I think this is right. We’ve been losing it for decades, ever since the Right made it a priority to undermine education in this country. We’re now left with a nation full of dolts who don’t understand their own obligations under our system of government – including being educated well enough to think critically through a tidal wave of bullshit and propaganda. So we’re sunk, no foreign or domestic election interference required beyond the extremely effective propaganda outlets.
Foreign foes haven’t even gotten much involved yet. They’re lying in the weeds, waiting for Democrats to get back in power. Never interfere with your enemy when they are destroying themselves from within. Better to wait until someone tries to fix it, then get involved and blame the fixers.
We’re done as a world power. Now it’s a question of just how bad it will get as we sink into irrelevance.
There’s lots of things Trump has done that another President can’t undo with a simple XO or a new law. I was just thinking of those things that can be undone that way. Those are things that will keep the next President in the spotlight.
I suppose that must be true, because Biden’s was a consequential presidency. Our country seems most focused on that debate and all that followed, and his impressive accomplishments somehow are overlooked.
The 48th or whenever D President will be in the spotlight if and only if they make a point of being in the spotlight.
Biden spent his entire presidency undoing trump 1. And all of it mostly behind the scenes while the legit mainstream news talked of other things. And while the RW propaganda machine spewed a continuous fountain of falsity about everything Biden did or didn’t do.
Only after the Left can out-firehose the Right’s propaganda can they begin to turn the ship of state. Until that sainted day the helm will remain hard-over to the Right.
Furure presidents must behave as media stars just to drown out the counternarratives of their enemies.
Disagree. We may be done as the world power–that position has been ceded to China, IMO.
But as long as we remain one of the richest nations on the planet, we’ll still hold a strong position. We may have lost relevance both politically and militarily, but economically we are still one of the strongest countries on earth.
That being said, it will take some major internal changes for us to remain that way over the next generation.
We are trying to kill our economic might, too. Tariffs immediately reduce our importance as a trading partner. And a lot of our economic development was driven by our universities, which used to attract the best students from around the world. And by our once-great program of government-funded research. Without those engines powering innovation, i expect more future economic growth to originate in other places.
Our place economically won’t crumble overnight (i hope!) but i expect we’ll be in decline for the rest of my lifetime, and eventually become another has-been, like the UK or the Holy Roman Empire before that.
We’re definitely done as the world power and the position is ceded to China, I agree.
Much of our wealth has already been siphoned off by the uber-wealthy in this country as well as foreign investors. They don’t even try to hide it anymore, because they’re confident they can stifle any efforts to rein them in. And I don’t believe the major internal changes required over the next generation are possible, not when the average citizen can’t even see through the rather obvious bullshit propaganda that got us to this point in the first place.
That said, I admire your optimism, and I hope you’re right.
A country with the resources and size of the U.S. will be always a world power, if not necessarily of the first order.
Of course if a balkanization process start even that could be lost.
I don’t think you’re fully considering what happens to nations that tolerate a lot of corruption, cede their soft power, and dismantle their educational institutions. We are on track to be a rich nation rather than a wealthy nation, and it just dissipates from there.
This is recency bias. For most of our history, just looking since independence, most Americans were not equal under the law. Many Americans never had it.
Yes, it is bad now. But it had been bad for a long time, and it got better for a while before it got worse again.
I will never get over hating the legacy media for failing to point this out. Utterly, utterly failing. Instead they spout some combination of sane-washing words that add up to ‘Trump sincerely believes tariffs will HELP the US economy.’
The truth has been obvious for many months. Trump sincerely believes that tariffs will lead to a line of business and government heads at the Oval Office, bearing flattery and bribes (as they request exemptions from the tariffs).
It is so clear. Yet no one with a national platform is saying it.
I can’t think of anyplace that has done all of this at once. China’s Great Leap Forward would be an example of dismantling education (in a way); Mexico and Brazil would be examples of nations whose potential has been dampened by corruption. US sees steepest decline out of all 193 nation brands in Global Soft Power Index 2026 | Press Release | Brand Finance talks a bit about the components of soft power: it’s 6 months old, but I think again the reasons a decline in such power is unhelpful to a nation are self-evident.
My point was that we’re not just wealthy because we have assets, but because we’ve traditionally ensured optimal conditions for making our wealth grow. Without those conditions, we’ll either grow more slowly or shrink.
I will be delighted to watch whoever it is push the button on the detonator for various projects starting with the concrete rose garden and Trumpified East Wing.
Neil deGrasse Tyson had a 20 minute video on that a couple days ago. He said when he was going to college bright people in countries that did not have strong educational opportunities would come here, get their degrees, and stay. He admits he did not consider how that negatively impacted the countries they were coming from.
He went on to say back in his day, Chinese students would come, get educated, and stay in the US. A generation later they’d get educated then return to China. Now they are getting their degrees in China and not leaving.
And this is emphasized by the whole crowd of them sitting through trump’s b.s. remarks at the dinner, insulting them, tearing them down-- they should have gotten up and walked out! If even half of them had walked out, that would have been a statement of some kind.
I didn’t watch because I knew I’d be hoping for that----in vain. The career-preserving impulse far outweighs any impulse toward Expressing a Decent Level of Disgust.
I’m sure they’ve all rationalized their applause for him, their remaining seated, their shaking his hand, etc. I’m sure they’re all pleased with themselves.
I’d be okay with Zohran Mamdani level of news. I know rather a lot, probably too much, about what he’s doing, even though he’s just a Mayor and for a town I have never been to.
It’s hardly a surprise that the US would consider Zaphod Beeblebrox as being a suitable Presidential candidate.
Just that, along with the less harmful elements of attention, outrage and fraud, the US Constitution gives 45/47 keys to the executive washroom, the situation room and, as now learned, largely unconstrained actual power.
“Yes! America’s wealth, power, and standing in the world are in a precipitous decline. We must elect more Republicans to stop this slide into irrelevence.”