[itsdavesanders]

And imagine how our allies feel. If you can’t count on the U.S. for more than about 3 years at a time, then you quickly move away from them and insure you aren’t so tied to them that a foreign election suddenly makes you vulnerable. Which then makes everyone weaker as a whole and easier to pick off.

Which is why U.S. foreign adversaries have been actively sowing chaos for a decade.

[dimitrios1]

I am not buying this argument.

America for better or worse (mostly worse) has a two party system that in practice functions as mostly a uniparty prioritizing defense spending, entitlements, and the economy, with some lip service paid to red meat/blue meat issues to ensure power is maintained. This means you can reliably predict what American policy will be in any given moment for any given president.

Besides, EU member states have had much more iteration on their governments, policies, regulations, and parties. It's not uncommon for a European country to have 7 different parties. And unlike the US, EU's don't hold their constitutions in a such unchanging high regard. Ours is purposefully difficult to change. France, for example, on the other hand, has changed its constitution twenty-five times since circa 1958.

edit: I took out He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named because it seems even here on the board of Very Smart People ™ we can't help ourselves when we see that name and ignore the rest of the point someone tries to make.

[lolinder]

> Arguably, the biggest wrinkle to this was Trump

You say this as though he isn't favored to win the next election and take over the presidency and all its policies in about six months.

Edit in response to the edit: I latched onto this because it's entirely relevant to the rest of your point. Trump is the Republican party today, and his foreign policy dictates the acceptable stances for the majority of Republicans in Congress. His foreign policy is absolutely terrifying to our allies.

I didn't latch on to Trump because he's a big name, I latched on to Trump because you deliberately glossed over him as though he weren't an enormous glaring example of how quickly our foreign policy can (and is likely to!) pivot.

[pessimizer]

I never understand this mentality. They continue to support expanding the power of the executive until it consumes all functions of government, while simultaneously declaring that Trump (and every Republican candidate in every presidential election) is basically Hitler. As if it is inconceivable that the technocrats they relate to will never lose control of government (and legislative agencies.) This, when a wrestling valet Berlusconi-level carnival barker was just elected president eight years ago against the (appointed through a goofy primary) übertechnocrat H. Clinton. That was their best and brightest, and the public was disgusted.

My theory is that liberals were made mentally dull by the Warren court, that it created this unacknowledged model of government within their minds where all actual controversies are low level, and will eventually work their way up to the Supreme Court, who will simply dictate the consensus liberal opinion to be the law.

It's a world where Congress has no other function but to create regulatory agencies to which they appoint their campaign staff, thinktank creatures, friendly professors, lobbyists, and each other's friends and family. To fill in the gaps, the country is otherwise ruled through executive orders, and all resulting injustices from this system are to be straightened out by the Supreme Court. That world is very much gone, and nobody has adjusted because all of their theories on liberal governance come from a period during which this was close enough to true (although gradually less and less after Warren.) It is not now true. We (and liberals) can stop worshiping the members of the Supreme Court now, and simply treat them as smart, connected people writing opinions that we may or may not agree with, instead of some holy chamber of wizened elders.

It's profoundly anti-democratic. It's an exact counterpart to the theocrats on the conservative side, but not grounded in anything but current upper middle-class trends and a belief in Whig history to replace the belief in gods.

If we can't fix Congress, and get them to actually govern, there's no government worth saving. I'm not going to fight for the right of the president to unilaterally declare war, rule by executive order and Supreme Court dictates, or the actual functioning of the country to be delegated to unaccountable regulatory agencies. Doesn't spark joy.

edit: I think the existence of the Senate probably adds to the level of liberal cynicism about democracy. It should really be abolished or directly elected in a way unconnected with the states. We already have a geographically based body in the House. The Senate is clearly a distortion of democracy, like a sensory homunculus for representative government (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortical_homunculus#Representa...)

[rayiner]

This is a home-run comment, particularly this:

> It's a world where Congress has no other function but to create regulatory agencies to which they appoint their campaign staff, thinktank creatures, friendly professors, lobbyists, and each other's friends and family.

And they call anything that takes power away from this unelected shadow government "anti-democratic."

