This is my point, though. Without the US, the global economy still runs. Runs differently, but it still goes. The US military helps it run the way we would prefer - not a requirement for it to function.
There’s no new Dark Ages that comes if the US collapses. The idea that the global economy would collapse or that there are centuries or even decades without some semblance of global stability is American exceptionalism. It would be terrible for us personally but the rest of the world figures things out, maybe has a bad year or two, and then carries on.
And we need to get over ourselves. There are spoken and unspoken fears about the loss of global American hegemony that are a significant part of much of our politics of the last several years. There’s no need to invoke some spectre of global collapse about that. As the saying goes, it’s about the (US) economy, stupid.
Exactly, the British Empire collapsed and the world kept on turning. The American empire is collapsing and the world keeps on turning, albeit at much higher temperatures due to climate change. As America collapses, a new world order will emerge, it will probably be a multi-polar world with no clear hegemon, but somehow the foreigners will figure it out without America and a lot of them will say good fucking riddance.
This also happened under Trump last time - he made it patently clear that our allies and trading partners could not rely on the US, and so they began the process of removing the need to rely on the US. Which is good for them, but not so good for all the businesses (especially soybean and other farmers) who have now lost out on some big markets like China for the longer term.
During his last term, I happened to be friends with someone whose spouse was very high up in the embassy of an ally. This country had always used the United States as an interlocutor in its negotiations with China because their country and china have a rocky history. As a result, the US got a little piece of every trade deal, they were in the negotiations.
During Trump, this country and China started working directly and one of the avenues for US trade died. This happened a lot and it’s the kind of thing you just can’t get a Trump voter to understand. America’s real power was soft power not bluster.
Trump basically forced everyone in the state department to retire and we lost an incredible amount of institutional knowledge and soft power. Seriously, we built it up over decades and lost most of it within a year. We lost our credibility with our allies and the rest of the world in general. The damage was probably already never going to be undone with just the one Trump presidency, but to choose to do it all over again? No one in the world will ever trust us again.
The election has taught me something about my fellow Americans that I did not want to know. I’ve never been very sociable but now I can’t even walk past someone on the street without thinking “Did you vote for him?” To sit down with my Trumpy cousins for a Thanksgiving dinner is just impossible. There is nothing to be thankful for.
As Trae Crowder (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6bBXN3I-2g) says “A lot of people are going to die” and suffering will increase for anyone who isn’t very wealthy. And for what purpose? Just so already insanely rich, powerful and corrupt people can become even more so.
I haven’t been religious for decades now, but I do remember the most poignant line in the New Testament, Luke 23:34: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do"
I’m going to go cry through CABARET now, since we are the “Germans.”
I have said why this would happen in many posts. I won’t bother to say what the Democrats can do because now it is too late, there is nothing they can do now.
The country is over. There will never be a fair election again in my lifetime.
I post on a few sites pertaining to railroads since I’m a locomotive engineer and a member of the BLET. Which is another bunch of idiots that went 60% for Trump the last I looked. This whole country is full of morons that just voted against themselves. In my union it’s because of the gas prices they say, while they are all driving giant trucks just to commute to work
They are all still talking about railroad regulations and the future of Amtrak and commuter rail like everything is normal. They really don’t understand that Project 2025 is going to cut all of the budget for any rail in favor of Musk, who hates rail and is going to be in charge of the cutting.
And they voted for it. That is how misguided this country is.
We are fucked, the country as we’ve known it is over. I’m not going to flee yet, but I can get into Canada when the shit really hits the fan which I expect to be around summer next year.
