"I live in the best country on the planet!"
"Have you ever been to another country?"
"Well, no. But why would I do that when I'm already in the best country!"
This doesn't apply to just the US...
this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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Traveling does wonders to people. Shame not a lot of people can afford it and even those who can not all travel.
You have a point. After I wrote it I thought of 2 things. Firstly, even those that are lucky enough to travel will never travel everywhere. So, how can they claim the best without having seen all possibilities? Secondly, there are ways to learn and /or experience things without being physically present, like read about it in a book, or watch a documentary. That counts for something.
Now I think about it, I could have changed it to:
"I live in the best country on the planet!”
"Really? How do you know? How do you measure that? What evidence do you have to back that up?"
But, it would probably go all downhill from there, as the original one inevitably would....😆
The End of American Exceptionalism
But not the end of them claiming it regardless of the reality.
Then again, their claims of being the bestest ever at everything have been false for a very long time already.
There is a chance that Trump will inadvertently weaken the US long term, but nothing is certain so until it happens I am not getting my hopes up. The article though is neocon propaganda, they don't even mention the genocide in Gaza or pogroms in the West Bank.
There is a chance that Trump will inadvertently weaken the US long term
He already did that the first time.
This time he'll double (or triple) down on that.
We can really only hope.
Trump was right about one thing, we are a nation in decline, but it’s not for the reasons he’s claiming.
Democracies grant immense power to the electorate. Including the power of suicide. Democratic systems are inherently capable of ending themselves because ultimately their survival depends on enough people believing in the system and holding the integrity of the system to be more important than any particular democratic outcome. That is lost in the US. Most voters don't care.
That truth alone makes a decent argument for US being in decline. It will take a long time , but it's beginning.
The US isn't a democracy though, it is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, where every election we get to select which group of oppressors will wield state power against us until the next one.
Also decline is caused by anticolonial resistance and the logic of capitalism breaking down. I would suggest reading Lenin's "imperialism" and Fanon's "wretched of the earth"
It is difficult to get Drezner to understand that American exceptionalism is already dead when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
Why does Will E Coyote look so much like a Swastika here
End? It was always a myth?
Right? But American mainstream media would not admit that.
Maybe even the start of Americans engaging with reality, I'm not holding my breath though.
Even though we will admittedly never engage with reality, you may still consider holding your breath around us to be prudent. We smell awful from all the obesity.
Exactly what pootin wants
They aren’t exceptional. They’re just like Russia.
I'd argue we're a lot more like the British empire in their glory days- exporting authoritarianism, subjugation, and hate globally, for as long as it serves our material benefit.
We learned from the best 🤷♂️
We are not just like Russia.
We aren't exceptional though, you got that right. America hasn't been exceptional in decades.
Oh, it has… just not in the ways anyone would desire to be considered exceptional.
Given that Russia has a competent government and isn't on a verge of a civil war, not sure in what way America is like Russia.
You call competent a government that pulled the "special military operation" and led hundreds of thousands of its people into death for not much of anything? You must be trolling.
Yeah, I call a government that defeated NATO in Ukraine and manged to grow the economy despite the sanctions competent.
So not trolling, alright. Sounds to me like you consider them competent in what they did well while not subtracting what they didn't. Let me contrast the Russian government with something that to me looks much more competent - the Chinese government.
China is indeed more competent, however we were comparing Russia to the US here. There's is no metric by which you could say the US is better governed or more politically stable than Russia at the moment.
I never implied anything about the US.
The whole context of this discussion was me saying that Russia is more competently run than the US. 🤷
All of that is true if you assume Putin is immortal.
Not sure what you mean by that. Putin doesn't run Russia single handedly like he's playing civ or something. Absolutely incredible that anybody could think that the entire Russian government hinges on Putin.
Not sure what you mean by that.
You know exactly what I mean by that. Who runs Russia after he dies and how will that person be selected? Until you can answer that question, your claims of Russia's "stability" will remain ridiculous.
No, I really have no clue what you mean by that because you're implying Putin's role is far larger than it actually is. When he steps down, it's most likely that it's going to be Medvedev that replaces him. You evidently have absolutely no clue about Russian politics.
No, I really have no clue what you mean by that because you’re implying Putin’s role is far larger than it actually is.
I'm asking a very simple question. Were there words in there that you didn't understand?
When he steps down, it’s most likely that it’s going to be Medvedev that replaces him.
This already happened. Putin was still in charge, and came back when the pretense of not being in charge was no longer necessary. What reason is there to believe Medvedev is next in line and that everyone else will just go with that when Putin is dead? Yes I'm saying dead because dictators don't have retirement plans lol.
You evidently have absolutely no clue about Russian politics.
Ah yes, the last refuge of the loser who can't answer a simple question. You're dancing around the question because your ridiculous claim that Russia is "stable" falls apart immediately when the fact that this question has no clear answer is considered. It's your ridiculous opinion dude. You can change it for free.
I’m asking a very simple question. Were there words in there that you didn’t understand?
I've given you a simple answer. Were there words in there that you didn’t understand?
This already happened. Putin was still in charge, and came back when the pretense of not being in charge was no longer necessary. What reason is there to believe Medvedev is next in line and that everyone else will just go with that when Putin is dead? Yes I’m saying dead because dictators don’t have retirement plans lol.
Not sure what point you're trying to make here. The fact that you think Russia is some sort of a dictatorship further highlights just how utterly clueless you are about it.
Ah yes, the last refuge of the loser who can’t answer a simple question.
You've made it abundantly clear that you are utterly clueless on Russia by claiming that it's a dictatorship and insinuating that Putin runs the government single handedly. Nobody is dancing around anything. That's just a straw man you're making based on your lack of understanding of the subject you're attempting to debate here. If you think that Russia is going to fall apart when Putin steps down then you're in for a really big surprise.
Typical of American exceptionalism to stand other country on the verge of existential crisis and when they react call that "for not much of anything"
I view FA as an arena for American political elite to build legitimacy for their ideas.
That, combined with an expected surge of corrupt foreign policy practices, will leave the United States looking like a garden-variety great power.
I'm surprised to hear such strong language out of FA. I normally expect boring policy-style language.
He believes that the U.S.-created liberal international order has, over time, stacked the deck against the United States.
I've perceived that things have never been better for American international order than under Trump/Biden.
he will likely use Schedule F—a measure to reclassify civil service positions as political slots—to force them out.
Interesting precedence if so. Having career civil servants keeps things from changing too fast, and turning them political could enable instability. I'm curious how this interacts with the Hatch act.
The first is the inevitable corruption that will compromise U.S. policies.
I'm surprised at the emphasis on "corruption" language, especially in FA. This type of language gets people labeled "troublemaker" as Chomsky might say.
I've perceived that things have never been better for American international order than under Trump/Biden.
The last few cycles have been a weird time for NATO, as the escalating Russian aggression revitalised the alliance, but the unreliability of Trump vastly diminished the status of the US. Europe is now actively trying to get out of the military subordinate role.