[User23]

2016 was absolutely fascinating because, while it’s possible it was a double fakeout, it really looked like the first shoot in presidential politics in my lifetime. Insofar as there is a script, it sure does look like The Nameless One went off it. It was totally obvious the intent was for a Bush vs Clinton rematch.

[mmcgaha]

So you think Trump was supposed to be a spoiler liker Perot?

[jf22]

Foreign policy is mostly up to the executive branch and is far removed from the decision-making process regarding whether or not the EPA can regulate a new type of deadly plastic.

[refulgentis]

FWIW nothing changed re: presidential power over foreign relations. The judiciary held that the legislature can't empower an agency.

[dangoor]

I don't think our allies felt quite so flung about until Trump came along. Sure, administrations might engage a little differently from one another, but fundamentally they could count on the US for a very long time. Presidents did not, before Trump, throw NATO under the bus, for example.

[barrkel]

Allies were so put out by Bush II that they gave Obama the Nobel peace prize before he did anything.

[datavirtue]

That was a jaw dropper.

[spurgu]

Reminding NATO countries to adhere to the 2% of GDP spending stipulated in the terms of the alliance is "throwing NATO under the bus"? Or did he do something else I'm unaware of?

[llamaimperative]

Did you forget the first impeachment for withholding critical aid from a buffer country between NATO and USSR-hopeful in exchange for them investigating his political rival?

[briandear]

Ukraine has nothing to do with NATO. If Poland were attacked, then there’d be something to discuss. As an American taxpayer, Ukraine is none of my business. Was Ukraine sending troops to help find Bin Laden when the U.S. was attacked? What strategic value does Ukraine have for the U.S.? Very little. It wasn’t like they were letting us put airbases or missile defense systems in their country. If Russia attacked Finland, Ukraine wouldn’t have done anything.

[llamaimperative]

Its strategic value is exactly as described: a buffer state. It gives us months, if not years, of warning and can potentially totally rebuff an aggressive Russian state.

To be confused about this at this point reveals either profound ignorance or extreme motivated reasoning.

[briandear]

Trump was found not guilty in the impeachment trial. Effectively he was “indicted,” but not convicted. So according to the Constitution, he did not do what he was accused of.

[llamaimperative]

lol, that is absolutely not what “not guilty” means.

That’s why it’s “not guilty” or “acquitted” as opposed to “innocent”

[AlexandrB]

I think the point is that, in the eyes of the law, "not guilty" is all that matters. Whether he's "innocent" in some moral or karmic sense is up to God at this point.

[ericmay]

There are things you are not seemingly aware of, to your point.

But while I do agree NATO allies should spend 2% or more on the militaries in a good faith effort, the spending value itself is kind of a dumb metric if for nothing other than they could just spend money and have poorly trained militaries anyway. It’s a rallying point to be angry about by people who didn’t know what NATO even was before Trump started complaining about it.

Going back to the awareness issue, the United States and allies across the world have been working to stop Russian aggression in Ukraine, and potentially elsewhere like the Baltic states or other formerly occupied Soviet Union states. Many of those in leadership in Europe and elsewhere are concerned about Trump because they do not, for good reason, trust him to act faithfully on the commitments that the United States has made in Europe.

Vladimir Putin believes that the United States and its influence should be degraded in Europe and that European states should instead be under the influence of Russia. This is a net negative for the United States obviously, and the concern here is that Donald Trump seems to either agree or find himself apathetic toward this because he doesn’t seem to understand that he’s being played for a fool to the detriment of the United States and European partners.

To try and paint a more clear picture, if the United States were to fail to honor its security commitments to Europe, it calls into question the ability of the United States to honor any strategic commitment. This pulls not just European countries closer to Russian influence, but causes the United States a massive headache in the Pacific as South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan (never mind the Philippines or others in South East Asia) stand to be sucked into the sphere of Chinese influence which means that the United States loses military, diplomatic, and economic capabilities and leverage.

You might say “so what?” and to that I’d say you’ll find our country worse off economically, higher prices for many goods, and whatever meager international influence exists today to cooperate on global or regional issues will be significantly degraded.

[Pet_Ant]

Bush going unilaterrally to war with Iraq (albeit with his lapdog Blair) really didn't do US foreign relations any favors either. It's not just Trump, it's a long-running theme. Trump just accelerated the trend.