One silver lining of the current U.S. regime's behaviour is how it's forcing us to move out of the local minima of over-Americanization that we've been stuck in for too long.
As an American, I'm so glad America is finally crumbling from its position of power. Americans need a wake up call because our insane hubris and stubbornness is responsible for so much of the bad stuff in the world.
I got some (bad?) news for you: Most Americans are either in complete denial over this or genuinely don't care. They don't think the wealth and lifestyles they enjoy have anything to do with the US' status as a global hegemon. Some even think the relationship is inverted, believing that as the world de-Americanizes, Americans will somehow benefit from this.
> Some even think the relationship is inverted, believing that as the world de-Americanizes, Americans will somehow benefit from this.
That may well be true of the working class, who receive nothing from the foreign income multinational corporations earn but face more competition to buy housing from the people who do receive a share, and more competition for jobs from foreigners (both immigration and globalization).
> They don't think the wealth and lifestyles they enjoy have anything to do with the US' status as a global hegemon.
> The people who hold these views are overwhelmingly not members of the working class. They're retirees or Gen-Xers coming off their peak earning years.
That implies young working class people think their lives would be worse if America does not remain a global hegemon.
I'd love to see your sources for that claim. That is not my impression. I have seen little if any support for American hegemony among the young.
It is entirely possible to recognize the things that are good about the US while also seeing the very terrible things. Nothing is perfect and if we tell ourselves it is by criticizing anyone who says otherwise, we are robbing not only the world but ourselves of any opportunity to make it better.
All I see on your timeline regarding us is blind sycophantic behavior. It's not self-loathing or sophomoric to recognize a point of policy or behavior that is not conducive to the wellbeing of global markets and wider well-being. We haven't been behaving in the best interest of the common good, or fellow Americans, nor even private interest for decades now and a little realization of that is just seeing objective reality.
We've had such a closely integrated economy and it's been a win-win for a very long time. Whether it's resources like lumber or manufacturing like Ontario/Michigan, or massive amounts of fuel refinement, we're so closely interconnected that we've needed that ease of cross-border travel for work. A consequence is that our industry hasn't evolved as much as it could have. We're sitting on an enormous amount of natural resources and technical competence that we've been feeding in to American companies forever, because we were reaping sufficient profits.
What the current regime could absolutely do is force us further from that local maxima by throwing a tantrum over TN1 visas.
I work with a lot of Americans so I know they understand deeply: changing careers out of principle is a rare luxury very few can act on. Especially when you depend on your employer for healthcare (though we don't suffer that mistake as much). I wouldn't expect people to voluntarily quit their jobs the same way they are voluntarily stopping U.S. recreational travel in record numbers [1].
I question your sources methodology as, similar to travel habits during the performative COVID border lockdown, Canadians are still heading south en masse over the winter.
Okay that got a hearty laugh. I post a CBC article and you question it, then make a claim while offering no evidence at all.
Quite frankly, I wouldn't be surprised to find that you're just here as an instigator, possibly not even from North America. Or, maybe I just want to hope that it's malice rather than incompetence that governs your behaviour.
That elicited quite the gafaw, I even lost my breath for a bit. I live in a border state filled with commuting Canadians, and every other residence is owned by a Canadian where I vacation at. The travel protest you take so much pride in is a rounding error
Thanks. I probably am. I will never not confuse the two because I imagine getting into a comfortable place and then having to march up the next hill to discover an even comfier place that you can't see from where you are. I also imagine the instability of placing a boulder at the top of a hill and the effort of pushing it up a hill to find a new resting spot.
I'm sure I can invert the sign of something being measured to make my mental model work again :D