Arjan Dirkse wrote: ↑Feb 10, 2025 6:04 am
Eh this sort of thing always gets overblown. "The whole nation is going to hell" etc etc
The US is doing very well economically. I'd sooner expect continental Europe to collapse than the US. Trump seems to want to return to a more type of 19th century politics, autocratic and expansionist.
It's amazing how quickly an idea can age!
Yes, the US is doing very well economically
now based upon its historical influence and trade networks. The US is a major trade partner of most nations. The US also has a very wide network of allies.
Both of these are now in imminent jeopardy with the new kooky krime-klown regime.
Why did Musk spend $44B on Twitter to go hard MAGA, then nearly $300M directly on Trump campaign, and now has an entirely anti-constitutional power over... nearly every aspect of the US government, apparently? Who actually knows what DOGE really does? No one really seems to know how even to address it as it seems entirely tooled and designed to fit into every possible loophole.
Musk certainly isn't doing this for deep MAGA convictions or a patriotic love of America, he's doing an old-fashioned dirty with Trump - just with the added spice of a techbro version of smash and grab on a clueless grandpa president. But because it's purely selfish, he doesn't give a hoot that he's also enabling Trump to repopulate the entire machinery of government with loyalists. Musk will become a target one day - he's got to know it?
We can already see what Trump's "maximalist" approach is: build elite resorts on the still buried corpses of state-murdered Palestinians, align with a modern-day European autocratic imperialist state, engage in diplomacy as if it's the late 19th century and the US needs to expand some more...
How does any of this lend itself to stable economic relations even before you start talking about tariffs on allied nations, land seizures from allied nations, threats of force on allied (NATO) nations, and all the sundry other whimsically ignorant pronouncements made which don't just affect the US's relations with the whole world, but also seem intended to reconstruct domestic society towards some quasi-ethnic rebalancing of power.
What was is gone. The question is how quickly can Trump fuck this up with his scattershitshot? It will fall apart, but how long will it take?
Of course, it shouldn't need be said that none of what I've written implies that I think that the US's influence has historically been a force for good in modern times - to a large part, it certainly hasn't.
Ironically, much of the world order was already considered unfairly polarized towards the US because the US has historically used economic and military threat to influence what it prefers in parts of the world. It failed on many notable occasions, but it worked plenty well too. The world was already setup more than fairly in US favour, but Trump has a pout - so unfair! That bit of land looks nice on my sharpee map.
Ironically, some of the 'soft power' aid given to
more-economically-than-using-military-force extend US influence was the first thing Trump stripped. People with HIV in Musk's country of origin are now at heightened risk because of their prodigal techbro with the loudest electronic speaker. It is shit but fair right now to say: only in America! My point is not 'in support' of US influence, but as an outsider witnessing an intended train-wreck and wondering how such self-harm can happen in a 'democracy'. It's clown-show.
I think the EU has a lot more robust economy than the world's press gives it credit for. It has lots of international networks, lots of soft influence, it's doing fine - just not equal to the (fading) economic superpower. Of course it doesn't want bad trade relations with the US - especially right now as it is having to contest Russia economically, but it might yet come to that situation. I think there are plenty of unaligned but EU friendly states with all manner of trade relations that makes them quite a bit more resilient than is, in my opinion, usually reported in alarmist and sensationalist terms in 'Western media'.
I very much agree with your last point, though. At first it seemed like it was some kind of 1940's or 50's? It was hard to tell. But no, it's definitely the US flexing its new-found muscles, continuing an expansionist tradition, and grabbing them thar minerals for the
oiltechbarons.
Wonder what's going to break first, and honestly have to say that for the first time in my life, I feel safer for being in SE Asia than in 'the West'. FuN T1mEs!
