Nope, turns out that the American Empire is being dismantled by something else entirely. A subset of the populace that feels jealous of those with more and scared of social change, reacting to try to hurt their fellow country men? A megalomaniac leader who is somehow completely controlled by Russia? It's hard to get the full picture.
Every single bit of the right is projection. "The left hates America" = we (the right) will dismantle and destroy this 250 year experiment
But yes, projection. Like free speech, playing with World War III, etc.
Is this really the case in 2025? There's been more than a few self-described leftists/liberals writing about attending Trump rallies over the years and this not being their experience. One example: https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2018/09/what-i-learned...
The damage is already irreversible on any near to medium term timescale - how bad it gets on an absolute scale is the only thing left to speculate.
Maybe on economic issues. On certain social issues it's definitely not "centrist" and arguably further left than other developed countries.
Trump is the result of anti-system vote by people who were ignored for decades by both parties.
Trump obviously won't solve their problems. Inequality won't decrease. Healthcare won't become more accessible. Workers' rights won't be fixed. Homes won't get more affordable. Inflation won't drop.
So - even when Trump disgraces himself completely - these disappointed voters will just vote for another anti-system con-man.
Trump's core voters desperately need Sanders to win. But they will vote Trumps and get fucked over time and time again.
This is how democracy dies. People distrusting the system so hard they destroy it.
The most frustrating part is that Trump is sabotaging the US by enacting the pseudo-anti war policies that the republican party has been vilifying for decades.
Leftist now refers to that. The leftist of like over a decade ago. That leftist is now more centrist.
If the left was strong in the US there would have been a contest between Hillary Clinton and an actual left wing contender like Bernie Sanders. Even people like AOC would make a decent centrist candidate in Europe.
That’s the kind of persecution they are talking, and angry, about. If that incident had not happened, Trump may never have been elected.
How about you check out the rest of the western world, where each single democracy had their own pickings with communist tendecies. And most of them handled that in the common sense way of giving workers basic protections and ensuring their share of wealth so they don't feel the need to go to the communists.
Worked pretty well for most European countries.
Although, once communism was gone, the ideology of neolibral economic thinking took over and thus all benefits to workers were seen as unnecessary expenses. Leading to the current rise in nationalism and fascism nearly everywhere.
It is pretty simple: If you want all people to carry a system, all people need to feel like they profit from its existence. Once the mask slips and people realize they aren't profiting, they will be unwilling to hold up their side of the social contract. This is what is happening right now.
The two sort-of examples in Western history I can think of are Spain after Franco, and the UK in the 1930s. In Spain a monarch's left-shift was perhaps the deciding and surprising variable, and in the UK it was a powerful civil rights movement.
The US has neither, so I don't know what to expect. The two-party system also makes it very hard to bootstrap meaningful change, since both parties tend to try and chase the Overton window, but only one is really pushing to move it right now.
Most leftist political parties in Scandinavia and the Baltics manages to be be both pro-Palestine, pro-NATO, and pro-Ukraine. They don't seen any contradiction because there aren't any.
Why do some American leftists follow this 3rd worldist neo-Maoist thinking that Western civilization needs to burn down before you can get free healthcare and free college?
Let's be fair, you said "some". We also have some of those in Europe.
But to answer, with a guess: perhaps the difference is that in European countries there are way more political parties. But I'm not an expert on American politics so feel free to say this is BS.
The reason why they feel overrepresented in the US is simply because a real, progressive leftist political project is essentially impossible, so the most extreme of the extremes are proportional more audible.
This is precisely how half of the US media characterized Barack Obama, who pioneered an even more impersonal style of American imperialism with drone warfare in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Syria.
You are saying this as a hypothetical that never happened, right?
I assume he was trying to allude to Obama, which at least in the recent decades came the closest to that in terms of media image, but the claim that there has been an anti-imperialist president of the US (on any relevant timescale) doesn't hold up to any scrutiny.
The combined nominal GDP of California, Oregon, and Washington is approximately $4.1 trillion. If these three states were considered a single entity, their combined GDP would rank as the world’s fifth-largest economy.
To me it seems to be a bit like what the Böckenförde-Diktum points to, which is: "The liberal secularized state lives by prerequisites which it cannot guarantee itself."
Basically the modern capitalist secularized society is so void of deep human values and only emphasizing legality and profitability that it brings out a certain kind of elite. An elite which is decoupled from all real human connection and value leading to a thinking like this: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/05/politics/elon-musk-rogan-...
Well and now we have to cope with this. But until we understand that these elites are no accident but logical results of the system we foster, nothing will really change. Or better: until we accept that the reductionist approach to human society and value that this system is based on is flawed and act accordingly everything we do is basically just flex-taping it and waiting for the next escalation.
