Point is everyone loves a redemption arc.
Yeah; Trump got into power because the Republicans spent decades creating a base that idolized everything that Trump is for their own purposes, and then Trump stepped into the Trump-shaped hole they cut into themselves.
But you actually have to redeem yourself for that. Post WWII, the Germans did everything they could to distance themselves from the Nazis. I’m not sure I can see that happening with the MAGAs, especially if they don’t lose a war. They’ll just carry on like they did during the Biden years. Claim the election was stolen, that the President is incompetent, that everything sucks now, that the US is the laughingstock of the world again, that the Haitians have started eating cats and dogs again, all of that.
I don’t think there is any chance the MAGAs will have any redemption arc. The possibility is that the general voting public does. The hypothetical is that they do, and if so can damage be undone? In that hypothetical, the voting public rejects Trumpism, would the world embrace an American redemption story?
I think to a large degree so, yes.
Except we did that with Biden, and yet, here we are four years later. You can’t redeem “America” or “American Voters” without redeeming MAGA. No MAGA redemption, and they will just be lurking in the shadows, waiting for a moment of weakness to strike. And we’ll all know they’re there.
Do you think they have ever not been there?
While I think the international community will embrace any American leadership return to sanity, the redemption arc requires a solid election rejection of Trumpism. It does not require its disappearance.
I don’t think a single election cycle is sufficient, though. I think it requires not just a “solid election rejection,” but a sustained electoral repudiation at the federal level, which means 2026, 2028, 2030, and 2032 at minimum.
Well, it’s been 80 years.
This is what I fear. The fact that half of the participating voters either approved, and voted for this, or were oblivious and stupid, and voted for this, is a terrifying omen of what lies in the future. I honestly don’t think that this can be undone without a deliberate “deTrumpification” process. But how does that work without accusations of “extreme leftist police state” or “social engineering” etc? And what means of enforcement can be fairly and effectively used?
And then there’s the rest of the world. I suspect that we in Canada will not trust the US for a long, long time, which is really sad. I’ve always enjoyed working with USN officers in my RCN career, and my wife and I have always enjoyed the encounters we’ve had with the American tourists we’ve typically met at small auberges, pensions and restaurants etc in Europe.
And militarily, though we have overly depended on the US for our defence, I just don’t see how they can continue to be included in the Five Eyes community, particularly after the whole Signal debacle. Until Trump, the US was the bedrock of western intelligence, and the rest of us worked according to their standards. Even in the corporate world, post-RCN, I had to work in accordance with ITAR regulations on various projects. How the hell are we supposed to trust US intelligence now?
And even if, on some magic day, everyone in the west agreed to forgive and forget, and trust, the logistics behind rebuilding would be simply staggering.
So now, at least in my remaining years, I don’t see any recovery.
After unconditional surrender, occupation by foreign powers, and the suicide of der Fuehrer.
Nazism collapsed completely. If American fascism was completely destroyed and America was rebuilt maybe we could move on, but we tried to rebuild the benighted parts of America after the civil war and they still bitch about it.
Depends what you mean by “redemption”. I think we could do without a Hollywood production number.
On the bright side, the damage to ‘merkin hegemony will be a whole lot more profound and persistent if 45/47 leaves the White House from natural causes on a gun carriage and JD Vance completes the term.
“When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers”
You can’t have your reputation redeemed without it first having been deemed. Americans drastically overestimate their overseas reputation prior to the Trump years.
Honestly I think this is a lot of what’s broken American brains. Folks who have lived in their bubbles, telling themselves that America is the globally admired beacon of democracy, and then getting on the internet and finding that not only does much of the world disagree with this, many people in America disagree with it too.
I might be biased, but: as far back as I can remember, America was the place that got its ass kicked in Vietnam, (a) which meant that conscripts who’d broken no laws were dying for no good reason in a war we couldn’t actually win, right around (b) when the president who lied about not being a crook got a full pardon.
Hasn’t that been our reputation for, like, the better part of a century? I kind of thought we were all on the same page about that.
The US is like a boil needing to be lanced.
We knew the dumpf is a prick.
I agree. I’ve said before that Americans are as brain washed as Soviets were, which is why both groups struggle with the totality of the collapse of their nation.
Yeah, from the outside, with some time and distance, America looks like a cargo cult. But instead of building an airfield and expecting food to fall out of the sky, they’re waving flags and shouting “freedom” and expecting that to make democracy magically happen.
And like the Soviet Union, it was built on a radical and unsustainable economic model that is also the cornerstone of its culture. So when the economic model collapses, so does the nation.
However this delusional aspect, I think is growing everywhere; it’s just the US are the vanguard. In the new media landscape, feelings don’t care about your facts, and words speak louder than actions.
Potential hijack about uk politics
For example, here in the UK, we recently had local council elections and our equivalent of MAGA – the Reform party – took almost half of the councils outright and has shared control of the remainder.
I could talk for a long time on why a Reform vote is irrational, but the bullet points are that Farage (the leader), told several massive lies to get the country to vote against its own best interest in Brexit. That the party has campaigned on issues like grooming gangs and fishing rights, and yet doesn’t bother to show up for debates, or even votes on these issues. That it’s still technically a company, and not a party, and IIRC 100% of its MPs have been mired in scandal. That Farage barely appears in his Clacton constituency, let alone do anything for them.
Ok, I’ll stop there.
The point is, asinine, nationalist rhetoric of essentially “Make X Great Again” and blaming everything on foreigners is increasingly a vote-winner in much of the Western world.