“The empire that defined the last century is falling apart at the seams. People notice.”
It's not "falling apart." It's being intentionally dismantled.
Rubio's statement at his conformation hearing was basically "the Post WWII order isn't working for us, so we're ending it."
Intentionally dismantled by a fascist theocracy.
say what you want about the brits, but they wouldn’t have voted for brexit twice.
They kept voting for the conservatives for a while after Brexit. They kept voting for Boris fucking Johnson.
You underestimate Putin's psyops and overestimate people's intelligence.
good old lefty progressivism reduced to: "look at what trump is doing!"
if you're truly progressive or left, you have as much ire for the democratic party-- if not more.
You're getting downvoted by the same people who got upset by calling out that Kamala and Biden were not good candidates.
If they were, they would have beat this idiot.
The DNC has no idea, nor does it care, what people really need or want. They don't represent our reality. The only Dems who do are... You guessed it: Progressive.
AOC, Bernie, Ro Khana, Cori Bush, Nina Turner... None of them are supported by the establishment wing of the Democratic Party. All of them have people in mind over reelection.
It's time for a sea change.
I think Kamala was an embarrassment that deserved to be called out, Biden is evil, and the establishment often cares more about suppressing progressives than beating Republicans, but I absolutely downvoted that dumb as shit comment.
The Democrats can be responsible for failing to defeat fascism, complicit in genocide and the backsliding of civil rights, and a problem in need of active and forceful change without saying stupid things like they're just as bad as the guy empowering Nazis, destroying the civil service, and persecuting trans people with deadly results.
That's fucking stupid online edgelord politics.
I have a very real fear that even if a truly progressive democratic candidate runs for president, they still won't win.
Don't get me wrong, they still should actually give it a shot. There's literally no other winning alternative for the Dems.
Instead, I think you're very right about the DNC not knowing what people want. There is a huge, mildly surprising amount of support in this country for bigotry. There is a surprising amount of people locked into the Nazi vote, and you know I'm not exaggerating. This is what people actually want. As it turns out, they chose fascism over treating specific people as people, same as last time, and times before.
This is America. And it has allies with other bigots and land grabbing warmongers.
May we both survive, and here's to hoping we can get a progressive candidate next time, if we get a next time. It's always worth it to fight for someone's right to just exist.
I have a very real fear that even if a truly progressive democratic candidate runs for president, they still won't win.
I get what you mean, but remember that many people voted for Trump because they wanted change, not because they were exceptionally thrilled about his bigotry. The Bernie-Trump pipeline is a very real phenomenon (see also AOC-Trump voters) and makes the GOP seem like they have more popular support than they really do.
is the democratic party currently destroying every american institution at record pace?
No. They're the ones who could not beat the most deplorable piece of shit to run and win the US presidential elections.
We all need to recognize this if we ever get a chance to vote fairly again.
I think the comment above hits on some important truths:
- The country wanted more, not less, populism. Kamala offered good economic populist policies, but failed to message them to the populace in a way that mattered
- The entire political machine failed to respond to that the people on the ground are either in support of ending genocide, or at least are indifferent to genocide. No votes were ever won by supporting a genocide. Yet there they were, supporting a genocide and acting like it was the only way. The people indifferent to genocide were far more likely to vote republican in the first place
- The democrats failed to hold the republicans responsible for the January 6th insurrection accountable, enabling them to just simply come back and do what they're doing right now
- The democrats failed to use the blueprint the republicans handed them for passing legislation without full bipartisan support because they're a bunch of decorum addicts
- The democrats are now failing to use the blueprint republicans handed them for how to obstruct the shit out of things (why the fuck is anyone voting "yes" on any of trump's nominees regardless of whether or not they're good, they fit into an overall system of bad
Kamala offered good economic populist policies,
She kind of did, kind of didn't. A trend that could be observed during her campaign (I saw this quantified somewhere but for the life of me can't find it again) was that while she started with economic populism, as the campaign progressed she watered down, took back or outright ignored her early promises and tried to fill the gap with "orange man bad". This wasn't a coincidence; corporate representatives would systematically ask for "clarifications" and "explanations" about her policies and have her walk them back one by one into something acceptable to them. So anyway, the result of this was that the Kamala of election day was not running on an economic populist platform.
did the democratic party lose twice to trump?
I used to think that the Democrats were the lesser evil, now I know they are a more insidious evil with polite rhetoric.
I only agree with half your statement. I can be appalled by the majority government and still think the Dems are dumb as stumps. What do you suggest “lefty progressivism” talk about?
The Roman Empire fell because of a series of invasions by “barbarian tribes.”
I cannot take this author seriously after they wrote this. It was, you know, just a little more complicated than that.
I don't think the author meant that seriously. You see the quote around "barbarian tribes"? I think he considered this notion sarcastically, as this is "barbarian tribes" is often used by people less knowledgeble abou the topic.
