Apologizing for making mistakes is not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of strength and maturity, and gives hopes for continued Relations, because it means that you are listenting to criticism, willing to recognize that you may have made mistakes, and willing to then rectificy and learn from them.
Being unable to accept any form of criticsm; being convinced that you never make any mistakes (and thus don’t Need to apologize); being convinced that disrespect and critisicm are the same - those are signs of somebody with the emotional and mental maturity of a toddler (with apologies to real toddlers who can learn).
The rest of the world doesn’t think that, and hasn’t thought for some decades, starting with the Bushes.
Yes, the US is strong economically, yes, the US has a Military (and short temper). That makes it powerful, esp. compared to poor countries. It means other countries don’t want to piss the US off, and want to try to get them onboard for international treaties because it works better if everybody cooperates.
But any Moral leadership the US might have had has Long been lost; and the power Balance is shifting. The more tantrums the US throws, the more tiresome it gets to deal with it, and countries Keep looking for alternatives to dealing with the toddler.
Going Isolationist will only hasten this.
Are you aware that many countries are laughing at us, now that Trump is in office? I have a friend who lives in New Zealand. We are ridiculed there. And they LIKE us. We’re a laughingstock. We have no reputation anymore, save as a source of humor.
The most telling part of the Paris Accords was, to me, the fact that fucking Kim Jong Un called Trump out for pulling out of it. Kim Jong Un called it a stupid move that reeks of egotism.
Think about that. Kim Jong Un thinks that Trump is going too far with this. And Un is crazier than a shithouse rat. When the town psycho says, “I may be crazy, but I ain’t that crazy,” it’s time to re-examine your worldview.
I have a friend in the UK who is big into Bimbofication - a fetish lifestyle focused on dumbing down one’s intellect, subservience, and looking as pretty as possible, a subset of which she applies being a disconnect from world news. She knew virtually nothing about the election that literally just happened there. And even she knows everyone is laughing/crying at Trump.
The point being this is a person who is dumb on purpose, who explicitly avoids topics like these, and she still has figured out that Trump is a global laughingstock.
The hard right in the USA is so funny in their weird projection of their own opinions on to the rest of the world.
outside of your echoes chambers, no one saw Obama like this outside of the USA.
the rest of the West does not agree.
it is more like the angry drunk in the corner of the bar who thinks he is the Most Import Person of the bar but is peeing himself as he makes the loud proclamations on how important he is, and the rest of the bar is looking on in with the sense of horror or amusement.
thank god there is Merkel and Macron to show a center politics outside of this horrible cartoon your elections created.
Very true. Trump is the kid loudly complaining that everyone is being mean to him, taking his ball and going home on the assumption that they’ll all be sorry now that they can’t play their game, not realizing that they all just shrugged it off and are finding other games to play.
We have literally reached the point where the public statements of the POTUS are ignored by the rest of the world - not because the rest of the world necessarily disagrees with them, but because the person making them has demonstrated an utter lack of consistency in what he’s saying, an utter lack of comprehension of all significant issues, and both an inability and an unwillingness to engage constructively with even our closest traditional allies. That’s not “making America great”. That’s “making America irrelevant”. And an America that no one needs has no influence and decreasing economic clout.
Not sure what any of this has to do with Clinton or Benghazi, though.
Not hardly. His public statements on the Paris Agreement were news all around the world. It got comments by many world leaders, was the lead story in a bunch of media outlets, etc. That’s the opposite of “ignored”.
Ditto with NATO. The media and world leaders hang on his every word on the subject, turning them over and analyzing them again and again. That’s not being “ignored”.
They may disagree with / not like what he says, but they’re not ‘ignoring’ it.
No, you’re quite right. They’re listening, and they’re all saying “What the hell is wrong with this guy?”. And then they’re all going off to have adult conversations without him about things like trade and defense and intelligence sharing.
