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.

  • Dagwood222
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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.

    • 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…

    • 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
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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?

        • catloaf
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          4 days ago

          Fascism loves a power vacuum.

          • Dagwood222
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            4 days ago

            I have no idea why someone down voted something that obvious.

            • catloaf
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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.

        • 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
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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
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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.

      • 4am
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        4 days ago

        No dumbass, they don’t just go away.