Yup, the middle powers have to organize and work together to avoid being chum. The economic power is there, and they can shift from purchasing US weaponry (thus paying US workers) into purchasing middle-power weaponry (thus paying middle-power workers). Car/truck plants can be repurposed, and if Ukraine's lesson is valid then smaller, portable weaponry is now the preferred solution. Cheaper, and the middle powers don't have huge investments in tanks and ships.
> First, it means naming reality. Stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised. Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion.
Nobody leading a western country would’ve dared be this direct about America a decade ago.
The great irony with the current political climate is that America has truly been first for many decades, leading the world order to tremendous financial, military and material success. But nothing lasts forever.
We won’t know for many years if this moment represents America’s true descent into a has-been empire, but the message from our closest allies is very clear: world leaders don’t speak that kind of truth to a power like America unless they mean it.
What i find fascinating is that, if we hold that Trump being elected twice was because of frustration and rage against society, this is the way they are now when the US is literally the most dominant country in the world. Can you imagine the rage, if the US actually saw real decline. Christ
All of those are true, yet the US's (PPP-adjusted) per capita GDP was over 37% higher than the EU's in 2024 [0], and GDP growth has significantly outpaced the EU for years. Basically, whenever there was a choice between anything and economic growth, the US chose growth. Other places made different choices. You can argue about which choices were better, and how the results are distributed, but the difference in salaries for most people using this site are even more stark.
Counter to your point, what's most striking from that chart is how comparably similar both Europe and the United States are in their GDP per capita growth.
As AI tooling improves, tech workers are finding their opportunities for high-paying prosperity fizzle out. Non-AI tech jobs are going the way of the rust belt and most tech professionals have seen their pay flatten. https://www.itbrew.com/stories/2024/02/05/tech-salaries-stag...
High GDP per capita does not immediately mean that people are rich. As one other commenter noted, Ireland has a very high GDP per capita, but your average Irish person is not living rich
> All of those are true, yet the US's (PPP-adjusted) per capita GDP was over 37% higher than the EU's in 2024 [0], and GDP growth has significantly outpaced the EU for years.
And? So what? What has that gotten the US?
Lower life expectancy, higher infant/maternal mortality, higher (violent) crime, and generally much less happiness with life:
If I work for a megacorp and they sell more widgets while paying me the same amount then GDP goes up. This is not actually a direct measure of human flourishing.
But they can't sell more widgets if nobody has any money to buy them.
Sure, you could model a pretend economy where only the wealthy ever buy stuff, but that's not how the US economy works, and Consumer Confidence has a massive influence over our GDP - so when our GDP goes up, it's often hand in hand with our population buying more widgets with extra money, even as they complain that they don't have the cash for "necessities" (I.E. burrito taxis, vanity pickup trucks, and owning a house with two spare bedrooms with a <30 minute commute to their workplace).
Note: I'm not saying that low-income Americans don't genuinely struggle, just that there's a mismatch between the Americans that are genuinely low-income and the Americans that perceive themselves as low-income because they need to save a little to make major purchases or need to tell themselves no sometimes.
Most of their numbers were about the quality of life. It's absolutely absurd to say,
> Well you're twice as likely to be killed, more likely to be sick and obese, will die earlier, are more likely to be in poverty under a tech baron, have a poisoned ecosystem, your babies or wife may die or your kids die in school, or they'll go in insane debt to go to their higher education, and if you're not a white man you're basically less human and risk becoming a part of the permanent ~~slave~~ criminal caste... But think of the moderately higher salary potential!!!!
>
> You know, as long as the economy grows forever and nobody calls any of your debts.
So we chose growth, and now are trying empire, because of memes about our supposed strength on paper, pushed by unserious “conservatives” who can’t form a cohesive argument about anything?
We stand a good chance of this totally destroying us, because the “technocracy” set actually believe their own Paper Divisions are unstoppable and the legal mind of “stick your fingers in your ears and say NAH NAH NAH” to be unassailable.
What an embarrassing ending to the American story this all is, eh?
Maybe whatever comes next will be more serious and will choose differently.
Yup, the worst and most dangerous time is yet to come. This is the country that has the worlds second largest nuclear arsenal. The biggest military logistics infrastructure on the planet and shown a constant willingness to use any force necessary to bend other people to their will.
One hopes, if it gets that far, somebody in the military will finally defy orders, and although the US has its first coup d'etat, the rule of law can return.
I still remember some redditor saying what happened in Nazi Germany couldn't happen in the US because of patriotism. Oh how smug I'd be to ask him "how did that work out?". Hopefully the military doesn't lock step into Armageddon, but "hope" is doing a lot of work there.
I hope so, too. But rule of law and democracy at it's core are cultural achievements - enough people must want it and believe in it. I feel like people start to forget why we have them in place.
ICE aka executive overstepping is a good example. Police actions are highly regulated for good reasons, it won't only affect "the right people".
From what I have heard, a lot of people who voted for Trump don't like the extend of ICE's actions. Even Joe Rogan spoke out. So maybe there's hope.
Europe is fighting the very same battle btw. it just has not manifested that obvious everywhere yet. I fear for Germany falling into the hands of fascists once again in the next years, though.
The US is considered to be a flawed democracy for about 10 years now[1]. Europe, especially the powerful west, has the most healthy democracies.
It's absolutely not a given that the European democracies will survive, people here need to step up in strengthening it against illiberal forces as well, but it's in a much better starting position.
Example: in the Netherlands there was a government with an illiberal far right party (Wilder's PVV). They didn't achieve much, but there was a year of stagnation and the far right talking points have become even more normalized. Other democratic institutions, like judges had to be more on the defense. However, nothing fundamental is broken.
Execution of laws is left to the executive branch. The constitution says power of the executive is vested in one person.
Currently that man is someone who's been convicted of breaking several laws, indicted for others, and has instructed his regime to also ignore some laws...
…and still got elected a second time, despite two impeachments on top of all his other legal woes, his previous term, etc...and he still managed to gain more votes each time he ran.
People seem to forget what this says about the other party.
The system feels broken because not everyone benefits equally from the American led Western liberal order. The liberal order allowed the creation of the most rich and powerful companies in the US, who had unprecedented access to markets and resources. The people owning these companies or earn super high salaries from these companies tend to believe their success is 100% their own. On the other you have people living pay check to pay check and are one unlucky fall away from medical bankruptcy.
I would say children having worse prospects than their parents at the same age is a good indicator of it.
The big issues IMO are: The housing market locking out young people and
The jobs market being brutal to graduates.
Honestly? When America nukes someone or itself. Empires decline slowly then suddenly, and that final bit tends to involve a tantrum. The only exception is when they’re conquered.
In the US, once you are in an elder care facility and you run out of money, the facility will try to keep you in. At that time they will apply to Medicaid in your name. After you die, Medicaid will try to claw back funds by putting a lien against your house. There are extremely complicated rules about exemptions etc.
Sure, if someone wants to get rid of their parents in a humane 21st-century way, by way of an elder care facility, it probably costs a lot.
People used to die living with their family. Perhaps they died earlier, and sure there were some problems with that setup, but I don't think it was necessarily worse for the dying. It was certainly cheaper for everyone.
I don't know anyone who wanted to go to an elder care home. My grandma spent her last three months in an elder care home: all she talked about was going home.
I agree with the sentiment of this post but there is also a consideration here that the world has moved on from a non-elder care end of life for many. Jobs have become increasingly concentrated in certain cities, which has prompted more migration away from many people's place of birth (whether town, region or country). You also have many people having much smaller homes relative to the past because they've moved to high density cities for jobs. Their ability to just have their parents in the home isn't so straightforward anymore.
In the middle of it right now with a grandparent. $5000 - $8000 month and you might still find them frozen to death out in the snow if the staff drops the ball in the middle of the night.
The housing is a house, but it's also a financial vehicle to wealth accumulation. Younger generations have been shut out of that wealth. When the old people are dead can we be so sure the wealth enrichment mechanisms will be left standing?
We know for a fact it won't. Care systems and demograph-targeting machines (sunsetter vacations, scams, etc) are siphoning every drop of wealth from the elderly.
> Can you imagine the rage, if the US actually saw real decline. Christ
You mean if the decline wasn't focused on poor people in unfashionable areas, and it hit the elites, too?
Parts of the US have actually seen real decline, and that's why we have Trump. This wouldn't have happened if we hadn't had policy set by technocrats chasing easily-quantified statistics, and lecturing everyone about how they really ought to feel better because the GDP number go up.
I think you misunderstand where the rage is coming from.
If all their countrymen were equally down on their luck, then there would be no rage. Instead, it's the result of one group of people that used to enjoy success watching it all fall apart while different people just do better and better.
