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Comment by awiesenhofer | Hacker News Reader

8 pointsawiesenhofer8 comments

This may sound cynical, but it is not intended so.

The baffling confusion spoken of is most likely tied to alienating nationalism, which is really just a mixture of politics and ethnocentricity.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism

Those are bad for discourse, but what's more troubling is that nationalism seems to be a common political trend of the moment. Other examples of nation level political administrations promoting nationalism are India, Russia, Turkey, Israel, China.

The most unfortunate part of that is not that allies are alienated or that relationships are soured, but that its corrosive economically often doing more harm where it intends benefit.

This feels cheap, as most articles do in the past few years. Scapegoat presidency. We can start over on a clean slate with ANYBODY else. Because thats how it works.. We didn't start declining since we started a buncha endless wars, we started declining because of this one person here and now. Cheap and divisive, can we check if the author isn't a foreign asset?

POV From Canada: The decline started earlier. But it wasn’t until the coronavirus pandemic that we can see that the United States can’t try to handle its problems. They seem essentially broken. The basics of a coordinated response was entirely absent.

It’s like if your house is burning down, but everyone in the house is yelling at each other instead of trying to put out the fire. We are looking south and it’s like looking at a bubbling pool of madness. As much as Canadians don’t want to admit it, we love the United States. We are also afraid since America collapses, we might get dragged into their descent.

I have to say, this is how it looks from my (UK) point of view. The recent Rolling Stone piece [https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/c...] was along similar lines.

We watched a documentary [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00095p0] recently - pre Trump, pre Covid - but again the picture being painted is one where the US was becoming this wholly divided nation, although this time the division was about financial equality: on the one hand the mega-rich, on the other the super-poor, subsisting at almost 3rd world levels of poverty.

Here's the various impressions: would love to hear viewpoints from anyone who lives there:

- nationwide severe issues with health, particularly around heart disease and obesity but also huge problems with depression and prescription drugs

- an almost unsolveable political split with neither side willing to take on board any kind of compromise with the other

- draconian drug and alcohol laws which are causing way more harm than good

- an out of control gun culture

- a crumbling infrastructure which was last properly invested in in the 60's as there is such widespread dislike of anything that looks like "state control"

- an almost comedically stupid president who stands at least a reasonable chance of getting voted back in in November. Even the suggestion that he might not honour the vote is enough to make one pause and check whether we're talking about the "greatest super power on the planet" or some war-torn 3rd world dictatorship...

- a totally out of control approach to Covid19 which has cause immense numbers of deaths

- an out of balance work/life culture

I should add that I'm no great fan of the UK right now, so I'm not exactly putting us on a pedestal of virtue. The Conservatives are arsehats of the first order; Johnson is a buffoon so obviously out of his depth (and has handled CV19 with similar - but not quite as extreme - levels of stupidity as Trump); we voted for Brexit on the back of a totally skewed and misrepresented lie (and all the evidence is this is going to come back and bite us if - as is likely - we crash out); etc etc - but still, it doesn't look as grim as it does over the pond. Tell me if I'm wrong!

What if, none of this matters? Until the US army starts to fail, i don't think american projection of power has been lowered. Yes, they seem broken on the outside, but it seems like their middle class is richer and has it better than other societies. But it's the military power, the safety that NATO provides to other countries that keeps the dollar on a pedestal and their stock bubble growing.

There is a certain "lack of competition" in the superpower market today, as the competitors are just not there yet. This leads to complacency and inferior product.

Until the US army starts to fail

The US Army has been failing for decades. It's just that this hasn't greatly mattered because the adversaries were small, powerless countries that didn't have the capability to hit back, only to resist.

Sooner or later, the US will be in conflict with an adversary that does have the capability to hit back as well as to resist, and it won't be pretty.

The analogy is Germany attacking the Soviets. Everybody expected to Soviets to last a mere six to ten weeks. Instead they lasted just under four years and overran Berlin.

That people are so interested in this kind of propaganda is puzzling. No politician goes around conceding or talking about losing during a campaign. Yet a refusal to concede before votes are cast is blown up as if it were a threat of violent revolution. Hillary says Biden should not concede “under any circumstances.” I don’t think she seriously means Dems should rise up in armed struggle. Why create problems that don’t exist?

"Why won't the president commit to a peaceful transfer of power", easy because he's a narcissistic sociopath. The US elected the worst possible person to be president, mentally incapable of fulfilling the job at any normal time but especially not now.

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