Re ‘the belief that NATO members will come to one another’s aid if a member is attacked.’ OK. But what happens when ‘come to one another’s aid’ is a one-way street, when Europe doesn’t pull its weight, when Europe insists that we compromise with the tyrants to retain peace? Shouldn’t we expect our partners to retain agency, to do something when they see bad behavior? Trump’s tough-love behavior is because he doesn’t trust the European to do the right thing. Only time will tell whether it makes the world safer.
Trump has destroyed trust like no other political figure in the history of this country. For what? To what end? The self-sabotage for no reason is unprecedented. Assuming we turn a corner and return to sanity, will we be able to recover?
The core problem is that U.S. institutions lost the trust of about half of the U.S. electorate - and they deserved that loss of trust. How could the American people elect as president a candidate who had just been found guilty of multiple felonies? The answer is that it was fairly easy, because a plurality concluded - very reasonably - that the criminal proceedings were a politicized sham. Which was itself easy to do after the debacle of the government's COVID response and other similar examples. I agree with FF on the crucial importance of trust. That's why it is so important for our institutions to undergo a cleansing to regain the trust of the American public. They have a lot of work to do.
Part of what made America a more trusting and more trustworthy society was our sense—inherited from the English—that we were “exceptional” and more virtuous than such brutal earlier imperialists as the Spanish and the Portuguese. This informed our “Enlightenment” and democratic outlook. Over the centuries, however, perhaps beginning in earnest with the Supreme Court (contrary to mythology) sanctioning the Trail of Tears in the 1830s and culminating in Trump, the ideology of nationalism triumphed over this democratic outlook. In this way, the United States has come to affirm “Christian Nationalism”—the same idolatrous variant of Christianity with which the sixteenth century apologists for the Spanish empire sought to defend their genocidal misconduct—as the foundation of our imperialism. It is at this level that we must rethink our role and place in the world and, indeed, the “world order” as a whole. https://steven3c6.substack.com/p/world-politics-on-a-new-foundation?r=21x2h&utm_medium=ios
What percentage of Americans feel we are on the right path? 10%? 20%? We know we’re in trouble. This is bigger than Trump or the Democrats, liberals, conservatives, progressives, nationalists, etc. Where is the bold, positive, and authentically American vision of our nation’s future?
Re ‘the belief that NATO members will come to one another’s aid if a member is attacked.’ OK. But what happens when ‘come to one another’s aid’ is a one-way street, when Europe doesn’t pull its weight, when Europe insists that we compromise with the tyrants to retain peace? Shouldn’t we expect our partners to retain agency, to do something when they see bad behavior? Trump’s tough-love behavior is because he doesn’t trust the European to do the right thing. Only time will tell whether it makes the world safer.
Trump has destroyed trust like no other political figure in the history of this country. For what? To what end? The self-sabotage for no reason is unprecedented. Assuming we turn a corner and return to sanity, will we be able to recover?
The core problem is that U.S. institutions lost the trust of about half of the U.S. electorate - and they deserved that loss of trust. How could the American people elect as president a candidate who had just been found guilty of multiple felonies? The answer is that it was fairly easy, because a plurality concluded - very reasonably - that the criminal proceedings were a politicized sham. Which was itself easy to do after the debacle of the government's COVID response and other similar examples. I agree with FF on the crucial importance of trust. That's why it is so important for our institutions to undergo a cleansing to regain the trust of the American public. They have a lot of work to do.
Of course! A country that chooses Trump as its leader must lose all trust.
Part of what made America a more trusting and more trustworthy society was our sense—inherited from the English—that we were “exceptional” and more virtuous than such brutal earlier imperialists as the Spanish and the Portuguese. This informed our “Enlightenment” and democratic outlook. Over the centuries, however, perhaps beginning in earnest with the Supreme Court (contrary to mythology) sanctioning the Trail of Tears in the 1830s and culminating in Trump, the ideology of nationalism triumphed over this democratic outlook. In this way, the United States has come to affirm “Christian Nationalism”—the same idolatrous variant of Christianity with which the sixteenth century apologists for the Spanish empire sought to defend their genocidal misconduct—as the foundation of our imperialism. It is at this level that we must rethink our role and place in the world and, indeed, the “world order” as a whole. https://steven3c6.substack.com/p/world-politics-on-a-new-foundation?r=21x2h&utm_medium=ios
What percentage of Americans feel we are on the right path? 10%? 20%? We know we’re in trouble. This is bigger than Trump or the Democrats, liberals, conservatives, progressives, nationalists, etc. Where is the bold, positive, and authentically American vision of our nation’s future?