Exploding inequality simultaneous with DEI obsession was a perfect storm of radicalization. The only thing that's really surprising is that "smart" people didn't see it coming.
A CEO, a blue-collar worker, and an immigrant sit down together at a table upon which there is a plate of a dozen cookies. The CEO takes 11 of the cookies, then whispers in the ear of the blue-collar worker "Hey, I think he wants your cookie."
Here's some reading material[1] which is basically a direct refutation of that claim. However you want to characterize what happened between 2016 and 2024, it's not nothing.
If you think the efforts were not misguided, I'm just wondering, how is everything working out lately? Pretty sh*t if you ask me.
"Loss of privilege feels like oppression". I see the numbers showing hiring shifts, but i don't see any numbers backing up the claim that there was once an pure and fair "American meritocracy" that has now been "gutted". and this [1] seems to show that the privilege has not actually been lost
Hiring people based on their race is immoral and framing this as moral is strange. That’s where classical liberals, centrists and the right are coming from when they say the left is obsessed with DEI. I understand you think they are obsessed with dismantling it and that’s a reasonable view too.
>If all their countrymen were equally down on their luck, then there would be no rage. Instead, it's the result of one group of people that used to enjoy success watching it all fall apart while different people just do better and better.
Sure, but hasn't that been the case the world over, or at least for developing economies? This isn't terribly unique to the US.
Most "smart" people could see this coming but as always the question is when? Just have to go back a small ways to the last heydays of communism and inequality was the stick to beat capitalism with.
The issue now is that if there is successful destabilisation of world economies in the way this could currently play out, if some brinkmanship isnt pulled back, you're left with a situation where the group of people who have already seen it fall apart realise it can fall apart even more for them, and the other group also see it start to fall apart.
All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage
It’s actually the opposite. It’s not about raging regarding the decline. It’s about many things going well and raging against prosperity for things they don’t agree with. They want to destroy America because it feels good, not because it makes sense.
> Nobody leading a western country would’ve dared be this direct about America a decade ago
America (and China) a decade ago were still trying to make the (or at least a) rules-based international order work. Not perfectly. (China annexed Tibet. America invaded Iraq.) But there were many times sacrifices in self interest were made for the sake of alliances and international law.
Today, that is gone. None of the great or regional powers are playing by those rules. Outside Europe, nobody even pays them lip service.
We didn’t hear such language a decade ago because it wasn’t yet true, and it wasn’t necessary—that was the point of the rules-based institutions. You could adjudicate differences through them instead of calling for new systems of military alliances.
"Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever?" - Joseph Heller, Catch-22
> Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed
Now count the centuries those cultures existed and exercised hegemony.
The dark thought is this: we may be at the crossroads for containing an imperial America. Because if America commits to global empire it will take WWIII to contain it.
Right, I mean the Roman Republic declined and gave way to Roman Empire for a long time before Rome finally waned. That doesn't feel like it would be a good time for the rest of the world if the United States gave way to the United Empire for next 500 years.
> the Roman Republic declined and gave way to Roman Empire for a long time before Rome finally waned
The Roman Republic was a rising power for centuries. It became the eminent Mediterranean power in 146 BCE and annexed Gaul under Caesar, right as it was collapsing. The Roman Empire then lasted for centuries more.
> doesn't feel like it would be a good time for the rest of the world if the United States gave way to the United Empire for next 500 years
Nuclear annihilation will go restrain growth outside of obvious geographic spheres in theory.
Industry was not globalized in the previous regimes of pre-World war imperialism. That is the novel difference now. And China requires globalized trade in order to support its overindustrialization and economy.
America also currently requires it because it doesn't have its industrial base anymore. It will probably re-industrialize over the next coming decades but that's something that happens over decades.
However, I feel the new rise of imperialism also marks the end of civilization's historical memory of industrial warfare of the world wars.
First, it's Putin, not Russia. Second, he's not itching to use tactical nukes as that will show his hand and there's a good chance that some of their nukes won't work as advertised due to corruption throughout all their systems.
What Putin enjoys doing is threatening to use tactical nukes in the hope that no-one calls his bluff.
My question is, why? This has been obvious to me over the past decade, and I just got into the financial world on the ground floor 2015-ish. Every damn trade agreement has in one way or another been projecting U.S. soft power through financial integration.
>world leaders don’t speak that kind of truth to a power like America unless they mean it.
I mean the damage has already been done. By electing Trump a second time, Americans have sent the world a clear and unambiguous message that it wasn't a fluke: They clearly don't want our friendship or value the treaties they've signed.
A loss of the popular vote, followed by a near toss-up, was hardly a clear message. Roughly half of us didn't intend to send that message, and if polls are an indicator, even fewer now.
I'm mad about the election and what it seems to say about us, but I still haven't completely lost faith in the American people.
Let me be clear; the rest of the world no longer trusts your type of American to fix your country. After Trump 1, maybe. Trump 2, that's it. We'll start to untangle our commitments to you and look elsewhere.
What was my type of American supposed to have done? This is a sincere question, since I'm racking my brain over it. People debate this with one another constantly. We may have more common cause with you than it might seem on the surface.
Also, what commitments? Since this is a tech centric forum, the easy guess would be breaking the dominance of the US tech industry. I'm a cheerleader for that effort.
Nothing. American empire isn't yours to control - people can hate what America is doing without recommending any personal change to your involvement in it.
That's fair, but I'm open to change. In fact, coincidentally, my wife and I were talking about it tonight. We feel frustrated that we might not have done enough.
My guess is that people on HN make a lot of money. Finding effective places to donate it is useful. While this won't be able to directly influence international saber rattling, it can still help protect people from Trump's criminal presidency.
Donate to organizations that provide legal information and legal defense to people at risk of abuse by ICE. Donate to organizations that provide food for people who are frightened to leave their homes because of ICE. Donate to organizations that provide food to people who are threatened by SNAP funding changes. Donate to independent media organizations that are willing to aggressively criticize the Trump administration. If thinking internationally, donate to organizations that target problems that USAID was targeting before being gutted.
For political change we need two things: democrats to win in 2026 and 2028 and democrats to have the guts to dismantle the systems that enabled Trump and charge people involved for their crimes. Existing dem leadership is clearly not willing to do this. So we need involvement starting at the local level all the way up to replace dem leadership with people with guts. Find community groups involved in local elections.
If you live in a region where ICE is highly active, document. Making their crimes undeniable to as many people as possible is what will shift public opinion so much that a new government will be forced to act.
I listed things that are more likely to bubble up into changes to US foreign policy below. Trump is doing a ton of horrible things. I listed various options that tackle various outputs of his regime.
Those are good ideas, but none of them will actually address this problem. It's a combination of charity and the same partisan battle mentality that alienates many people. For instance:
> For political change we need two things: democrats to win in 2026 and 2028 and democrats to have the guts to dismantle the systems that enabled Trump and charge people involved for their crimes. Existing dem leadership is clearly not willing to do this. So we need involvement starting at the local level all the way up to replace dem leadership with people with guts. Find community groups involved in local elections.
That just reads like a Trump-like ideological power grab: "we need to make sure our opponents can never win again." But what does that do for people who aren't partisan Democrats? They want Trump to lock in his power, but they don't want Democrats to, either.
The first step is to acknowledge that voters dislike Democrats so much that not only did a guy like Trump have a chance of winning, but he won. Twice. The response needs to be for the Democrats to reform into a party with broad appeal across diverse regions. The first step to that is saying no to the technocrats, and taking some pages out of Trump's economic playbook (and Sanders's). The second steps is saying no to the activists, and stop alienating large fractions of the electorate by pushing too hard and too fast on a lot of issues.
>>>> The first step is to acknowledge that voters dislike Democrats so much that not only did a guy like Trump have a chance of winning, but he won. Twice.
I think this is too extreme. Trump lost the popular vote, twice, then won his second term by a slim margin. And this was after betting the entire farm on propaganda campaign of racism, misogyny, conspiracism, and pseudoscience, abetted by capture of social media.
I don't think driving the entire Republican Party out of existence is a realistic goal. For one thing, ours is a two party system, and if one party vanishes, another will form in its place. The parties rearranged themselves after the Civil War, and during the Civil Rights era, so I don't think "Republican vs Democrat" is a permanent institution.
See that right there. Oh Trump is not that popular, he barely won the second time.
Then why is he sitting in the White House running the country?
Your democratic institutions, your constitution, allowed him to win elections. Your group of Americans are incapable of enacting meaningful change that will prevent his brand of fascism from taking root in America.
> That just reads like a Trump-like ideological power grab: "we need to make sure our opponents can never win again." But what does that do for people who aren't partisan Democrats? They want Trump to lock in his power, but they don't want Democrats to, either.
