It’s always sad to lose a friend, but even with a new administration, nobody can really trust USA anymore, USA is currently descending deeper into a authoritarian regime, and resistance is effectively being systematically removed. As it is, there seems to be little hope that USA will ever become a functional democracy.
I hope that a better US administration will come after this one and that it will improve the things that can be improved easily (tariffs, visas, rhetoric, and other transactional policies), but at this point Trump has poisoned the well and it will take a generation of good (or at least understandable and workable) behavior by both US parties to rebuild a fraction of the trust and soft power the orange idiot has squandered in barely half a year.
The US largely voted for what is happening and would vote for more of it harder and worse. A new admin does not change what a large chunk of the population feels. There are systemic issues that would take generations to solve, if it is even solvable in any peaceful way.
We (EU) can absolutely reestablish normal trade immediately with USA if USA wishes, it is 100% one-sidedly USA that want trade restrictions. EU even went so far as to NOT put tariffs on USA despite USA has put a 15% tariff on everything from EU!!!
But the election of Bush twice, who already had hostile rhetoric against allies, and started a war based on false intelligence. And then the election of Trump twice, even after it became well known he is a rapist and a con man and a fraudster and behaves like a Russian asset. Shows the American people and democracy itself is very unreliable. It’s not just this administration, it’s the entire system that is the problem.
Of course we will work sanely with a sane administration, but we simply can’t reasonably rely on American sanity anymore, unless some sort of fundamental shift occur in American democracy.
American democracy was always dysfunctional, designed that way on purpose in the belief it makes for a more efficient government, effectively creating an undemocratic 2 party system.
There are many good Americans, but they are outnumbered and the undemocratic system has failed them. Americans need to fight for democracy if they want it. If they really value freedom and democracy as Americans have boasted about more than any other nation, they will fight. But my guess is that when push comes to shove, the majority doesn’t give a shit. At least that’s what decades of presidential elections clearly indicate.
I’m not quite sure what you mean, of course we can go back to normal trade. But there is no way Europe will go back to rely on American weapons like we used to, and we will also try to rid ourselves from reliance on American IT.
So I agree we will not go back entirely to what it used to be. The trust has been broken.
i don’t think either of the current parties can be trusted before you start trusting our nation again. we need systemic reform to set up durable safeguards against oligarchy.
Oligarchy is hardly exclusive to the US or its political system. Its relatively global considering that the overall global economic system is basically an even more off-the-rails version of the way the US economy operates. The UN has little ability to regulate all that much, and without global intervention the 0.01% can afford to shop around to avoid taxation. Look at Monaco…
Thats a pretty extreme prerequisite for the US to ever be trusted
4 years of a better admin won’t fix this. 40 years of good admins won’t fix this.
The real damage done was showing the world that the American system of democracy, long thought to be infalliable and a known constant of the international geopolitical sphere, was easily broken by a bunch of haphazard incompetent fascists in less than a decade. It matters not who is in charge anymore because it could flip on a dime at any second with no warning.
The US can NEVER be trusted unless its government collapses and is reformed in a different, more stable manner.
I hope that a better US administration will come after this one and that it will improve the things that can be improved easily (tariffs, visas, rhetoric, and other transactional policies), but at this point Trump has poisoned the well and it will take a generation of good (or at least understandable and workable) behavior by both US parties to rebuild a fraction of the trust and soft power the orange idiot has squandered in barely half a year.
The US largely voted for what is happening and would vote for more of it harder and worse. A new admin does not change what a large chunk of the population feels. There are systemic issues that would take generations to solve, if it is even solvable in any peaceful way.
We (EU) can absolutely reestablish normal trade immediately with USA if USA wishes, it is 100% one-sidedly USA that want trade restrictions. EU even went so far as to NOT put tariffs on USA despite USA has put a 15% tariff on everything from EU!!!
But the election of Bush twice, who already had hostile rhetoric against allies, and started a war based on false intelligence. And then the election of Trump twice, even after it became well known he is a rapist and a con man and a fraudster and behaves like a Russian asset. Shows the American people and democracy itself is very unreliable. It’s not just this administration, it’s the entire system that is the problem.
Of course we will work sanely with a sane administration, but we simply can’t reasonably rely on American sanity anymore, unless some sort of fundamental shift occur in American democracy.
American democracy was always dysfunctional, designed that way on purpose in the belief it makes for a more efficient government, effectively creating an undemocratic 2 party system.
There are many good Americans, but they are outnumbered and the undemocratic system has failed them. Americans need to fight for democracy if they want it. If they really value freedom and democracy as Americans have boasted about more than any other nation, they will fight. But my guess is that when push comes to shove, the majority doesn’t give a shit. At least that’s what decades of presidential elections clearly indicate.
The damage is done. There’s no going back to previous status quo
I’m not quite sure what you mean, of course we can go back to normal trade. But there is no way Europe will go back to rely on American weapons like we used to, and we will also try to rid ourselves from reliance on American IT.
So I agree we will not go back entirely to what it used to be. The trust has been broken.
i don’t think either of the current parties can be trusted before you start trusting our nation again. we need systemic reform to set up durable safeguards against oligarchy.
Oligarchy is hardly exclusive to the US or its political system. Its relatively global considering that the overall global economic system is basically an even more off-the-rails version of the way the US economy operates. The UN has little ability to regulate all that much, and without global intervention the 0.01% can afford to shop around to avoid taxation. Look at Monaco…
Thats a pretty extreme prerequisite for the US to ever be trusted
4 years of a better admin won’t fix this. 40 years of good admins won’t fix this.
The real damage done was showing the world that the American system of democracy, long thought to be infalliable and a known constant of the international geopolitical sphere, was easily broken by a bunch of haphazard incompetent fascists in less than a decade. It matters not who is in charge anymore because it could flip on a dime at any second with no warning.
The US can NEVER be trusted unless its government collapses and is reformed in a different, more stable manner.