-
15 votes
-
The destruction of the soft power of the United States
I haven't seen anything about this topic online yet, but to be fair I have been avoiding the news a bit for my own sanity. One of the disasters of the recent presidential election is the damage to...
I haven't seen anything about this topic online yet, but to be fair I have been avoiding the news a bit for my own sanity.
One of the disasters of the recent presidential election is the damage to the "soft power" of the United States. By this I mean, the ability of the country to affect the behavior of other countries through cooperation and attraction. You can't have soft power if you don't have reliability, trustworthiness, and honor. Soft power takes years and decades to build. During the first Trump presidency, he did tremendous damage by siding with dictators, criticizing his own advisors, complaining about NATO countries not paying their share.. Like all of his ideas, it is based on the claim that he understands everything, I'll just do this simple thing and it fixes everything. So let's cut the deficit by cutting spending everywhere. When Biden was elected, some of this damage was undone, but the trust needs more than four years to recover. Well, now Trump is back before the trust was really regained. There is no ally in the world that can fully trust the United States. If we all survive the next four years, and there is a fair election, and then the best president of all time is elected, it will hardly help. The whole world knows that we are a country that is stupid and selfish enough to elect another trump in the near future. There is no way to unring this horrible bell.
Yes, I know that the US has done terrible things with it's power in the past, including invasions of other countries. But there has never been a leader in charge that openly antagonizes allies and embraces adversaries, and is so obviously corrupt and easily manipulated through bribery and favors. That so clearly works to weaken the United States in every possible way, including sowing division internally, flaunting ethics, and all the other "unamerican" things we have seen him do.
About Trump's complaints in his first term that we have bases all over the world and we are paying for it: Yes, we are. And it pays back in dividends. Besides the projection of power that serves our interests, it also gives us a reason to build equipment (in the US) using labor in the US and technology studied and implemented in the US. Complaining to NATO that they aren't paying their fair share makes them think "oh shit, the US won't protect us anymore. We better make more nukes". Now we are drastically increasing nuclear and military proliferation problems that are way more likely to have conflicts.
About Trump simplistic solutions such as cutting spending on programs: Remember how trump cut the staff by two-thirds of a key US health agency operating in China? Right before the coronavirus outbreak. For all we know, the global pandemic could have been almost averted.
Most voters apparently don't understand this type of thing of course. This is a problem of education, especially in civic responsibility. But I am sure that there are people in the Republican party, and working for Fox News, and on talk radio, that understand the things I said, and to a much better extent than some random guy on the internet. But for some reason they don't seem to give a shit. Something is more important to them so they allowed Trump to continue and they constantly help spread lies to give him more power. I find this very curious and suspicious.
27 votes -
The Electoral College is bad
49 votes -
US Republicans’ electoral college edge, once seen as ironclad, looks to be fading
23 votes -
Study finds people are consistently and confidently wrong about those with opposing views
37 votes -
Post-Positivism is not yet normalized in international relations
6 votes -
Unexceptional exceptionalism: The use of force by great powers and international instability
4 votes -
Where do you fit in the US political typology?
29 votes -
How bad maps win elections - Gerrymandering explained | Map Men
18 votes -
Girl, so confusing: Will the “Brat” memes help or hurt Kamala Harris?
22 votes -
The cynic and the two nations: Twenty years since Barack Obama assured us we're the *United* States of America, a new country has been building with fearful momentum. Can anything be done to stop it?
11 votes -
A new way to self govern - the selection of representatives by lottery
21 votes -
US history shows swapping candidates is a losing game for Democrats
32 votes -
The credibility trap – is reputation worth fighting for?
11 votes -
Danish PM Mette Frederiksen's domestically popular tough immigration stance could prove to be a weakness with European Social Democrat colleagues in the upcoming EU elections
5 votes -
An honest assessment of American rural white resentment is long overdue
32 votes -
Researcher calls out misuse of research in book on American white rural rage - suggests resentment over rage
25 votes -
It’s no longer the economy, stupid. America’s hyper-partisan voters express economic sentiments that mirror their politics — this is not true in Europe.
25 votes -
The mystery social media account schooling US Congress on how to do its job
39 votes -
A partisan solution to partisan gerrymandering
21 votes -
Finland has rejected the far right, but is the country ready for a gay, Green head of state in Pekka Haavisto?
8 votes -
What happened to David Graeber?
6 votes -
Denmark's far-right, populist Nye Borgerlige party is being dissolved – other right-wing parties applaud, spying greater share of votes
14 votes -
Red and blue US states: dichotomized maps mislead and reduce perceived voting influence
25 votes -
Adopting rightwing policies ‘does not help centre-left win votes’
36 votes -
Top court clears path for Democrats to redraw House map in New York
15 votes -
The Republican Revolution and how the party switch actually happened
13 votes -
Women used to be more likely to vote Conservative than men but that all changed in 2017—UK research wants to find out why
17 votes -
Eliminate elections for a better US democracy
25 votes -
Political warfare comes home to the US - the founder of the Nixon presidential library comments on the history of US disputes over presidential succession and the Trump indictments
14 votes -
Twitter, Elon Musk and the Indigo Blob
19 votes -
Conservatives go to red states and liberals go to blue as the USA grows more polarized
51 votes -
US Democrats and Republicans share core values but still distrust each other
27 votes -
The results of Finland's parliamentary elections signal a tumultuous period ahead – what happened to Sanna Marin and what to expect next
5 votes -
The case for abolishing elections
17 votes -
Pew Research Center's US political typology
7 votes -
Regardless of the outcome of the November 1 polls, Denmark is expected to maintain its restrictive immigration policies
2 votes -
America’s self-obsession is killing its democracy
11 votes -
Nationalism is underrated by intellectuals
14 votes -
The rules for rulers: How dictatorships work, and why Russia is heading towards a coup
15 votes -
A funny thing happened on the way to the gerrymander - Democrats may actually gain 2-3 seats on net rather than losing
8 votes -
David Shor is telling US Democrats what they don’t want to hear
8 votes -
Is gerrymandering about to become more difficult?
14 votes -
Politically polarized brains share an intolerance of uncertainty
5 votes -
Why did the Democratic and Republican parties switch platforms?
6 votes -
Denmark's socialist left needs to reverse the decline in working-class mobilization – mass-membership parties have been replaced by a professionalized media-political sphere
12 votes -
We selected 10,000 American neighborhoods at random. If we dropped you into one of them, could you guess how most people there voted?
29 votes -
The Republican Party is now in its end stages
13 votes -
Party supporters shift views to match partisan stances
7 votes -
Making policy for a low-trust world
6 votes