And for the US to implode within a few weeks, there must have been considerable rot inside. I am really not sure where precisely it started, but I consider Bretton Woods (both the system and it's breakdown), Nixon with the final breakdown of honor in politics, Reagan and his "trickle-down economy" lie Reageanomics, and Bush Junior with his Gulf War key milestones in that process. Notice a trend? They were all Republicans. That Trump puts the final nail into the US' coffin is only consequential.
Not fast enough. Look at what it did to Gaza and realize that it can still do that to anywhere else it wants.
If there was anything the US was good at, it would be marketing. Creating the image that it's the greatest nation on earth, influencing mainstream media to tell their version of the story, keeping up appearances of a strong nation.
The moment these smoke clears and the mirrors break, that is when we see the real US. I think we have Trump to thank to show it to us.
I feel bad for the innocent Americans who are gonna suffer... people who honestly didn't ask for or want any of this.
As it should. The rise of fascism shouldn't go unnoticed. The United States is capable of better but, the rot of capital needs to be expelled first.
I feel like saying it's normal for empires to fall due to external causes is not accurate? It's usually the exception. Maybe the external factor is the final kick, knocking over a rotting house of cards, but the cause is almost always division, internal conflict, or unsustainable growth. An empire is much more likely to collapse under its own weight than it is to have Alexander the Great kick its teeth in. The Ottoman Empire was called "The Sick Man of Europe" for a reason.
It's absolutely not. It's their very internal policies that force them into destroying themselves. They start believing their own propaganda. For both Rome and Constantinople it was wasting huge amounts of it's power on fighting Persia and trying to extend its borders in ways that outran it's logistics capacity. For the Ottomans it was the rise of nationalism and their ham fisted attempts to combat it. For the modern Western imperialists it was the base fact that direct colonial rule was always a monetary drain for the state and only made businesses money. Making these stupid decisions was because each empire had created a web of political commitments and internal propaganda that was unsustainable.
America's wealth is tied up in perceptions. When the rest of the world views America the way I currently view Tesla, we're going to have some very big economic problems. And of course we already have huge security and safety issues as blow back for turning on our allies. It's impossible for me to imagine this isn't all a deliberate attempt to destroy America. And we all know which world leader Trump worships who is very very interested in causing that.
Trump is creating a lot of enemies. Even turning allies into enemies. The reputation usually mostly recovers when there's a Democrat in the WH, but since American voters walked right back into the same chaos again, eyes wide open, it's going to be a lot harder to recover this time around. There's just very little trust and credibility left.
In three weeks, Donald Trump has imploded whatever positive image the United States might have had internationally.
If you were born in the last three weeks it may seem that way, but Joe Biden did the US' reputation abroad no favors, nor did Trump 1. Obama is less bad than those on either side of him, but his admin at best still represents stagnation, as he failed to address Bush's crimes and added to them in places like Libya. And before him was the guy who really got the ball rolling downhill after the high point that was the Clinton administration, Bush Jr.
Just to give you the perspective from Germany: Reagan is viewed as an idiot, everybody forgot about Bush Senior, people kind of loved Clinton, viewed GWB as an idiot and warmonger, Obama is seen as a great guy and Binden was also not viewed negatively by most people. Trump, however, is seen as the dangerous clown that he is.
In just over three weeks, Donald Trump has been able to redefine the United States’ position in the world from a global power to an international outcast.
This is exactly what people uttering "Make America Great Again" were asking for when they chose Trump to be the figurehead. None should be surprised.
As a European I'm all for it. Fuck up your own country for once and leave the rest alone. Nobody needs the corrupt self-declared policeman of the world
The United States is imploding. The reign of Donald Trump is not only challenging and threatening the very foundations of its constitutional democracy, it is calling into question the U.S.’s post-World War II hegemonic role. Empires or hegemonic powers rise and fall. Often they are defeated by emerging powers. Sometimes their decline takes place over time. But rarely do they self-destruct as spectacularly as the U.S. is doing. The U.S. implosion is dramatic in its intensity and rapidity. In just over three weeks, Donald Trump has been able to redefine the United States’ position in the world from a global power to an international outcast. Despite whatever military and economic power the U.S. still has, its image and global leadership have been undermined by President Trump’s foreign policy decisions.
I just want to take a short, though probably unpopular, note that while you present it as something negative, to some people on the world, that's actually something positive. There are communities all over the world who have suffered tremendously through the US' global hegemony; and these people (me included) are sometimes actually in a very good mood about the news that have been coming the last few weeks.
The US falling apart would implicate that it was once whole, which it never was. It is just reaping the harsh fruits of half a century of aggressive 2 party campaigning.
Article about how the states is falling apart.
Uses picture of a house no middle class family could reasonably afford.
The alternative reality won’t make those republicans succeed.
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