After one Trump presidency and on the eve of another, it is now clear that a once mighty global superpower is allowing its gaze to turn inward, to feed off resentment more than idealism, to think smaller.

Public sentiment – not just the political class – feels threatened by the flow of migrants once regarded as the country’s lifeblood. Global trade, once an article of faith for free marketeers and architects of the postwar Pax Americana, is now a cancer eating away at US prosperity – its own foreign invasion.

Military alliances and foreign policy no longer command the cross-party consensus of the cold war era, when politics could be relied upon to “stop at the water’s edge”, in the famous formulation of the Truman-era senator Arthur Vandenberg.

Now the politics don’t stop at all, for any reason. And alliances are for chumps.

  • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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    4 days ago

    i hope so. we need it to collapse asap so the rest of the third world can thrive

    • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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      4 days ago

      That’s unrealistic. You think the fall of America is going to be a simple affair? Here’s just one reason it won’t. All those aircraft carriers and submarines full of nuclear weapons. What happens with those?

      Be careful what you wish for.

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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        4 days ago

        All those aircraft carriers and submarines full of nuclear weapons.

        they stop being used against us.

        this threat is empty because you already use all of these against us.

        • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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          4 days ago

          What happens with those?

          What happens when the crews stop getting paid? You think they are just going to walk away? You think those weapons will just disappear?

          What makes you think the next boss is going to be any better?

          • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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            4 days ago

            they can be taken care of by the rest of the world once the terror infrastructure stops being maintained

            • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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              2 days ago

              I’m sorry, but that’s an absolute fantasy.

              When have you seen anything like that level of international co-operation?

              And have you stopped to think that there are a lot of rich and powerful people with a strong vested interest in keeping things going the way they are.

              • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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                2 days ago

                yes. and these powerful people are mostly located in the us.

                collapse away, please.

                • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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                  2 days ago

                  Mostly.

                  Think the world would be all sunshine and friendship if the Saudi princes had the US arsenal? Putin? The people at the top didn’t get there because they played nice and shared their toys.

                  Be careful what you wish for.

              • catloaf@lemm.ee
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                4 days ago

                Don’t worry about it. That’s a dozen reasons someone might downvote a perfectly good comment, and none of them are worth thinking about.

      • babybus@sh.itjust.works
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        4 days ago

        That’s unrealistic. You think the fall of America is going to be a simple affair?

        You think

        think

        You are asking a lemmy.ml user…

      • tamal3@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Not saying I agree that the fall of the US would help others, but we sure have fucked up a lot of countries over the years and it would be great if we stopped doing so. We’ve illegally prioritized the capitalist agenda at the expense of international progress time and time and time again. Imagine what South America might be like without US interference in their governments.

        • nomous@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          I agree the fall of the US would definitely hurt basically every other economy in the world, in the short term at least.

          The rest of your statement lays out a really good reason why a lot of people would cheer though. The U.S. has absolutely brutalized South America with its constant meddling (almost always at the behest of private industry) and is responsible for most the pain there. I can’t really say I’d blame them.

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
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        4 days ago

        we wont get forced to use your financial system, and we wont be under constant influence to liberalize and sell assets to the us. under threat of invasion and destruction.

        did you ever notice every single country not subjugated by the us is considered a “brutal dictatorship” that must be invaded and killed?

    • yrmp@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Many of those countries use the USD as their primary or only currency. Though if the collapse is more gradual I suspect they’ll be using the RMB like the rest of us before it’s all said and done.