and then not only did we not change, we doubled down on crazy. We’re a democracy, we’re all also a bit responsible for the destruction of our reputation by allowing this to happen and continue. Even those of us who have never voted for Trump.
Honestly yeah, that was it for me. Seeing him get elected this time was really this feeling of “Oh, that’s just how it is over there huh?”.
The first time I could just believe your voting systems are messed up with the electoral college and all, and the massive push back that happened. Feelings were also optimistic coming off the Obama years.
But now that he’s spent the last several years fully mask off, investigated up and down revealing all the crazy things we’d been hearing about him and his cronies were true, and he still gets elected? By majority vote too?? There’s no excuses.
The US is actually just like that huh?
Yeah, right after the election, we all had a few days of reckoning with ourselves in realizing what we allowed to happen, and realizing that maybe the US really is just like this. And then a whole bunch of people, turned their own guilt around on trans people, and people who were against funding a genocide, and the concept of “woke,” blamed them for the loss, and convinced themselves that they aren’t responsible for what happens now.
And to Americans, I know that there are limits to what we can do when Trump has majority support of every branch of our Government, and we’re rightfully scared of what they’ll try to do to dissenters. I know how strong the temptation is to sit back and smugly watch the FAFO roll in. But we also need to be loudly rejecting this whenever we can, otherwise we’re going to normalize it for a generation. I know it’s gonna be difficult. I have some family members who are in the cult, and I don’t know if I can talk them out of it. But sitting around waiting for my parents and grandparents to wake up on their own, or pass away isn’t a good plan either.
I’m from Europe, I have relatives in the US, I’ve spent a whole year doing my senior year in the US, I’ve traveled to the US multiple times. What is currently happening makes me incredibly sad. I’ve always seen Trump as something temporary, some illness that has befallen a great country that soon will be healed. But what JVL writes is true, trust in the US is gone, for good. I see it within myself, my peers and in the local media.
Would it change your opinion in the long run if it ended up being proven that the 2024 election was stolen?
Not the person you responded to, but no.
As long as the US does not fix it’s broken two party system and reconciles it’s divided society it cannot be trusted.
I’d say no. Regardless of it being stolen or not, the amount of damage done with no (read: few?) checks and balances does not present the US as a democracy at all.
It should have been impossible, but he and his team have found and abused every single legal loophole there is and it does not seem like the majority of politicians are interested in fixing them.
It’s not trust inspiring when one person can write a presedential order overuling a literal constitunional amendment.
I don’t hate Americans. Most are great people, but I do hate their rotten to the core political system.
Donald wanted a wall around America. We got one! Who paid for it? Our democracy.
These MAGA idiots don’t get it. We didn’t just have a seat at the table, we had the seat at the head of the table. We were the richest, most prosperous nation. The nation nobody dared cross. The nation looked to for guidance and leadership. And now we’ve thrown it all away to become a fucking backwater. The North Korea of North America. God damn these pricks for destroying our nation.
Look at the DJ and S&P in YTD rather than just 5 days. It’s worse than that graph is showing.
Honestly, I can’t grasp just how screwed the US is… Republicans has pulled a Brexit on us, and worse.
I can’t stop watching this train wreck. I mean fuck it’s bleak but I just can’t look away.
Anyone care to guess what’s in store for the week to come?
I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a run on TP.
I read some comments about food shortages as Mexico exports to other markets. I wonder how likely that is?
I just have no. freakin. idea. how the MAGA crowd is going to react to price increases. I mean, it’s pretty hard to explain any of this away or blame it on anyone else. Even official propaganda people don’t know what to say.
Is a mutiny even in the realm of possibility? If there are food shortages and riots, would the republican house ever pass an impeachment?
Repubos won’t ever think critically about it. Trump said things have to get worse before they get better. So like Christians thousands of years ago (and today) they will go through the hardship thinking that there’s a better life awaiting them. But it won’t ever come.
Best case: Trump gets impeached, Vance takes over and they walk back some of this bullshit.
Worst case: Trump brings the army to start un-terrorist-ing protestors, declares martial law and enacts even worse policies.
Worst case sounds like Trumps usual behavior.
Vance is more protectionist than Trump. Trump has surrounded himself with a group of people who believe in American exceptionalism and isolationism like a religion.
Laura Loomer (far right conspiracy theorist who plays Jigsaw in the Saw horror film franchise) came in and advised Trump to fire National Security Agency director Gen. Timothy Haugh as well as multiple others for disloyalty, in favour of more Trump-friendly appointees.
This is usually a a step before we go full Emperor has no clothes because intelligence is supposed to be apolitical. If Trump only wants intelligence that feels good to him, then the US is truly fucked.
Its doubtful that America will recover from this. The rest of the Western world needs to figure out how to make their soft landing.
