Comment by zzzeek
11 hours ago
The US , when finally back in control by reasonable adults, will need to offer great concessions to Iran in order to extricate from the effects of a disastrous, illegal (both from a US as well as an intentional standpoint) and of course, completely, utterly failed war. And it might be just that Iran gets to be a permanent toll collector for the global economy.
> The US , when finally back in control by reasonable adults
Betting says next president will be Gavin Newsom or JD Vance or Marco Rubio, so I wouldn't bet on that happening anytime soon. It is weird how so bad people bubble up in american politics.
I wish with all my heart it’s going to be Newsom. Perfectly center left just like I like it.
Ugh
Newsom should be elected to count all the grains of sand on the California coastline. He can be comped in trail mix and given an upturned boat for shelter.
He does seem wildly corrupt though with extreme exceptions in bills for his friends and backers, more than other politicians I've seen. He is probably better than Trump or JD Vance but that isn't saying much.
I too mostly agree with his populist center takes, but that doesn't mean he is reasonable.
I can assure you that no "center left" president will be fixing any problems in the middle east anytime soon
none of those three people will be president
Then you can get rich by betting against it, so most people seem to disagree with you. And in a democracy most people decide who the next leader will be.
https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/us-politics
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No matter who controls the US in the future, it will never go back to the position it once had globally.
It's been actively harming it's allies, threatening them with invasion and conspiring with their enemies.
The rest of the world cannot afford to give the American people the benefit of the doubt.
After Trump I, there was hope it was just a fluke. Trump II is much worse and cements the unreliability of the American voting public.
Never is a long time. Look at where Germany was after both WWI and WWII, and where it is now; it's demonstrably possible to cause irreparable damage to everyone around you, and then rise back to the top (multiple times!). The only questions are timeline and scale.
Germany got a new type of government. The 2/3 required in USA for significant change will be insurmountable short of a disaster on order of second Great Depression since plurality of American voters can’t see past next paycheck, no Democrat that can win Presidential primary has any kind of revolutionary vision, it’s all muted, even Bernie got squashed by centrist voters eventually and he was not even that far to the left IMHO - he even stayed away from race or gender issues.
Germany changed its constitution, banned its former ruling party, and actively explores and teaches their school kids about their crimes. The US on the other hand has a chunk of its electorate flying Confederate flags and voting for politicians who think US history textbooks should be more "pro-American".
Germany wasn't and isn't the world's hegemon.
I don't think that position is recoverable the same way.
Look at where Germany is now?
They're a total non-player on the world stage. They completely kowtow to the US. Hardly a good example
You also have to consider the outside intervention forcibly imposed upon Germany, after being defeated in war both times, and how the first round of that contributed directly to WWII. It's not exactly a playbook to copy verbatim.
This. We all thought Trump was a crazy accident but the fact that he almost beat Biden, and then did beat Harris, means we just can't trust Americans to put sensible people in charge. Assuming a democrat takes the office next, they will inherit an economy in tatters, a failing infrastructure and a broken strategic alliance. They'll have four years to try to fix all of that while the republicans blame them for everything they've inherited, and four years from that the American people will have largely forgotten how Trump and his minions trailed dog shit all through the house and they'll vote for the next right wing dick that's been groomed for the job - probably Pete Hegseth, or Don Jr, or Mark Wayne Mullin
Neither Biden nor Harris were sensible candidates. Democrats could have easily beat Trump by running a more appealing/less polarizing candidate. Didn't even have to be both. Obama was polarizing but he was appealing and he won comfortably.
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> The US , when finally back in control by reasonable adults
Everyone reasonable seems to be holding their breath in anticipation of this eventually happening.
What if it doesn’t? What if all of this is a symptom of an underlying deterioration that extends deeper and beyond the current administration? It’s not Trump that made Americans A-OK with wars of aggression; Obama blew up as many kids using drones as Trump put into cages. What if the next few are the same, or worse? What do we do if this isn’t a temporary excursion but the new normal for the US and A?
> What if it doesn’t? What if all of this is a symptom of an underlying deterioration that extends deeper and beyond the current administration? It’s not Trump that made Americans A-OK with wars of aggression; Obama blew up as many kids using drones as Trump put into cages. What if the next few are the same, or worse? What do we do if this isn’t a temporary excursion but the new normal for the US and A?
In the cold war, there was the "Evil East" and the "Good West", and this opposition forced at least some token "goodness" and a certain predictable behavior on both sides. It also forced both sides to have some firm principles they adhere to. Now the cold war is over, and while it did change more in the formerly East, the West, at least in some parts, also learned a few things. Among them that principles are negotiable, especially without a closed opposing bloc with the opposite principles. Doing business with China and Russia not only made people rich, it also moved Western culture more towards the Eastern ones, more than anyone would like to admit. Starting to see things from the Eastern perspective also induced the West to over time to not just understand the former enemy better and learn the "good stuff". We started to find things like strong autocratic leadership, compromises on human rights, ignorance of international laws and treaties, and wars of aggression and conquest more acceptable and even preferable.
So I don't think this is just temporary.
None of that is new or imported from the Asiatic Hordes. It's just more visible now.
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Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. The US saw what Trump did during his first term, and four years later, after relative calm, they were like "nah, let's go back to Trump." That's the new normal. In fact, things will be worse during the next election, with even more of the media owned by unhinged billionaires intent on robbing as much as possible from normal people.
I don't think the electorate ran back into Trump's arms. Kamala was an egregiously poor candidate. He didn't win, she lost.
> Obama blew up as many kids using drones as Trump put into cages.
Obama didn't deliberately target kids using drones.
> The US , when finally back in control by reasonable adults
This rings as "make America great again", just with a different mythology standing-in for "again".
The US (or at least the US _state_) hasn't been in control by reasonable adults in over a century, or arguably ever.
What is finally becoming obvious is that this particular landmass is much too large to be under the control of a single state, and now that we have instant communications and ubiquitous cameras, even the arguments (laid out eg in the federalist papers) are no longer dispositive.
Calm and careful deprecation of the US as a state needs to top the new agenda.
> The US , when finally back in control by reasonable adults
There is no way back, as there is no way back to the world before covid or before the 2008 global crisis. They say about Russian history "it was bad and then it got worse". Over and over, for hundreds of years. Vlad and Donnie are friends now.
> when finally back in control by reasonable adults
no one even knows who was really in control during the previous administration. quite a few idiotic and destructive policy changes were made during that administration too