No. The goal is to make sure that presidents who commit crimes or direct the executive branch to commit crimes are prevented from doing so or held responsible for doing so. For example, legislation that expands Section 1983 to include federal agents and legislation that limits the availability of qualified immunity would go a long way in mitigating lawless action by federal law enforcement.
> The first step to that is saying no to the technocrats, and taking some pages out of Trump's economic playbook (and Sanders's). The second steps is saying no to the activists, and stop alienating large fractions of the electorate by pushing too hard and too fast on a lot of issues.
These two things are opposites, in my mind. Things don't become less big or fast when they are focused on economic policy. Heck, even Biden's cancellation of student loan debt (something I consider to be on the technocratic side) was considered a Major Question by the supreme court to justify their reversal of the policy.
Not as I had in mind. By "social issues" I meant the non-economic stuff. That stuff has been key to pushing a lot of people to the Republican side.
> Things don't become less big or fast when they are focused on economic policy. Heck, even Biden's cancellation of student loan debt (something I consider to be on the technocratic side) was considered a Major Question by the supreme court to justify their reversal of the policy.
I think they should go big and fast on economic policy, especially on the kind of goals Trump campaigned on. For instance: tariff the heck out of China, figure out how to tax offshoring, plow the money made into re-industrialization, cultivate a trade-bloc of established high-income democracies.
But you know, Trump was for tariffs, so they had to be against them. All the sudden they sounded like the re-animated corpse of Milton Friedman.
The student loan debt thing was dumb because it came off as elitist, and it was to some extent. The Democrats need to listen to and serve people they don't like talking to anymore, instead of their staffers with student loan debt.
"Social issues" does not appear in the text of your comment.
I do not understand how one can do economic things that are substantially larger than cancelling student loan debt while also not "pushing too hard and too fast on a lot of issues."
That was my mistake. I wrote "issues" when I could have been more specific and said "social issues."
I don't think addressing economic issues can be very alienating, except when they signal messed up priorities that exclude you. I don't think student loan forgiveness would have been that controversial if it were a smaller part of a larger package that overall addressed higher priorities or a broader base of people (e.g. a bunch of tariffs and programs to re-industrialize).
The Inflation Reduction Act was a large piece of legislation that had huge programs for re-industrialization, which produced measurable improvements in employment in these sectors.
Zero GOP legislators voted for it. It was pilloried on right wing media constantly.
I do not believe that there is any large scale economically-focused legislation that the democrats could push that would not be controversial.
> What was my type of American supposed to have done? This is a sincere question, since I'm racking my brain over it. People debate this with one another constantly. We may have more common cause with you than it might seem on the surface.
Honestly? Your type of American is supposed to make sure the Democrats stop behaving so stupidly that they create openings for someone like Trump to win.
The dysfunction is America is bipartisan, but I put a lot of fault on Democrats for not rising to the occasion, as they present themselves as the party of responsible people opposed to this craziness. But that's a lie, because unfortunately they lack the maturity to escape from their own narrow partisan ideology, and keep handing opportunity after opportunity to people like Trump. They need to own their role in this mess, which they never, ever fess up to.
Like seriously: if Democrats handled immigration better and took some flashy steps against free trade and globalization (like Trumps tariffs), Trump would have lost handily. If they put a lid on strident progressives setting the tone on social policy, they'd be dominant for a generation. Democracy would have been saved! Unfortunately they're too beholden to technocrats and activists, and the result of that is Trump.
Unfortunately, people outside of the USA think that the people there are very much like Germans in the 1930s/40s. Some of them might be okay, but the rest are swept along with cheering on evil leaders and hate of their own countrymen.
Trump can only dream of the support Hitler had. Thousands turned out to salute Hitler. Trump can't fill a small stadium anymore, and he knows it. AT MOST, he might have had 50% support; AFAICT Hitler was adored by a vast majority of Germans (at one point). Hell, Austria VOLUNTEERED to be absorbed by Germany.
Trump absolutely would set up ovens for his public targets today if he thought he could. He doesn't have a shred of moral fiber. His followers are openly supporting evil. But his demagogue skills are third-rate; he didn't even win a majority of the popular vote (49.8%) amongst the minority that bothered to vote.
And his followers? They don't even have the courage to pull off a successful peaceful public protest. They aren't going to enlist and invade anything further than their local snack-mart.
--
> the USA is a country of racists.
Everyone is racist to some degree; good people try to rise above it. I guarantee your country is full of them, too. Racism is most definitely not the black-and-white distinction people pretend it is (no pun intended). It's a biological Original Sin.
Possibly, but it's not socially acceptable in most places. Meanwhile the USA has ICE agents acting as an armed, unaccountable, private army that are specifically rounding up people who aren't white or have different accents etc. And you have people cheering that.
It's a common way in native English speaking countries to disparage someone, to compare them as a small failed version of something worse.
It's also confusing to non native english speakers, and even to people from "mismatched" english speaking cultures (an Englishman, a Scotsman, an Australian, and a central North American enter a bar; Oscar Wilde tells them they're separated by a common language).
The HN guidelines suggest people refrain from hyperbole, sarcasm, idiomatic metaphors, and generally having fun with language :( <- sad face
> I mean the damage has already been done. By electing Trump a second time, Americans have sent the world a clear and unambiguous message that it wasn't a fluke: They clearly don't want our friendship or value the treaties they've signed.
Come on. Americans sent no such signal. No US election in my lifetime has been about foreign policy, including the last one. Domestic issues are by far predominant.
What really happened was a lot of people were unhappy with a lot of different things, and enough of them rolled the dice on Trump again, because he was the only other choice (and the Democrats decided to rely on his negatives as their complete electoral strategy, which was stupid).
> Come on. Americans sent no such signal. No US election in my lifetime has been about foreign policy, including the last one. Domestic issues are by far predominant.
Guess what, we also care about domestic issues more. Except in smaller countries, your election might have a bigger impact on our fate than our own elections. We only want to live our lives and take care of our families... and then you elect the president who starts helping our worst enemy, and then even threatens our neighbor.
Our soldiers bled and died for you in Iraq and Afghanistan. Please, try to put yourself in our shoes. Imagine you live in one of those small countries that always tried to be a good ally to the US, and you get stabbed in the back, and then you hear an American basically saying, “come on, we don’t care about you, we only care about ourselves”. How would you react?
The other piece though is they sent an unintentional message to the rest of the world that American political system is hijackable in a way they ought to be concerned about.
Not American here. Reading your guys replies it almost feels like you are rejecting the existence of Trump supporters or invalidating their stance. Doesn’t this enforce their argument and created this situation in th first place?
> rejecting the existence of Trump supporters or invalidating their stance
I think the problem is that if you read what people say about why they voted for Trump, it becomes clear that an echo chamber is at least as salient to these voters as traditional Republican motivations.
I am unsurprised about the 2024 election and it's exactly what you'd imagine from a purely economic perspective.
The 2016 election, however, has been studied extensively, and it's clear that several aberrations (large contingent of Republican candidates, the first black president, Facebook, Comey) tipped things in a way that you wouldn't expect if voters are acting rationally.
So as someone who genuinely wishes to understand how people think about things, I don't know what's going on here. I can't tell what new lie will be pushed next week to distract us from the recently-disproven lie of last week. Were I outside all of this, I would have very little hope.
(edit: re sibling poster, Trump is not a representative of the median voter but instead a representative of the median electoral college elector. We can't have it both ways, rejecting the popular vote and then failing to acknowledge that our politics represent the electors and not the man on the street)
> I think the problem is that if you read what people say about why they voted for Trump, it becomes clear that an echo chamber is at least as salient to these voters as traditional Republican motivations.
same can be said about people on the opposite side.
> the things that traditional Democrats supported in 1992 are largely the same things supported now.
No. See Bernie Sanders in 2015 talking about how America needs strong borders and illegal immigrants are used by big business to rip American workers off. See Obama’s speech on the same. See positions on trans identifying males in women’s sports. See open support for hiring based on sex and race. Many democrat positions from 20 years ago are now considered right wing.
Please find perspectives on each of those from 1992 (the OP mentions a handful of culture wars issues that I won’t reproduce).
You misinterpret my statement when you select hot-button issues of today that were not in the public discourse at that time- and almost none of the things you mention were in ANY public platform at that time.
My point is that the core political planks from then (healthcare for example, jobs for coal workers) are maintained in one political tradition and not another.
I don’t think the 1992 perspectives would have been different from the 2015 perspectives. Do you?
I live in a different western country but was old enough to watch the US news (Tom Brokaw) then. People did actually discuss these things. The consensus was: the border should exist. Tomboys were tomboys. Effeminate boys were effeminate boys. You can’t just have a policy of hiring someone based on their race because that’s silly and illegal.
