It is genuinely so heartbreaking seeing the US destroying itself in this way. It’s like a real feeling of grief whenever I see there’s a new article about the US betraying us, it’s like finding out your best friend is fucking your wife.
They didn't become anything. What happened is that the Republican party turned hard towards pandering to the minority of cruel people that were always present.
I wonder how they will talk about this decline and fall of this American Empire in the future. Ultimately I think it will become clear that the constitution failed, as one of its primary purposes was to stop such populist enemies of the Enlightenment from coming to power. Well, 250 years was quite good, but eternity is a long time! Maybe parliamentary democracy has finally proven superior to presidential systems.
Has such a dominant power collapsed in this way before? Just arbitrarily decided one day to betray all its allies and start fellating its enemies? Think of the last hegemon, the British Empire, fundamentally that was unsustainable because it's a small island off the coast of Europe, but still it fought two world wars before it finally had to pass the torch. Meanwhile the USA has collapsed in on itself completely foregoing such a glorious end.
Well, yes, many of them appear to be. Mostly not as rich as the USA, of course, though, but if wealth was all that mattered then Monaco would be the greatest country on hte planet. And I should remind you also that not all countries in Europe have parliamentary systems anyway. France and Russia don't, for example, and there are also parliamentary democracies outside of Europe, like Canada and Australia.
Well my original claim was regarding parliamentary democracy, and France is not a parliamentary democracy, so I shan't go to any great lengths defending them over something I know nothing about. But yes, these countries are not perfect anyway and I did not suggest otherwise. Only that many of them seem to be fundamentally more stable and successful than the USA. And tbh, what other country has done well with a presidential system besides South Korea?
Anyway we are witnessing the sudden collapse of the American Empire and it is fascinating and tragic to watch. You guys, you really have fucked it all up! A country not more than 30 years from the absolute peak of its global power, decided to abandon all claims to global power and influence by voting for Trump a second time. Incredible, just, incredible. Americans, everybody!
The only one that seems to have failed in the same way as the US system has failed is Hungary (Turkey had a broadly similar systemic failure, but isn't a parliamentary republic). Now, obviously, a parliamentary democracy isn't a _guarantee_ that you won't fall into autocracy/kleptocracy (notably, the Weimar Republic was one, albeit a poorly designed one), but they do seem more resistant to it than presidential republics, where it seems to almost happen more often than not.
To you sure, but lots of people enjoy food. And Americans enjoy eating complete dogshit, being among the most obese and revolting (to the eyes and to the nose) people on the planet. Maybe it'd be a pretty cool thing if they at more like the Italians.
Frame this on the wall as the most succinct way to sum up the utter capitulation people face in supporting these tariffs.
Yes they are raising taxes and making everything more expensive for Americans.
Yes they are disrupting the raw materials needed for domestic manufacturing supply chains.
Yes their policies change so frequently and capriciously that it's impossible for American businesses to make medium-to-long term plans.
Yes the president and his family are personally and directly benefiting from these policy decisions. Yes they are directly accepting gifts and payments, including jets, TikTok board seats, and brazenly corrupt contributions to their personal cryptocurrency.
All of that is acceptable, and technically food doesn't need to taste good anyway.
> All of that is acceptable, and technically food doesn't need to taste good anyway.
Food doesn’t need to taste good. This is America, not some mediterranean country: https://www.nytimes.com/1975/08/31/archives/food-on-enjoying... (“This American attitude toward food has been formed by two important elements in our national thinking, both functions of our national history. One is the he‐man ideology developed during our pioneering past which holds that it is effete to demand finesse in cookery (or in any other cultural activity, for that matter). The other is our Puritanism. The Puritan nourishes himself (grudgingly), for God has so organized the universe that he must. Possibly he suspects that the chore of eating was imposed on him as a penance for his disgraceful gourmandise in connection with an apple.”).
Of all the things in my post to address, the fact that you are pulling some random NYT opinion piece from 1975 to say “actually it’s more American to NOT enjoy food” only reiterates my point.
I the article discusses a salutary american cultural norm that has since been diluted but is still worth emulating. The America that sent a man to the moon thought garlic was spicy. You don’t need “the best pasta.” Adequate pasta, produced in America by Americans, is good enough.
This is becoming a Tim Robinson gag. I wish you would dedicate as much time supporting American consumers and American manufacturers as you did trying to argue whatever it is you’re digging in about food spiciness or whatever. Your points were not about pasta but truly that it’s more American to not enjoy food lol.
If you must respond, please address my initial points about all the concessions you’re making about these policies. Also, how do you end up finding these random op eds? Like what do you search to find them?
> Your points were not about pasta but truly that it’s more American to not enjoy food lol.
The point to which I was replying asked: "Why not just buy the cheapest highest quality pasta, where ever it happens to be made?" My response was that developing American capacity to produce is more valuable than satiating the American appetite for consumption.
America's lost Puritan spirit is directly relevant to the demand side of that equation. It suppressed Americans' appetite for cheap Chinese goods, foreign luxuries, etc. It was a great virtue of the Republic. Among other things, it enabled America to develop its domestic industries and reinvest the profits in the country, because Americans were readily willing to forgo cheaper prices and higher quality of foreign-made goods for the benefit of developing domestic industrial capacity. (Note that Chinese industrial policy also is focused on suppressing domestic demand for imports.)
Contemporary trade policy is based on facilitating the cheap procurement of foreign products at the expense of domestic industries. That's a bad thing, and one of the forces enabling that bad thing is the loss of the Puritan spirit in America. We've become a country focused on hedonic satisfaction, and that makes us weak.
I find comment such as yours rather pathetic, for reasons I can't quite put into words. It's like you want to make excuses for Trump but you're not really willing to actually commit to it.
Political corruption was not invented by Trump. We know. But that's really not the point at all.
I don't understand this. Should only Trump be blamed? I think that's stupid. All presidents before him were just as corrupt as him, only Trump doesn't care how people think of him, so he's not very sublte, like the other presidents. In that way I think Trump is actually revealing the corruption.
> All presidents before him were just as corrupt as him
Is that so? Please list the ways in which former presidents have violated the Emolument clause, profited directly from their office (i.e., issuing their own cryptocoin), and increased their family's net worth by billions while in office.
Either put up the facts, or stop with the "whataboutism" nonsense.
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