[apercu]

>At what point can we say that the US truly has fallen from being the leader of the world?

When a ridiculous, obtuse con man was elected President in 2016 and his party lost whatever little desire they had left for a functional government?

Of course, I would argue it was when "W" was elected for the second term.

[mnky9800n]

To be fair to W, some part of the world followed america into iraq. it wasn't like he did it all by himself. i think if these countries had not supported this war, there would have been a reckoning for the usa much sooner than trump. in much the same way that people now question, what could we have done differently with how we treated russia prior to 2014 when they started a war with ukraine, the world should ask itself how it should have responded differently to joining america in a war in iraq in 2003. but so far, i don't hear anyone having these conversations about how did the world allow america to arrive to now.

[giraffe_lady]

Yeah everyone's reckoning needs to go back to bush and sept 11 2001 frankly. The consolidation of executive power, the labeling of "enemies" and "terrorists" as inherently applying to some groups which therefore do not have the same rights of due process, the torture prisons it didn't quite all start there but it was a massive turning point.

The way the wars fed back into american policing, the justifications for the drone assassination program (but not here! not quite yet). A lot of what we're seeing now is the natural endpoint of processes that were started under bush "in reaction" to sept 11 and expanded under obama and later biden.

The main stream of the republican party has been, first quietly but then openly, fantasizing about authoritarian control for 25 years. And through that whole time the democrats have made it one of their biggest priorities to help them construct the apparatus needed to accomplish it. And our allies have been eager to get their hands on these same powers & systems to apply to their own citizens.

Honestly looking back the biggest mistake I made was that I thought the things that are happening now would happen in bush's second term. When they didn't I took seriously the possibility that I was wrong about the bloodlust of the american right, sincerely spent many years convincing myself they were in working in good faith towards what they understood was best for the world. I had it right the first time. For there is no truth in their mouths; their hearts are destruction; their throats are open graves.

[monkeyfun]

I think we were almost all lulled into a sense of "huh, I guess I slightly misread them..." fueled by the failures to capitalize, the little losses of momentum that almost gave the hopeful impression that maybe people had finally gotten over the bloodlust and the worst of the power grabs.

By the way, the ending of what you wrote is beautiful.

[mnky9800n]

That's because it was written by the author of Psalms. haha.

[giraffe_lady]

It's from psalms. We're not the first to go through this.

[ZeroGravitas]

The danger of this both-sides approach is that Trump used it as cover and painted himself as anti-war (despite his recorded comments at the time) compared to both Democrats and Republicans before pivoting to talking about invading Canada and turning Gaza into a Trump Hotel resort.

[apercu]

Agreed, both side-ism is ridiculous. One party has pursued their personal wealth and power, concentrations of wealth for the elite class, and globalism and the other side has done the same, but also embraces fascism and theocracy as core tenants.

The former is the only choice, because democracy is still able to maintain a slight pulse under their "leadership".

[giraffe_lady]

I was trying to avoid both-sidesing here, sorry I failed. I only briefly mentioned democrats to point out that while the republicans were openly planning all along to implement an authoritarian regime, the democrats broadly supported building out the means to do it. The democrats have always considered their right flank colleagues and their left flank adversaries, have put a lot of energy into ignoring the fascist dreams of the republicans: this was the predicted outcome.

[apercu]

The capital class has been squeezing people for years (and it's gotten worse since covid made the serfs feel empowered by actually letting them breathe for a moment), so I don't know that people have time and space to _think_ about these things.

Social media has joined religion as the "opiate of the masses".

[ctack]

How did covid allow a respite?

[cactacea]

> since covid made the serfs feel empowered by actually letting them breathe for a moment

...the irony

[bgwalter]

This link contains a map of the coalition of the willing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_of_the_willing_(Iraq...

You see Eastern European countries who were grateful for NATO expansion or wanted future NATO membership. You see the UK and Australia which always follow the US. There are a couple of wildcards line Spain, Denmark and Italy.

Germany and France are absent and there was huge criticism of the Iraq invasion at the time.

In general, the whole EU was much more critical of the US in the 2000s than it was in 2020-2024. The current criticism is mostly Trump related and not fundamental. To summarize, in the 2000s the EU had an independent foreign policy which is now completely gone. How that evolved exactly is interesting. Has the US played off the Eastern European countries against heretics like France and Germany to achieve this goal? Is it a symptom of the international elites moving in lockstep?

[fabian2k]

The EU doesn't make foreign policy, that lies with the member states. And why do you think those don't have an independent foreign policy?

The US hasn't started an illegal war recently, which could explain why there is much less criticism of US foreign policy compared to the time of the Iraq war.

[apercu]

>US hasn't started an illegal war

The US hasn't declared a war since WWII since executive privilege allows the President to pursue war without Congress declaring war. Does that mean that every time we take military action (which the US is doing daily, right now) we're pursuing what the founders of the country would (rightfully?) classify as an illegal war?

(I didn't take any political science, and I'm not really informed on constitutional law so I could have this partially wrong)

[vonmoltke]

> The US hasn't declared a war since WWII since executive privilege allows the President to pursue war without Congress declaring war.

That's not correct. Congress no longer passes declarations of war, it passes authorizations of the use of military force (AUMF). The change was made starting in Vietnam because a declaration of war can only target a recognized sovereign nation, while an AUMF can target any state or non-state actor. The President is still heavily restricted from employing the US military without an AUMF.

I think the confusion about this stems from Congress having passed several, a couple of which are pretty broad, and never repealing them. This has allowed various Presidents to use one of the active AUMFs to justify actions, but for those who don't know or pay attention to the details it seems like the President is going around Congress.

[Dylan16807]

> This has allowed various Presidents to use one of the active AUMFs to justify actions, but for those who don't know or pay attention to the details it seems like the President is going around Congress.

That is going around congress. It's not breaking the letter of the law, but authorizations not having a time limit is a mistake, and the involvement of congress is supposed to be needed for that kind of action.

[t0lo]

There's only less criticism if you live in a post trump columbia bubble ;)

[insane_dreamer]

Yeah I thought W 2.0 was bad. But this is even worse (at least for Americans).

[j_timberlake]

Don't just blame the reds here. The blues let their primaries get rigged 3 presidential elections in a row, and they still don't talk about it. I think most haven't even noticed, probably because their chosen information sources (social media and late-night comedians?) haven't told them.