> I live in a different western country but was old enough to watch the US news (Tom Brokaw) then. People did actually discuss these things. The consensus was: the border should exist. Tomboys were tomboys. Effeminate boys were effeminate boys. You can’t just have a policy of hiring someone based on their race because that’s silly and illegal.
I'm very curious about this if you're able to find records on this sort of thing.
From the top:
- I don't think the words we use on news these days were even allowed back then (rapists, Small Hands Rubio), so I don't think "these things" were discussed.
- "You can’t just have a policy of hiring someone based on their race because that’s silly and illegal." You said you're not American, so you may not understand that the current ethos of 'reverse racism' was not how this question was viewed in the 90's
- "the border should exist" This hasn't changed. I'm not sure why people are so ready to parrot this point, when Obama deported more people than any previous president, and Biden continued that. If anything, there has been a monotonic increase in this (but nevermind that many large businesses rely on undocumented labor)
- "Effeminate boys" I am sure that was never on the news in the 90s, and definitely not in a party platform. Gay people have always existed and it's a credit to our current era that we have finally started acknowledging that this isn't a 'wrong' way of living
First time I heard ‘small hands Rubio’ but yes totally agreed politics seems dirtier now.
Anyone with enough exposure to American culture to realise the reasons given for stopping anti black racism are now thrown out, and left wing activists are openly discriminating against Asians, Europeans and Jewish people.
“the border should exist” is now controversial. People think “defending migrants” (which I am) means defending illegal migration. There are suburban mom vigilantes taking on LEOs.
I am talking about sterilising and giving cosmetic surgery to effeminate boys and tomboy girls. We used to acknowledge they existed. Now we tell them their bodies are wrong. Which is not a credit to our current era.
All these positions are remarkably different from the 1990s. Asides from present day politicians having different views in older recordings, Bill Maher also talks about this very frequently.
I hate to bring up all the actions taken against American citizens and legal migrants.
> Bill Maher also talks about this very frequently.
I would not take his talking points to reflect Democratic Party orthodoxy. However, I would challenge you to compare his 1990s recordings to the more recent ones to see how things have changed.
> all the actions taken against American citizens and legal migrants.
Yes, for example this guy. He was indeed an american citizen, and anti-ICE activists framed it has him being kidnapped and driven around for two hours. The wider story is much more interesting: https://x.com/TriciaOhio/status/2013317071342317918
> I would not take his talking points to reflect Democratic Party orthodoxy.
Yes, agreed. That's the point. Bill Maher's views haven't changed much compared to 15 years ago, the Democratic Party's views have.
Also 'talking points' is a silly word for things people say. I write things, you write things. You don't have 'talking points' and I don't have 'talking points'.
I’m not trying to convince anyone. I am happy to engage in a discussion if you are interested in anything beyond platitudes about what will and will not “work”.
I'm rejecting your claim that voters didn't act rationally relative to any other human.
No human is 100% rational, doesn't matter if you are Progressive or Conservative, you don't get to claim to be rational and others not (relatively speaking).
> I'm rejecting your claim that voters didn't act rationally relative to any other human.
Okay
> you don't get to claim to be rational and others not (relatively speaking).
Agreed. However, if someone presents a rubric to explain her actions, any person can assess that rubric and the actions for congruence. This is what I am doing.
This is perhaps true to an extent. But what is also true to an unprecedented extent for Americans is that this 'stance' is almost pure demagoguery. For many, there is no 'stance', their 'stance' is Trump, whether he hews close to a principle or completely contradicts it.
"median American voter" implies a distribution of views like a normal distribution, with a lot of people in the middle and a few people on extremes. If that is the distribution, then the median is representative of most people. I am not sure that is really a great way of thinking about American voters these days. It seems to me that American's views on many issues are tending to cluster around extremes, with fewer people in the middle. So I am not sure the median is as meaningful.
Median does not assume anything about the distribution which is precisely why I use it. Median allows for us to count max total of one category because the variances are so small. Hence why medians can actually demonstrate the underlying distribution instead of commingling amplitude like the mean.
In this case it’s “American Voter” as the category. This is what messes most people up, because they read “American Citizen” but I’m describing only the subset of citizens who successfully vote.
Using that number you’ll see what the demographics demonstrate: there are not as many progressive voters as there are “conservative” voters and only 2/3 of eligible voters even cared to vote.
If you zoom out even further and you evaluate which candidates run, then it really does not matter who is voting or not because ultimately who is on the ballot is dictated by a small group of party leaders, who in turn are dictated by whomever has the most money for ad spending.
The median American voter voted for Obama, and then Trump, and then Biden, and then Trump. They are angry about inflation, hate billionaires, don't want to start a war, and don't know who pays tariffs.
Basically, the median American voter does not have a coherent position. It's futile trying to build a narrative around them.
I mean I think that’s exactly my point this concept that there’s some kind of like ideal or coherent version of the American voting public it just doesn’t exist
Donald Trump is an irrational randomly reactive, incoherent person who doesn’t know what he wants other than to just be in charge and to do whatever he wants all the time
If that doesn’t describe the median American voter I don’t know what does
No, but they they were somewhat accurate representations of the median American voter (note here VOTER is the key) - less so than Trump, given what he’s been able to get away with.
> Trump is an accurate representation of the median American voter
On foreign policy? Probably not.
Like, Biden wasn’t an accurate representation of the median American voter on e.g. transgender kids in school sports. That wasn’t just right-wing delusion.
Because he’s telling Americans exactly how he’s going to oppress and punish them, doing it publicly with no remorse and a patina of lying, and people still supporting
The first message is “don’t open the border.” People don’t want an open border. Not in America, not anywhere else. If there weren’t videos of thousands of people streaming across the border every day during Biden’s presidency, we wouldn’t be dealing with Trump 2.0 today.
Second, don’t announce to the world you’re limiting your VP search to Black women, or any other Constitution-violating hiring criteria. Americans are tired of identity politics. And you’ve done a disservice to your running mate because they’ll be labeled as a “DEI hire” instead of the best person for the job.
Third, don’t nominate an idiot as your running mate.
Fourth, don’t force the idiot running mate on the world as a presidential candidate because you hid the president’s cognitive decline until the last possible moment in a humiliating live TV debate.
It was visible on the polls prior to the election itself (and the damage). It's on the Democratic party they didn't read it. (voted Hillary as if it changes anything in WA)
The message sent, perhaps more accurately, was that the USofA electorate fully bought into the Trump / Project 2025 framing of the "problems" facing the USofA.
eg:
> People don’t want an open border. Not in America, not anywhere else.
And yet recently prior administrations famously did enforce contempory border protections and prioritised chasing down people with actual criminal records.
Past administrations, eg. the Republican Eisenhower, have been in favour of open borders for the cheap labour and boost to the agricultural industry.
His often cited border enforcement operation was undertaken at the request of the Mexican government who were losing labor to US agribusiness.
All that aside, the USofA Democrat party has a messaging and PR problem of epic proportions and the USofA has spiralled into a two party Hotelling's Law cesspit despite the founders largely disliking party politics - a fundemental flaw in the forward iteration of an "adequate for now" electoral system centuries old.
Sure, recent past administrations enforced border protections and prioritized deporting immigrants with criminal records. And that’s irrelevant.
The Biden administration did neither. They took active measures to strip the Customs and Border Protection Agency of its scope and authority through executive order from their first day in office. Their policies directly led to over 2.4 million border encounters in 2023 alone, the most ever recorded in the history of the country.
This wasn’t policy they campaigned on or announced. It wasn’t something the American people wanted, and it polled terribly even among Democrats. But they did it anyway.
Conversely, Trump had the voter’s mandate to secure the border when he entered office, but he’s managed it so poorly, created terrible optics, and has Democrats marching in the streets in every major U.S. city in support of illegal immigration. The Republicans make the Democrats look like PR masters by comparison.
This appears to be a partisan statement subject to data source and bias. eg:
The Biden administration took office amid heightened debate in some circles over the merits and tactics of deportations, yet it is on track to carry out as many removals and returns as the Trump administration did.
The 1.1 million deportations since the beginning of fiscal year (FY) 2021 through February 2024 (the most recent data available) are on pace to match the 1.5 million deportations carried out during the four years President Donald Trump was in office. These deportations are in addition to the 3 million expulsions of migrants crossing the border irregularly that occurred under the pandemic-era Title 42 order between March 2020 and May 2023—the vast majority of which occurred under the Biden administration.
Combining deportations with expulsions and other actions to block migrants without permission to enter the United States, the Biden administration’s nearly 4.4 million repatriations are already more than any single presidential term since the George W. Bush administration (5 million in its second term).
> Their policies directly led to over 2.4 million border encounters in 2023 alone, the most ever recorded in the history of the country.
Their policies or global events? Either way the sheer number of recorded border ecounters speaks to them being out and about and actively encountering people on the border ... when thought about, that's hardly a bad thing - it sounds more as if they were getting the job done.