What you're saying here is "we're better than everyone else and everyone else disagrees with my positions because they envy how awesome we are".
It's really quite difficult to not be demeaning because the core of the problem is bigotry across the political spectrum, making significant unequal decisions about individuals based on shallow characteristics (appearance, ethnicity, gender expression). And you can't really have a discussion about it because nobody will accept that making decisions based on a person's race/gender/... is discrimination regardless of which group gets the positive benefit. And you can't really have a discussion about it because "yeah but what the other guys did or are still doing is way worse".
Bottom line: to succeed in the 21st century you have to weigh pros and cons and live in the grey area. This is an optimization problem not a battle between good and evil. Viewing the world exclusively through the "good vs evil" lens is going to lead to a civilization threatening war.
Now what American would ever think that?...
For years we have been listening "fuck your feelings" coming from the right.
Hillary’s “deplorables” thing was maybe the most prominent example. Her point was that democrats who think that all republicans are committed to evil positions we can’t compromise with or entertain isn’t correct! Only about a third of them are, according to the data. The rest could maybe be reached or worked-with!
This is true shit you say in blunt terms in a strategy meeting or nerdy discussion groups, not in public, because poli sci is just full of demeaning stuff about voters, because they are stupid and often evil and if you study democracy soberly that’s what you’ll find, and you have to grapple with it to act effectively, but you don’t say it in public because most voters also don’t know that stuff because they’re not poli sci nerds. She, and/or her speech writers, had been around strategists and wonks too much.
[edit] on the other hand, one wonders how much this really matters when Trump wins while saying worse things about all kinds of folks. The way the media approach and characterize and amplify (or don’t) the messages may matter more than what’s actually said.
They voted for Trump, twice. They love it when politicians are insulting.
I knew that democracy was fragile and that losing it could happen to all of us - except the US. somehow I believed their separation of powers would always work, that the pretence of freedoms would always be in the interest of Western oligarchs.
it's been a tough 6 weeks for me.
The difference now is that the plutocrats are high on their own supply.
There used to be an understanding that if they didn't give something back they'd end up hanging from a lamp post.
Now they've decided the little people and their silly little planet are disposable, and AI, magic robots, and a cult of narcissism will replace them.
Absolutely lunacy, with consequences as expected.
It's part honest desire to do something good with the position history has afforded the empire, and part self-serving rationalization, depending on who is doing the talking.
The underlying goal of horseshoe theory is not to create a meaningful comparison between two positions, but an underhanded attempt to demoralise those on the left, and to swing undecided centrists by convincing them that the left isn't really offering the progress that it claims. I think it's also used as a shield by people who are right-leaning but don't want to admit it out loud.
...unless you can find a single good example of a notable left-wing proponent suggesting that horseshoe theory is valid, actually.
But somehow – SOMEHOW – the same people that ask for nuance in everything act as if it would be even remotely plausible that the two most polar opposites of political theory would be basically the same for all important intents and purposes if thought to an end.
It is simply mind-blowing. People looking at something, seeing it is complex, stopping their thinking and just somehow feeling their way to the most empty assessment ever: "probably the same consequencesif you think it to the end". Without even having begun to think their way through it!
But I get it: thinking is nice as long as it is a purely intellectual endeavor but not if any personal moral responsibility is concerned. You might be morally obligated to draw consequences in your behavior – Heaven Forbid!
Yeah, about that... Analysis by Grok says "75-85% likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset"
https://x.com/i/grok/share/WQepvCpIJl2EJ0F7tHNbLAhm6
Can you imagine if this were true?
I cannot find an objective lens that enable one to view the current administration's policy changes as beneficial to the US and it's interests. This forces ones to explore why US leadership would aggressively espouse policy changes that are almost universally assessed to be damaging to us and our interests.
Is Europe finally stumping up and spending more defence? Yes. But they are also much less likely to buy US made systems in the future, and they will ask for more in exchange for intelligence sharing, or maintaining US military infrastructure domestically. The risk of nuclear proliferation is higher than it would have been without the shift.
Trump even refused to call Russia a dictatorship, not that that is material to policy decisions, but it provides fodder to those who are skeptical of Trump's policy goals and objectives.
In the short term, Russia benefits.
Did you read the evidence Grok gave, at least? Lots of citations in there.
Playing nice with foreign empires, economic protectionism, domestic military action, an "all or nothing" attitude towards foreign wars, taking chunks of our neighbors back yards, etc.
This isn't new at all. It's exactly what FDR had to overcome to build the American Empire.
At the end of the day, the problem isn't really Trump. The American Empire isn't going to end because its only exporting $300B of military might to the world instead of $600B, when no one else on the planet is scratching $50B (I made these numbers up as an illustration).