70 days. He ruined the American image in 70 days. He’s a disgrace.
no no, the image has been atrocious for decades… but they were more or less reliable. even an idiot like Dubya could only fuck up things so much, at least for allies. but now after getting out of deals, disrespecting sovereignty of allies, general hostility, and demonstration of the checks and balances being dismantled … everyone knows that’s not the case.
reliability was literally the only thing the US had. it’s not like they produce anything worth a shit anymore. no one needs the US.
I always wanted American Hegemony to end. No one country should have that much influence. We were abusing our status as a leader for a long time, anyways. I just didn’t want it to end like this.
I actually am so sad about this. I’ve always been a patriotic American. To see my country (which has had its fair share of shit fuck) being reduced to nothing but a pile of cult worshipping narcissists brings me so much pain. I love and respect other nations, so trump sowing salt into the fields is like a stab to my heart.
My neighbors have officially gone insane. My country and the immediate world around me has gone insane.
I feel the same. I imagine this was the feeling of watching Hitler come to power and seeing the entire world burn. I fear this is the beginning of that again. All the signs are there.
I dont know what else to say… Many good people will suffer.
I really hate when people jump to Hitler. Trump isn’t Hitler and the US isn’t close to Nazi germany… yet. But we are certainly following close to Franco or Mussolini
Yeah didnt mean to anger you. But Trump is a bit crazy. He acts like a dictator.
Those were dictators too.
Big victory for humanity and the planet.
The USD being replaced will be wild, but it will happen. It’s not reliable anymore.
Good fucking riddance
As an American living in Europe, I can see things from the outside looking in. And this article is spot on.
It’s time to start your exit strategies, if you’re in the US. Get your passports, go to the consulates and apply for your visas, buy your tickets, leave. Apply for asylum if you have to.
I’m a waiter, I’m definitely stuck here.
I mean, people have been writing this headline for over 20 years. Not that its strictly wrong, but even Fukiyama wasn’t so blinded by the veneer of US hegemony in the wake of the Bush War on Terror and the cracks in the global international.
If you get into the history books, NATO’s OG purpose was to guarantee a future in which Germany never gained a continent-wide grip over Europe. That mission went out the window in the wake of 2008, as German banks and businesses consolidated their influence over the continent through supply chains and mass transit developments. US/EU relations have been downhill ever since, with Trump simply flooring the gas while Presidents like Obama and Biden gently massaged the brakes.
Similarly, NAFTA and the Pacific Rim outsourcing of the 90s/00s did in domestic industrialization. We turned our physical capital into the hands of Indonesian/Philippine juntas, Singaporean oligarchs, and Chinese Communists. Trump trying to bring it all back by slamming the door on imports does nothing to rebuild the lost domestic industrial capital. But then neither did endless speculative investment and bailout for the FIRE sector or the domestic mineral extraction industries.
Putting all this on Trump’s shoulders is shortsighted. He’s the bumbling duffus who finally took the propaganda of Evangelicals and Anarcho-Capitalists swarming over Wall Street and Silicon Valley seriously. But this is apotheosis, not mere consequence. Trump is a vehicle for an ideology that’s been brewing in the US since the Hoover Institute opened its doors in 1919.
Similarly, the shattering of confidence over the last three months is not merely the result of Trump’s reckless abandon, but of the 40 year Federalist Society Mission to root out and replace all those Warren Era liberal judges with rock-ribbed Calvin Coolidge conservatives combined with the 30 year long Gingrich/DeLay project to gerrymander conservative states into a Permanent House Majority. This, combined with a liberal establishment to timid - and in many cases quite explicitly senile - to oppose the JD Vance-guard of the Republican Counterrevolution, has removed all the traditional barriers a President might have normally faced when attempting to wield dictatorial power.
Talking about this from an “Evil Russian Agents” perspective only further illustrates the rot within the American mass media. Even now, as one of the 1980s most iconic American Business Tycoons implements a playbook authored by some of its most seditious and sadistic neo-confederates, we still cannot recognize this as a uniquely American problem. Its gotta be some impurity in the American strain - pee tapes or some baroque clandestine debt arrangement or KGB mind control - that’s causing an American President, surrounded by his American advisors to execute on an economic playbook straight out of the Ron Paul Newsletter.
Even then, we can look at this as the End of An American Age or we can look at this as the end of a failed experiment in illiberal democracy. Maybe the 80 years that took us from Truman to Nixon to Bush/Obama to Trump hasn’t been so great after all. Maybe we’ve fucked around long enough, and now - by finding out - we can move into a future in which the US isn’t required to be an unassailable City On A Hill in order for domestic residents to live an honest and satisfying life.
Or maybe we just can’t handle our Imperial Reign ending and we blow it all up. WW3! WW3!!