To be clear, I have zero interest in debating this aside from noting it's hardly clearcut.
> The Republicans make the Democrats look like PR masters by comparison.
They are indeed superlative propagandadists, on this we can agree ...
they are, however, in a view from afar, falling well short of actually making middle North America great again, gutting essential infrastructure maintainance, etc. etc.
But few will ever know given they've also gutted many of the means of tracking the state of the country, the state of the environment, the activities of their administration.
Counting deportations is half the equation. If Biden was deporting roughly as many people as Trump, but there are 4X as many people crossing the border, it wasn’t good enforcement. Look at net illegal immigration to get the impact, and it’s estimated the number of illegal immigrants increased by 3.5 million people during Biden’s term.
You say "illegal immigrants" to describe people that had border contact, made application, and were allowed into the USofA as "as yet documented" applicants.
People that, for the most part, committed no crime, made no attempt to hide, paid taxes, ran businesses, and employed others.
Yes, Obama increased deportations, and deported people at a faster rate than Trump. But that’s completely irrelevant when we’re talking about the Biden administration, who did not continue this policy, who reversed it, who allowed an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants through his executive orders and policy set by Mayorkas, with many millions more granted asylum status with reduced vetting. This was not reported by the news media until it inevitably reached crisis level.
The very fact that Obama deported more immigrants, and Trump is deporting fewer but with riots in the streets should clue you in to the effect that media has over you.
> The very fact that Obama deported more immigrants, and Trump is deporting fewer but with riots in the streets should clue you in to the effect that media has over you.
Whoa. To refresh my memory, how many American citizens were shot by ICE under Obama? How many cities were threatened with Insurrection Act occupations? Maybe deporting people doesn't require such actions, and "the effect that the media has" is highlighting how ridiculous these behaviors are.
edit: more data https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/biden-deportation-re... . I sincerely hope you will re-adjust your priors based on actual data (some of it from the current administration!) as opposed to what you hear on the radio or television.
During Obama’s presidency ICE wasn’t dealing with protestors actively interfering with day-to-day operations in cities throughout the country. Remove the protestors, and the probability of a civilian getting shot goes to ~0. Of course dozens of non-citizens died during those years.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make with your data. The first doesn’t even cover Biden’s term, which again, is what I’m talking about. The second is extremely disingenuous because doesn’t take net illegal immigration into account. Even if Biden deported a similar number of people as Trump, he let far more people in: the net number of illegal immigrants in the country during Biden’s term is estimated to have risen by 3.5 million people.
> When is the last time you questioned your priors?
Every day, friend.
> During Obama’s presidency ICE wasn’t dealing with protestors actively interfering with day-to-day operations
What do you think the difference is? What do you think your most reasonable opponent might say? In a dispassionate analysis, who do you think is correct?
- Kamala Harris, a terribly unqualified candidate who was appointed by the Democratic Party without a primary vote, who couldn’t clearly communicate basic policy positions, and who served as “the border czar” while the Biden administration dismantled the border protection agency and ushered in almost four years of a de facto open Southern border, which was very unpopular with most voters.
- Donald Trump, who was a known quantity, who riled people up and said things that were offensive, but didn’t actually do anything catastrophic in his first term and was mostly harmless by virtue of being ineffective.
These were far and away the worst two candidates of my lifetime. But among the Americans who voted for Trump, I doubt many expected the administration to simultaneously be this much more unhinged and impactful a second time around.
You're glossing over January 6. There are few things more damning of the American electorate than their willingness to vote for a man who tried to use a coup to stay in power. The rest of the world sees it. And they'd be stupid to trust that Americans wouldn't do something so stupid again.
But he didn’t. Trump didn’t sieze control of the military, there was no column of tanks moving towards Washington, just some angry fans rioting against his wishes (see the BBC lawsuit for manipulating trump’s speech of you think otherwise).
The deck across the board is consistently stacked in Trumps favor in terms of domestic adjudication, often times by people he appointed, the system is hopelessly corrupt.
You could make a case that January 6th was a catastrophe.
But a Trump-led coup? That’s quite a reach. I’m sure Trump got a thrill from the show of support. But I don’t believe even Trump thought those protestors could stage a successful a coup and overthrow the U.S. government. It’s fantasy.
Nobody thinks that the Trump supporters that stormed the capital could have overthrown the government. The coup attempt was much simpler - Trump wanted his supporters to interrupt the certification so the states could use alternative electors to circumvent the results of the election.
The way Trump thinks the world works, why the hell not? He thinks the government of Norway is the one who decides who gets the Nobel Peace Prize... He thinks he ended 8 wars (ok this might be him talking out of his ass, as usual, but do we know that for sure?)
Trump tried to get false electors to be used for counting the vote, changing the outcome the election by having states like Georgia and Pennsylvania vote as if Trump had won these states. Because he was too incompetent to organize this quickly he needed to delay the certification on January 6th, which the mob did accomplish.
He just couldn't get a few key people on board with this.
The only places I see that Trump 'tried to use a coup to stay in power' is far left commentary and online political discourse. Same exact thing as calling him a pedo.
It seems impossible to talk about him without resorting to wild reaching claims because he is the most guilty of doing the same thing.
Please tell me what trying to convince states to send false electors who would vote for Trump even though he lost their states and trying to prevent the certification of the election to either allow the false electors to be used or to throw the election to the state delegations should be called if not a coup.
You must keep in mind that a good portion of U.S. citizens can't even read, and have similar deficiencies around critical thinking. Couple this with a purpose built media landscape and social media slop that are actively trying to convince you that Trump is the savior of the republic, a man who shits gold, the perfect physical specimen 100% of the time; and it should not be too surprising that he managed to get elected, especially against weak or ill-timed candidates.
The right wing propaganda machine works very very well, look how well they've absolutely ingratiated things like trans issues into the political zeitgeist in just a hand full of years, and strongly coupled them with the Democratic brand. The Democrats have a huge problem in that they are effectively as or more unpopular than Trump. They've also lacked real leadership for 10 years.
> Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed
The Electoral College is a Constitutional body. The Vice President, in his electoral duties, a Constitutional officer. These are limited roles with specific aims and they were directly, explicitly and violently attacked. The men who called for hanging the Vice President never repented and were pardoned.
The fact that Trump was even allowed to run for another election is the clearest sign that he has not and likely never will be held to account for his flagrant disregard for Democracy.
> The Trump fake electors plot was an attempt by U.S. president Donald Trump and associates to have him remain in power after losing the 2020 United States presidential election. After the results of the election determined Trump had lost, he, his associates, and Republican Party officials in seven battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin[1] – devised a scheme to submit fraudulent certificates of ascertainment to falsely claim Trump had won the Electoral College vote in crucial states. The plot was one of Trump and his associates' attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election.
By the time we had the full details the republican party had coalesced behind still supporting Trump. People either claim that Trump did win the election and he was fighting back or insist that the fake electors plot didn't really exist and this was all just the Biden administration weaponizing the DOJ against Trump as revenge.
The Supreme Court stepped in twice to protect Trump. Colorado tried to remove him from the ballot based on a clause in the 14th amendment that makes people who have engaged in insurrection ineligible for holding federal office. The Supreme Court said that doing this requires congressional action, which was controlled by the GOP at the time. The Supreme Court also stepped in to stop the federal prosecution of Trump for this crime, finding that most (or all) of the actions he took were protected under a new doctrine of presidential criminal immunity.
You are delusional if you think January 6th was not an insurrection. Anyone who willingly denies the reality of what happened that day is nothing more than a traitor to this country.
Trump organized riled up a mob that called for his own vice president to be hanged for certifying his own legitimate election loss.
His own campaign was involved with groups that led the breach of the Capitol, resulting in the death of many police officers, where the insurrectionists got within mere feet of our legally elected officials.
He called the Secretary of State in Georgia telling him needed to "find votes" so that he could claim he won.
Donald Trump tried to destroy American democracy with a violent mob that day. Denying the legitimate voice and vote of tens of millions of people for his own sick gain.
He is destroying democracy again, but you cannot deny January 6th was his doing.
>You are delusional if you think January 6th was not an insurrection. Anyone who willingly denies the reality of what happened that day is nothing more than a traitor to this country.
Was it a "insurrection", yes, sure.
Was it lead by Trump to try and take the presidency through a coup, no.
Does he have responsibility in the actions of the people that came their by what he said? Maybe, that is for a court to decide that we'll probably never see.
Europeans volunteered troops in Afghanistan to help America fight Al-Quaida. When America was not right about invading Iraq, European nations tried to help America to see the truth. When America took on Libyan dictator Kadhafi European nations provided some air support.
Europe helped America when they could and when they thought it was the right thing to do.