It might end because it seems like the media landscape has entirely striated the US population into two groups: One group who genuinely and deeply believes that these actions are necessary for the continuity of the US way of life, and another group who genuinely and deeply believes that these actions will destroy the US way of life. No one makes any good faith effort to understand the other side; even my suggestion that this division is the real threat will get downvoted by HackerNews' overwhelmingly leftist bubble. American political discourse is now dominated by people who cannot allow even a single imperfection in their coat of armor, Trump cannot possibly be wrong about anything, his supporters cannot admit they might not have known the implications of what they voted for, the left cannot possibly be wrong about any of their criticism of him, we're screaming past each other.
Interrogate your inner thought process right now; were you thinking "What side is this person on?"
Its so difficult to get the full picture of understanding of the other side. Trump is rich, egotistical, and doesn't listen to the counsel of others; but Russia is controlling him? Trump wants to reduce the federal debt levels of the United States; but is hellbent on spending anything to deport economically productive illegal immigrants? Trump is silencing the media and kicking them out of the white house; while streaming more than Pokimane, direct from the Oval Office, just rambling for hours a day? Trump supporters were hoodwinked and lied to; yet more than any President america has had for decades, Trump is doing exactly, to the letter, what he said he'd do on the campaign trail; its just that the left didn't believe him back then, because we're so used to Presidents that do nothing. America's children have the worst test scores in the G20, and cost the most to educate; we should continue what we're currently doing? America's healthcare outcomes are among the worst in the G20, and most expensive; we should continue the path we're currently walking?
We're in a crisis of understanding right now. We need more moderates. We need people who understand both sides of the coin, and can have a reasonable conversation about why the past 20 years hasn't worked for most Americans, and also why Trump's policies also won't fix things. My fear, however, is that we won't get that in 2028; instead we're just going to move into our camps further, with a leftist version of Trump v JD Vance, and we'll dig further down the hole of two sides that need each other to solve the problems we face, but refuse to work with one-another.
I do and have.
Too many of their issues are simply made-up for me to get much traction, though. You see one outrageous thing after another and go “omg if that’s true it does seem pretty bad!” and then it’s almost always not true when you look into it. You can do this all day long with Fox News, let alone even nuttier sources.
The latest one for me was a discussion about the Olympic boxer from Algeria. Apparently it was proven through leaked medical records that she does, in fact, have XY chromosomes.
I did some digging. 99.999% of the articles covering this are just circular references to each other celebrating their moral victory. Finally I found the original source which was an online-only French newspaper that as best I could tell publishes like three articles a year from random guest contributors.
Reading the “leaked report”, the only evidence are screenshots of photocopies of… what literally just seems to be a textbook explaining the supposed condition she has. Not regarding her specifically. Literally just a textbook description of the condition.
There are no confirming documents. Nothing with her name on it. Nothing with an actual lab result. Nothing but a random Internet personality pseudonymously claiming that they somehow, out of all the other possible news outlets on earth, received leaked copies of her medical report. And zero receipts.
By all means, read for yourself and determine if this is a credible source: https://lecorrespondant.net/imane-khelif-ni-ovaires-ni-uteru...
Every. Single. Time. that I dive into actual claims from the conservative outrage machine, there is nothing there. This specific topic has the right running victory laps, reposting one another as their primary sources. Nobody has bothered to look if it was actually based on anything real.
Example 1: We sent hundreds of billions to Ukraine, while North Carolina and Florida flooded and people lost their homes. This is a direct talking point Trump has used; maybe we should have spent that money on the homefront. Well: We spent billions on disaster relief for these affected areas, there were reports from Governors that they were getting everything they could meaningfully deploy, and moreover it doesn't seem likely to me that the money we spent on Ukraine came from some funding source that incurred that direct trade-off. The DoD isn't getting a budget increase equal to the amount spent. It was money already allocated.
Example 2: Illegal immigration is raising the crime rate. Well, its not an incorrect statement; Trump has literally deployed this "technically correct" argument that every illegal immigrant is committing a crime by entering the country illegally, and thus it raises the crime rate. Then, they talk more about the homicides and "eating the cats and dogs", and it should be obvious to anyone that: Everyone commits crime. Illegals are no different. Are they committing crime at a rate higher than citizens? I doubt it. Sure, slowing down the rate its happening has reasonably-majority agreement among Americans; but removing those already here instead of finding a path to getting them work authorization benefits no-one.
But remember: Republicans are a Vibes party, and there is something real to the Vibes they run on. These vibes should, in my view, be a mostly-bipartisan issue. Heck, its things I've seen leftists rightly complain about many times: American education sucks, American healthcare sucks, American health sucks, no one can afford a home, unemployment is growing, tons of jobs are getting shipped overseas, or supplanted by AI, what is going on?
