Hey Trumptards - Enjoy Your Sore Assholes

[Anomalocaris]

Cap, "you too" wouldn;t really be an effective rebuttal even if it were true.

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We lost forever the ability to actually regain our former position in the 1960s.  What we had since the 1960s and before 2016 was the ability to hang on to major parts of the hegemonic position we gained before 1960 through a singularly enlightened understanding that a hegemonic power can only stay great and not be toppled through a death of a thousand cuts inflicted by all the other powers in the world if it used its hegemony in a way that profits and enriches all the other powers, it supported a global order that is essentially fair and provides room to grow and gain on the hegemonic power, and the other powers do not feel the hegemonic power is fundamentally enimical to the core interests of other powers.

That was before 2016.  After 2016 we’ve largely dismantled our capacity to hang on to what we could never regain once lost.

b-mine

That;s the part that gnaws at me, and the part that I apply my foolish optimism to.  I'd like to imagine that we can return top a state in which other powers don;t necesarrily agree with our positions..but that they recognize our continued existence -as- a power is beneficial to them in some way.  That we deserve a seat at the table..even if we no longer own the table at which we all sit.  

The only way I can see that happening is if america resumes a front edge position on issues that have global impact.  We need to be seen as problem solvers, again, rather than a problem.  People with suggestions, rather than impositions and half baked isolationist policies.

Being seen as a problem solver again will not undo the damage.

With internal division running so deep that fundamental national institution become fair game in partisan politics, out right treason readily accepted so long as partisan agenda is advanced, alternative facts accepted as basis of policy so long as the policy appeals to the ruling ideology, foreign treaty commitments and long standing alliances flippantly discarded for short term domestic gains, foreign debts cynically allowed to default for domestic grandstanding, the United States has discarded the most fundamental behavioral normals required to instill any sort of confidence whatsoever that its actions and goals are predictable and rational, it’s commitments can be relied upon, and thus it’s role in the international stage can be accommodated by other powers.

In the future, even if the US is seen to be helping to solve a problem on the international stage at the moment, the strong suspicion can never be assuaged that its participation today will simply give it inside access to sabotage the collective efforts tomorrow when its domestic political whims shift, as it has done in the Iranian deal, the transpacific Partnership, and Paris accord.  Immediate american help will more generally be seen as not worth the increased risk and loss of confidence associated with any resulting dependency on long term American reliability, in much the same way creditors might prefer not to have as a client a perspective borrower with a dubious payment history than to profit from a few immediate interests payments from the same borrower.

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I;m foolishly optimistic..but I think we can turn it around.  I don;t think we'll ever regain our former position or status, but a respectable downgrade like the UK's is well within our reach...unless we keep screwing the pooch.  I'd hate to see the us go through it;s own version of the immediate postwar period.

(assuming that;s not where we are already)

Well at the moment the UK is a borderline third rate power rapidly transitioning into offshore banana republic and on the verge of breaking up.  So if that's your goal I'd start panicing.

I don’t think breaking up is an improbably fate for the “united” States on the time scale of 50 years or so, particularly if trump wins a second term, or even if not, the GOP remains a viable political party despite trump and thus opening the eyes of all future political hacks to the vastly broader new horizon of what could be gotten away with in the pursuit of short term partisan political gain and personal enrichments.