After 9/11, America had a brief moment of world support that we royalty screwed up. But that was only because we were attacked. Besides that its all nations for themselves.
And even today, if the UK or Germany [just examples] were attacked in the same way, America would send troops under the same circumstances.
The Theucydides quote Carney leads with, of course, recently rolled off the tongue of the white house deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller. The days of might making right are, apparently, back.
Just in case anyone thought the genie could be stuffed back into the bottle once Trump is gone, Carney goes on to state that the rules-based world order we've been living under since WWII is somewhat of a sham. The rules have not been applied equally. Some nations, the powerful ones, have been given much more latitude to do what they want. Middle nations have gone along with this to avoid trouble.
The reward for avoiding trouble for so long is... big trouble (e.g. invasion threats for an ally of a big power and economic terrorism applied to its allies). So, why pretend the old system works to avoid trouble if the trouble lands on your doorstep anyways?
The answer seems obvious. Middle powers of the old rules-based order need to band together and put bigger powers in their place. It's not impossible. Just very, very difficult. France and Germany may be sticking up for Greenland, but where's Hungary (another EU member)? For this to work, you need everyone. Also, looking ahead, how would you prevent such an alliance of smaller powers, were it successful, from behaving like a bigger power?
Trump is currently showing off AI photos where he's meeting with world leaders in front of a map where both Greenland and Canada are a part of the U.S.[1]. As a Canadian, I think Carney gave a stirring speech here, but I suppose I'm biased given that he's our PM and his vision is one of the few things between us as being swallowed up by Trump's MAGA empire while the other big powers fall upon the respective apples of their eyes.
The fact we have a system that produced a Trump-like figure, and once in power, haven’t checked him internationally, shows the US will continue to be an unreliable partner.
We have kinds of political problems, and it’s not clear they’re going away post Trump.
The funny thing is it’s all cultural. It’s not some intractable thing, the path to fixing all this has been available for a long time. It’s a well studied domain with practical solutions abound.
But enough of the US citizenry that I share the nation with seemingly can’t see beyond their own horizons. No matter how bad it is, there is still enough people who can’t possibly see the value of the government doing anything useful. Government is exclusively the enemy. And in turn those who seek to ransack the system do so under the guise of pushing back against so called “government overreach” (a deliberately vague term) and continue to give the general public the raw deal
All because the elites got too greedy and decided to destroy the only successful labor movement in America (the New Deal coalition) because they wanted more money.
> "great powers" are using economic integration as "weapons."
This is so true and I think economic sanctions should be recognized as the weapons they actually are.
Just a taste:
No Amazon, No Gmail: Trump Sanctions Upend the Lives of I.C.C. Judges
President Trump’s retaliation against top officials at the International Criminal Court has shut them out of American services and made even routine daily tasks a challenge.
https://archive.is/KflDP
Now consider the US has been doing this to entire countries for decades. Cuba, Venezuela, Iran. Forget Amazon, the inability to use the SWIFT banking system has all sorts of nasty consequences that get elided by a clinical sounding term.
From the Lancet:
Our findings showed a significant causal association between sanctions and increased mortality. We found the strongest effects for unilateral, economic, and US sanctions, whereas we found no statistical evidence of an effect for UN sanctions. Mortality effects ranged from 8·4 log points (95% CI 3·9–13·0) for children younger than 5 years to 2·4 log points (0·9–4·0) for individuals aged 60–80 years. We estimated that unilateral sanctions were associated with an annual toll of 564 258 deaths (95% CI 367 838–760 677), similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1...
I am saying that sanctions are weapon of sorts and have worse effects than people realize, and you seem to be saying their effects are not as bad as those of kinetic weapons. Despite Lancet concluding their tolls are comparable.
If I blockade you in your house, is that failure to aid? Or something else? Sanctions occur via commission, not omission. They’re not a failure to render aid or to be maximally charitable. They’re active harm.
If I decide to stop buying bread from the baker in boycott, is that a commission?
It is certainly a change of state, but the status quo does not entitle ongoing purchases. This is a sanction. I can also extend this boycott to anyone else who shops at the baker. That still is not a commission. It is a refusal to interact.
A blockade is different. It is a threat to use force for disobedience. IF I threaten to beat other who willingly shop at the baker.
I replied to a comment mentioning deaths from sanctions.
Other than our monkey brains prioritizing physical violence as worse, I don’t see a functional different between deaths from sanctions and deaths from bombs.
When asked, “Do sanctions actually work (on Iran)?”, Bessent replied:
If you look at a speech I gave at the economic club of New York last March, I said that I believe the Iranian currency was on the verge of collapse, that if I were an Iranain citizen, I would take my money out.
President Trump ordered treasury and our OFAC division, (Office of Foreign Asset Control) to put maximum pressure on Iran, and it’s worked because in December, their economy collapsed, we saw a major bank go under, the central bank has started to print money, there is a dollar shortage, they are not able to get imports and this is why the people took to the streets.
> "Many countries are drawing the same conclusions. They must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains.
Sounds like an economic NATO (without the USA). It's good that other counties are waking up at last. Taking the hit now (and blaming it on Trump) will make them stronger on the long run.
Not true in case of NATO. NATO does not have a military, but it's member states do, each contributing in ways that are unique to their geopolitical and strategic situation (see Estonia leading NATO's Cyber Defense Centre, Norway's Cold Response exercises).
The idea that allied nations don't maintain strategic autonomy with respect to each other is very modern. Remember that Greenland is the second island dispute to divide NATO, after Cyprus in the 70s. The expectation for NATO to become one big happy family only really caught on in the 90s, and without a rules-based international order to prevent said allies from exploiting it the expectation won't last long.
> The idea that allied nations don't maintain strategic autonomy with respect to each other is very modern.
No it's not. The point of making an alliance is that you're not stuck with strategic autonomy. You can tell other people that if they mess with you, they're also messing with whoever you're allied with. If you were autonomous, that wouldn't be true.
Again, that's a very modern perspective. When Portugal faced colonial revolts in the 1960s and early 1970s, NATO didn't help at all, and some members including the United States actively hoped Portugal would lose and free their colonies. Nor did they help France in the Algerian War. (The terms of the NATO treaty anticipated these conflicts, formally excluding all territory outside of Europe and North America from collective defense obligations so there'd be no question that help wouldn't come.)
Again, not being autonomous is the purpose of an alliance. It's the only purpose, and this is just as true of NATO-at-inception as it is of everything else. Portugal and France didn't get the ability to tell their own citizens that making trouble would get them squished by the United States. But they did get the ability to tell Spain that.
If you wanted to be strategically autonomous, you wouldn't have to do anything, because that's how you start out.
Trump fundamentally misunderstands how power really works. Power doesn’t mean others kiss your boot and give you peace prizes. People hate being ruled over. They absolutely hate it. So you have to hide your power through, ideology, laws and institutions. Galeev explains it well [1].
This is how American imperialism works. The American led western liberal order was an unprecedented alliance and America was the house. The house doesn’t win all the time, but everything is rigged in its favour.
The issue is that there is no 4d chess at play here. Trump has a narcissistic personality disorder combined with dementia and has surrounded himself by yes-men.
I agree that there is no 4d chess here but I disagree that Trump actually does or decides anything.
At this point I'm suspicious of any viewpoint that posits Trump as a president/person with an agenda. I'm pretty baffled by the serious policy "experts" analyzing his actions and trying to determine cause and effect.
It's pretty clear to me he's a demented old man reading off the teleprompter. I'm sure he finds all these duties of presidency pretty hard and tiring on his body and mind. I feel that all he really thinks about is golfing, his estate business, increasing his wealth through other means like crypto scams and the like, and always getting more attention which he desperately craves.
The White House administration, intelligence services and the Pentagon collectively decide what to do, be that invading Greenland, Venezuela or the like. Trump has occasional stupid demands as well, like the FIFA Peace Prize which I'm sure the admin staff find very hilarious but comply regardless to make his little boy wishes happen to preserve the status quo.
Even more spicy takes: The only reason the societal divide exists in the US today is Meta. Facebook and Instagram. When people are exposed to entirely separate spheres of content for hours a day every day their opinion changes slowly but surely and there's pretty much no escaping it.
I don't use any social media besides HN (which no doubt also does this covert influencing). I can spot a person's social media app of choice is in 5 minutes. They literally change a person's character and the way they speak.
--> I can spot a person's social media app of choice is in 5 minutes.
I find this sadly hilarious. What are the current tells you see? I'm similar in that I read a lot of HN and don't have other social media accounts. But I couldn't even guess at what a person's preferred social media is.