The way I've seen it: The Republicans are a party that are quick to admit that there is a problem, but they have all the wrong solutions to it. The Democrats, on the other hand, won't admit there's a problem beyond abstract generalities in a campaign speech, and don't offer any solutions anyway.
Where information input before the Internet might have been: 20% newspapers, 50% face-to-face (at the bar, church, work), 10% radio, 20% TV, now it's more like 80% Internet, 10% TV, 10% face-to-face. And it seems to make it a lot easier to grow hateful without the human element.
Doing it like it just did with basically no notice is a stabbing in the back to former allies of the US. And Republicans are also not saying much.
That behavior should and very likely will not be forgotten by Europe.
The next phase that makes sense is an iron curtain between 4 blocks (US, Europe, Russia, China). Like during the Cold War, it is the approach that will minimize the risk of war.
The savings from DOGE ( if there will be any) will pass on to rich people, not to the average American voter.
"I thought he was going to hurt those other people, not me."
Well. About that.
The problem isn't even left vs right. It's a media system that has parted company with reality and deliberately promoted lies and rage bait for clicks and distraction.
It's a huge machine. It's not just Fox, it's the entire network of neoliberal, now neofascist media outlets - from think tanks and "serious journalists", to bot farms and weaponised social media that promotes selected views and deboosts others, to podcasts, influencers, megachurches, mainstream econ schools, MBAs, startups... all promoting the same dysfunctional reality-denying neoliberal supremacist views under various guises.
Id be curious to see the data if there are any articles or polls that show a large amount of Trump voters regretting their pick. Thanks.
I think your over all point is healthy but you really need to reexamine this assumption. Take a look at /active and see how often topics critical of Trump, Musk, Thiel, Yarvin, etc. flagged.
They even say this - Rubio said that we do not live in a unipolar world any more - a comment which attracted weirdly little notice.
Biden's approach assumed a unipolar world which did not exist. That's why the Ukraine war, from the American imperialist perspective, backfired.
The achilles heel of the American empire was, ironically, always profit and greed. If there is one thing that could be used to persuade America to let its industry rot it is profit and its industrial malaise is largely responsible for the ever-more-obvious decline in hard military power.
Sounds like a destruction. The administration is abandoning both the US soft power and its abilities to project through allied countries.
The failure in Georgia to push back on the "pro Russian law" (a law similar to one the US has which required all foreign propaganda to be clearly labeled) was probably seen as a watershed moment that it was about time to hit the reset button on that stuff. That one didnt just fail it backfired.
No US military bases have been closed though, have they?
Incorrect, Biden treated China as a rival power and pursued an industrial policy based on this view.
If China started doing something similar in North America the US would probably invade that country almost instantly (e.g. like it almost did to Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis).
Even Donald Trump now admits that stalling NATO expansion and not treating Russian security concerns with utter contempt could have prevented this.
The good news - form my perspective - is that the GROWTH in the percentage of the workforce living off pensions is slowing dramatically and is now under REAL growth, which means working folks might feel like life is getting better again.
The reason people have complained that life hasn't gotten better for workers over the last 20 years is because nearly all growth has gone to more people being retired and the 0.1%.
If you keep the same growth, but the number of people retiring slows, there's a little more wiggle room with the pie.
What is your bill when an ambulance brings you in? When you have a legal problem at your workplace? What will be your pension? How is the mass transit system? What do you pay for child care, how is your school, how safe is your neighborhood, how do the number of murders in your area compare?
We’ve since had two major rounds of tax cuts by republicans, so a balanced budget isn’t feasible even in booms and when we’re not deficit spending on two stupid wars. And now we’ve got all the interest on the debt from those tax cuts and wars to worry about.
If only anyone could have predicted this. Oh wait, everyone who knew anything about taxation policy did.
Neither can France, which redistributes over 50 per cent of its GDP.
The hunger for public monies will eventually outrun any feasible taxation system.
How do I know? Because my parents earning ~1000 USD per month each living in Poland have higher standard of living than most Americans. Despite paying ~30% taxes.
You have to add up what the taxes pay for in the calculation. Free healthcare, free university education, good public transport, low inequality (= low crime). All of that adds up to higher standard of living achievable with pretty shitty earnings.
Oh and before you blame it on military spending - we spend higher% of GDP on military than USA. Russia is a shitty neighbor, we have to.
American problems are exactly the opposite of what Americans think they are. You are in dire need of some social democracy.
Going at it with a chainsaw isn't going to help.
And I think these are all difficult things to do well and make money, as in doing a good job in healthcare, education, etc. is not really profitable. So, they are areas for government involvement.