The full video is at the top of this post's secondary (transcript) link, although that version doesn't translate his initial ~minute in French. If you want to skip to his (main) section in English: https://www.youtube.com/live/5UqQTqvhFRg?t=104s
I understand what you mean, but at this point I don't find it ironic at all. It's been quite similar in my corner of the world, where a leader enjoys great support and visibility externally, but is fairly unpopular internally.
No, but it is a European leader that has ~recently enjoyed that situation, but is no longer in it.
Sorry, but I don't want to spell it out too obviously, for my own privacy.
> We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
> This fiction was useful, and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
An interesting observation I came across today:
> The genius of American foreign policy since 1941 was that it found a way to be both the single strongest state and the leader of the strongest coalition of states: power and legitimacy, together. That's the achievement Trump has jeopardized - and possibly permanently wrecked.
All well meaning and good and all that, thank you Canadians.
.
.
but...
Invoking Thucydides's "and the weak suffer what they must" at a time when weak-on-strong warfare has fundamentally changed, in a fluid still-small world where for example:
-Some russian goons can poison someone on a bench in England.
-Some north korean hireling lady can poison someone in any airport.
-Some radicalized youths will go on rampages using easily-accessible assault weapons.
-So many systems that "strong" societies depend on are so so fragile and running close to many edges.
-Lethal FPVs are cheap cheap.
...is I think falling into the trap of adopting the mindset of the loudest man in the room (initials DJT) who's thinking in early 20th century terms, instead of looking at the world and conflict the way they really are.
Peter Zeihan has been predicting this for a decade which means there has been a lot of academics also predicting since he generally repackages academic work.
Really it isn't just a different order. Imo it is a reversion to imperialism with us eyeing Latin America, Russia Ukraine, China Taiwan.
I have said for many years that in the distant future, historians (those privileged by their patrons to claim the freedom of unfettered research), will read about the brief spasm in history, climaxing in the latter half of the 20th century, in which for half the globe, autocracy, dictatorship and absolute monarchy gave way to a system in which the proletariat believed they had (and amazingly in many circumstances actually had) the freedom to be, to think, to live, to flourish - largely as they wished! Those historians will wonder how this chaotic anarchy managed to not only survive, but momentarily flourish before the immense pressure of history brought about the reversal to the mean: the autocrats ruling, precious few flourishing at their feet, and the rest subsisting sullenly.
That's just history though, a paucity of human existence committed to script, nothing at all of, say, 70K years of libertarian utopia in post-Sahul, just the tantalising remnants of pre digital Instagram real silicon party posts.
They would have gone right-wing in Carney's election if not for Trump meddling. He needs to get those cost of living issues fixed ASAP, probably starting with housing.
Also Canadian here (I've been using this account for years despite the name though).
The above poster is correct that Canada also has a lot of problems. I lived in the U.S. for 20 years and probably would have stayed if I could have. For many people, moving to the U.S. was seen as highly desirable for a long time, especially for tech workers.
I've noticed the reverse is true since around the start of Trump's presidency (not for tech workers though, at least not yet).
I also agree with the suggestion that Canada is at risk of falling into fascism as well.. we were a razor's edge away from electing our own version of Trump in our most recent election almost a year ago... funnily enough, Trump's talk of annexing Canada shortly before the election swung the polls enough that the Liberals were able to retain power (and fortunately, with a minority government that gives our 2 social democratic parties some political sway even with only a handful of MPs).
Now there may be more Canadians coming back (and American refugees coming) that the tide has noticeably shifted.
Dude trump is NOT a temporary blip. His approval rating right now is slightly higher than it was at this point in his first term.
Last time it took a great depression to convince Americans to actually care about each other (socialism-lite), and I expect nothing less this time around.
> Carney said Canada must be "principled and pragmatic" and turn inward to build up the country and diversify trading relationships to become less reliant on countries like the U.S., now that it's clear "integration" can lead to "subordination."
They surely needed some decades to underestand this.
Much quicker than the Europeans, though.
the current world split starts to eerily look, while still far from it of course, like the 1939 split in Europe - totalitarian regimes of Stalin and Hitler allied together against Europe's democratic countries. Here we have authoritarian leaning Trump starting to ally himself with totalitarian Putin and China against democratic countries by dividing the world in very similar way as Stalin and Hitler divided Europe between themselves.
> Europe might have a unique opportunity to ally with China to pry it from Russia
Sounds like it could be promising, but how in that world do you get containers back and forth between Europe and China, given that USEUCOM could mine Gibraltar; USCENTCOM, Suez and Aden; and USINDOPACOM, Malacca?
(My personal optimistic view atm is an independent free-trading armed-neutral european block which is sufficiently valuable that any move by one of the three major powers to bring it under their bloc will naturally be countered by the other two)
> He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. He’s a brilliant guy whether you like it or not.
> He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.
Xi Jinping is probably gleeful, if he can manipulate that moron he'd have USA under his control. Putin already needs his support for Ukraine, add USA and he'd gain the title of the most powerful person on the planet.
But considering Trump is an uncontrollable toddler, I guess he knows that's a title he can never keep..
This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what happened in WW2. The tl'dr is Hitler lost, fascism won.
Germany only became a national project in the 19th century. It was a collection of principalities before that. Unlike its neighbours, who were actual Great Powers at the time, it lacked colonial interests to exploit and get rich from. And then when oil became important in the early 20th century, Germany didn't have access to oil.
So Germany felt like it would get swallowed up by its neighbours at some point and sought to assert its dominance, throwing away the Bismarck order. When scores were settled, Germany was punished with devastating reparations that laid the groundwork for WW2 and, on the side, countries like Britain secured their oil interests in the Middle East.
Post-WWI brought the Spanish flu (pandemic anyone?), hyperinflation to Germany, a badly attempted coup (the Beer Hall Putsch; sound familiar?) and the rise of a populist fascist who blamed all of Germany's problems on undesirables, Jews and Communists (any modern parallels, at all?).
Europe had entered an era of appeasement, desperately seeking to not repeat the "Great War". Reunification of German peoples was used as an excuse to seize all sorts of land.
Now Stalin tried to warn Britain and France of the dangers of Hitler and form an alliance in 1939, which failed [1]. So instead Stalin formed what you'd have to call an uneasy alliance with Hitler.
WW2 breaks out, yada yada yada, Hitler betrays Stalin and Stalin basically defeated Hitler at a terrible cost. The US had 400k casulaties in the European theater of WW2. The estimates for Soviet military and civilian losses in the same period are between 26 and 29 million.
Where FDR had sought to rebalance the inequalities in the Depression and created lasting legacies we depend on today such as Social Security, Truman decided Communism was the enemy and, as such, the USSR was the Great Enemy, a decision that led directly to the Korean and Vietnam Wars and other smaller conflicts.
And who would be good at killing Communists? Nazis of course. Operation Paperclip is well known. Less well known is how hudnreds if not thousands of former Nazis were forgiven their "moral lapses" and joined the ranks of the CIA, the FBI and NATO as well as the new West German military command [2].
Hitler and Stalin were fundamentally different beasts. I'm not saying Stalin was a good guy. He commited his share of atrocities. So did every American president if we're keeping score. But one thing Stalin was really good at was killing Nazis.
So began almost 50 years of Cold War that saw the Red Scare and the near complete destruction of any form of organized labor in the US. All to fight Communism.
I say "fascism won" because the Nazis weren't wiped out and we're seeing fascism reborn in the US and Europe while people who survived the Holocaust are still alive. That's how little time it took.
You just put a whole lot of nonsense out there that it would take too much time to rebuke all of it. Tech workers buying property is a surprise? The US paying tech workers alot is a surprise? They literally pay the most on the planet. I'm a tech worker in Canada, guess what, me and my friends are buying property here too. We literally have a 60% home ownership rate in this country. The problem is social media is flooded with Canada doomer propaganda.
> People move to the US and they make twice the money. > This is nothing new. US just pays way better no matter how you look at it.
Not for long, Palantir CEO said that AI will displace so many jobs that it will eliminate immigration, plus there will be enough local jobs... if you have vocational training... that's the future! [1]
I wouldn't blame him for the US failings either, that would assume his role in the US is different than Carney's role in Canada and that'd be an assumption unsupported by evidence.
> The country is massive and yet we are so unproductive > I’d blame every layer of the government
What does the government have to do with it? The US gov isn't in control of the US econ, much less the Can gov of theirs - if you want to change that, you'll have to find a way to change it yourself.
> That’s got absolutely zero to do with Trump’s blowhard attitude.
Indeed zero to do with Trump but absolutely plenty to do with the attitude.
> Stop getting hoodwinked by professional speechwriters
You won't find amateurs up there, and they wouldn't be any better either, I'm not sure if it's worth it to be able to pick the speechwriters who hoodwink you.
I liked your heartfelt comment, please cheer up, this crisis is going to be harder than you think but, to make up for it, it's gonna last longer too...
The speech was surprisingly good. I think it's going to prove effective. This "taking the sign off" thing, good imagery.
But I can't help notice the inconsistency in this imagery. First, he says it himself a few minutes later. He doesn't "take the sign off" for NATO. We can understand why it's important to keep this facade.
But another one that bothers me is "energy, both clean and traditional". Oh, you didn't go for "clean and dirty"? Categories are clearer thus. Oh, not ready to take the sign off on the climate front? Too bad.
I don't think that's inconsistent - all but one member of NATO share the same values currently, and it's important they work together to resolve the current annexation threats from the US. That particular sign can be taken off later, if necessary.
This is all eloquent and game-theoretic, but who is this being said too? Other davos attendees, and it will be the small people who must pay for this shift, through rising prices, worse labor conditions, austerity, etc. His astute observation about competing powers running to the lowest common denominator is intrinsically a property of capitalism.
It's a modern stage, it doesn't really matter who is physically there.
The EU aligned countries would be crazy to let the US set these rules for some temporary maintenance of income. They've all tended to social Democrats and socialist governments and have a better lifestyle than the US at half or 1/4 the GDP. That goes away if they let the US set pure power based rules, then 1/2 the GDP really is being half an American and if being a whole American was so great no one would have voted for Trump.
> For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order.
As an Indian listening to this, this comes across as absurd. Trudeau constantly invoked this phrase when dealing with India about the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. It basically meant Trudeau could level allegations, not provide any evidence, and strut as if he as won. In due course, the murderers turned out to be their own terrorists.
>It basically meant Trudeau could level allegations, not provide any evidence, and strut as if he as won.
Canada's case was well corroborated by US and UK intelligence. India's claims of Mr Nijjar of being a terrorist was not.
>But nothing in the evidence India presented, the people say, met the standard for criminal charges in Canada, let alone for extradition. To press their case, officials in New Delhi frequently sent clippings from Indian media, which was rife with lurid stories about Nijjar’s alleged involvement in violence, instead of providing what the process required: hard evidence, obtained without coercion, that would stand up in a Western courtroom. When that didn’t work, the people say, the Indians suggested that Canadian police find a way to concoct the necessary evidence.
> India's claims of Mr Nijjar of being a terrorist was not.
But I'm not talking about this claim. I'm talking about the fact that Trudeau accused the Indian government being responsible for his murder. The onus was always on the Canadian government to prove it.
First, this issue has nothing to do with what Carney is talking about, second - nobody in Canada wants anything to with your 'ethno nationalist wars', third - the frequency with which this issue is brought up and pigeon-holed into everything is absurd, but fourth - and most critically - you're lying: the 'murderers' by all accounts were Indian nationals and the link you provided literally indicates that 'Karan Brar, age 22, Kamal Preet Singh, age 22, and Karan Preet Singh, age 28' arrested for murder - are Indian Nationals on temporary visas in Canada.
> nobody in Canada wants anything to with your 'ethno nationalist wars'
Absurd. These are YOUR 'ethno nationalist wars' because your country has given them a safe haven. This problem does not exist in India. Not one Sikh I know sympathizes with these separatists, and I have plenty of Sikh friends, been to their homes, been to their hometowns.
These are literally murders by Indian nationals on other Indian nationals, involving Indian government.
We want nothing to do with this.
Nobody is getting 'safe haven' - we have 'laws' and 'citizenship' so we respect those things, otherwise, we'd prefer all of you who want to continue your infighting to go home. Totally unwelcome.
> These are literally murders by Indian nationals on other Indian nationals
They are all in your immigration pipeline or already through it. The crimes are all on Canadian soil. Who has jurisdiction in the so-called "rules-based international order"?
> involving Indian government
This is your fantasy. You're playing fast and loose with accusations, just like Carney and Trudeau were while calling it "rules-based international order".
> We want nothing to do with this.
Then stop providing asylum. Stop courting them for votes. Prosecute criminals.
Most of the asylum claims came before CY2025, which is when the false asylum crackdown began in Canada [0].
A major issue was the Truduea-era diplomatic spat that led to the expulsion of Canadian [1] and Indian [2] diplomatic staff who cooperated on background checks along with an MP in Punjab who ran a "cash for asylum claim" racket [3].
After Carney became PM and Anand became MFA, the Canada-India relationship went back on track, and Trudeau era appointees were largely sidelined.
Are you saying a "Canadian Terrorist" murdered Nijjar? The article you link says nothing about any country (except India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka) disputing Canada's claim.
Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalistan_movement is not a significant movement in India. I have plenty of connections with Sikhs and Sikhism in India. Apart from a very tiny minority of people, who quickly set off to Canada, this movement does not exist in India. They are courted by Canadian parliamentarians, which included Trudeau.
If it's such an insignificant movement, it's curious why India saw fit to assassinate a Canadian on Canadian soil. A claim that as near as I can tell only India and its surrogates (such as yourself, it seems) dispute.
Also, the veracity of a claim does not depend on who is making it or who is disputing it. The accusing investigation agency has do a proper investigation and submit proofs and ask for extradition.
As someone from the US, I thought we were the leaders in choosing strange government figureheads, until Canada elected the head of a foreign bank as their's.
That speech reminds me of the conclusion the main character in the movie Antz settled on. Being forced to be a cog in the machine is awful and no one should accept it. Instead we should be happy to volunteer ourselves to be cogs in the machine.
Technically Carney was never the head of a foreign central bank; he was the head of a Commonwealth central bank. Canada and the UK do not consider each other to be foreign nations, as evidenced by their exchange of High Commissioners rather than Ambassadors.
It’s an allusion to him previously working as a Goldman sachs banker, Goldman sachs is lovingly referred to as a vampire squid, its tentacles are everywhere.
The King of England is not our head of state, the King of Canada is our head of state. It's an important distinction because the Canadian and British monarchies are legally distinct offices. Canada is not subordinate to Britain like it once was as a colony, and our succession laws, royal titles and even the powers of our monarch are all determined by our law and constitution - not British law.
Mark Carney is born and raised Canadian. Just because he has had an illustrious career internationally does not make him any less Canadian than someone who has lived here their entire lives.
He was here recently to read the speech from the throne and open his new government after the election. It was quite the event with a lot of pomp and circumstance. Very much welcome during these tumultuous times, and a nice reminder of our tradition and history that makes Canada what it is.
He only won because trump said he wanted to make Canada the 51st state and the opposition party didn’t pivot or adjust their campaign to Trump’s rhetoric.
I mean… we elect leaders to represent us and protect our country. If the other guy looked like he was willing to give the country away, well, that means he wasn’t the best person for the job. Trump rhetoric just showed us how ready Pierre Pollievre was to lead us: aka, he wasn’t.
- the NDP and the CPC were both led by deeply unpopular leaders: Jagmeet Singh the silk clad, Rolex-wearing self styled "man of the people" and Pierre Poilievre who is so dislikeable he routinely polls double digits below his party
- Trump threatening to collapse the Canadian economy and/or annex us by force
- Flat economic growth
- Carney's credentials on the economy being unparalleled in Canadian politics (see previous point)
- Voters tired of the far-left big government nanny state philosophy that was the hallmark of the Trudeau governments and Carney successfully presented himself as a centrist
Interestingly, Carney was appointed to the Bank of Canada by a Conservative PM and I'd argue he's got a similar appeal that Trump initially had, but for different reasons: Trump positioned himself as an outsider, and Carney is similarly not a career politician. By contrast his only real challenger (Poilievre) hasn't had a real job in his life and has been living on the taxpayer's dime his entire career.
I think voters in both the US and Canada are sick of slimy politicians.
(Edit: can't reply because rate limited, better go back to pointless discussions about JavaScript. My usage of "far left" should be understood as being relative to the Canadian political spectrum. Justin Trudeau was definitely a very left-leaning PM by any rational measure)
Trudeau outflanked the NDP if you recall the election vs Mulcair, who I liked. Singh for his part did not sound deviate much from Trudeau on social issues.
substitute "communist" for "far-left" and the point still stands. No government in Canada has ever, EVER been far-left unless your definition of "far-left" is welfare capitalism.
CPC was firmly in the lead for the elections before Trumps' attention to Canada and the Liberals jumping on this to frame PP as another Trump or someone who would yield to Trump, both couldn't be farther away from his actual policy stances, but in the age of social media (and I guess major government owned media that does its bidding) that doesn't matter.
That's not my recollection of the events. I think "showed us who he really was" is just the FUD spread by the Liberals. I have left leaning friends and their opinions of PP are totally disconnected from the reality of what he says and does, they are just repeating the talking points they get from their circle.
Nobody wants to debate actual policy and basically we ended up with a different conservative, Carney, whose actual policies are in my opinion iffy ans his performance the same. Scare tactics are easier than policy debate.
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