Forget the shining city on the hill. A TV personality with a cult showed up one dark night with their tiki torches and pitchforks, and laid waste to that vision. America was the foremost world superpower for many a year. The idea of American exceptionalism was born — and even Mitch McConnell mentioned that in his resignation speech before the Senate today. I wonder if it occurred to Mitch that he, himself, had undermined whatever exceptionalism America may have once laid claim to, by supporting the underbelly-of- America candidate, the czar of chaos, Donald Trump?
In any event, it’s too late for recrimination now. Now we need to figure out where we’re going from here, because that’s exactly what the world is doing. And they’ve been doing it for some time. We began to seriously concern the world with two terms of George W. Bush. So if we had a Mulligan, that was it. Then we horrified the world with one term of Donald Trump. Supposedly, according to polls, he bears a fair to middling chance of getting back in power. This also alarms the rest of the world and they’re making contingency plans. You probably heard French president Emmanuel Macron yesterday. If not, this is what he said.
While this makes me very sad, I don't blame President Macron at all. He's just protecting his country. Hopefully when we get rid of Trump, Macron will reconsider. I'm waiting for other countries to make the same decision. 😟
— jen grimes (@jengrimes8) February 27, 2024
This is not something that has just developed and it is not limited to France, according to the Associated Press.
Thomas Gift, director of the Centre on U.S. Politics at University College London, said that whoever wins the presidential race, the direction of travel will be the same – toward a multipolar planet in which the United States is no longer “the indisputable world superpower.”
Most allied leaders refrain from commenting directly on the U.S. election, sticking to the line that it’s for Americans to pick their leader.
They are conscious that they will have to work with the eventual winner, whoever it is — and behind the scenes, governments will be doing the “backroom work” of quietly establishing links with the contenders’ political teams, said Richard Dalton, a former senior British diplomat.
But many of America’s European NATO allies are worried that with or without Trump, the U.S. is becoming less reliable. Some have started to talk openly about the need for members to ramp up military spending, and to plan for an alliance without the United States.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he was “currently on the phone a lot with my colleagues and asking them to do more” to support Ukraine. Germany is the second-largest donor of military aid to Kyiv, behind the U.S., but Scholz recently told German weekly Die Zeit that the country couldn’t fill any gap on its own if “the U.S.A. ceased to be a supporter.”
Trump’s comments on Saturday about NATO rang alarm bells in Poland, which shares a border with Ukraine. “We have a hot war at our border,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Sunday.
He warned: “We must realize that the EU cannot be an economic and civilizational giant and a dwarf when it comes to defense, because the world has changed.”
The world has changed and nobody knows which way America is going to fall on any given issue. We used to be predictable and reliable. Now we are becoming known as a country who lives perpetually in the shadow of a government shutdown and who may betray her allies at the drop of a hat. Performance artists like Marjorie Taylor Greene may entertain MAGA and right-wing media but they appall the rest of the world. And well they should.
Russia is busy bolstering its ties with China, Iran and North Korea, which is normal. What’s not normal is having a GOP candidate who is all in favor of them doing so, so that they can better attack one of America’s allies, namely Ukraine.
Trump and MAGA are destabilizing forces, both at home and abroad. What is needed this November is for America to come together and rout both of those forces and elect sane and stable leadership — not just in the White House. That contest is a no brainer, Biden must win. But the House and the Senate need leadership as well. Mike Johnson isn’t cutting it and very likely the House will go back to Democratic rule.
The Senate may have also moved into play, as a result of Mitch McConnell announcing his resignation Wednesday morning. It’s been speculated that the Senate could fall to the GOP in November, because the way the Senate map is configured, a lot of seats are vulnerable. However, with McConnell leaving there may be a skirmish for power among the old guard and MAGA for leadership and it’s too soon to figure out how that might go.
McConnell remains in his Senate seat until 2027 — unless Almighty God decides to do something different. He’s been locked in battle recently trying to get aid to Ukraine passed and who knows what better results or worse results his successor will have.
In any event, this November can be America’s come back or it can continue to alarm the world that much more, if we emerge from the election scattered and fragmented. This is a time for unity and strength and it becomes even more imperative to vanquish Trump and his extremist cult.
When the electorate forgets our history of the American Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War 2 by allowing a fascist, a malignant narcissist, and a child killing nazi to take the white house with putin’s help…that ship has sailed.
You’d think that the US military industrial complex would be aware of this and how it could effect their future earnings. Why would anyone want to continue buying F15s, F16s, F35s, P8 Poseidons, C130 Hercules, C17 Globemasters, Sikorsky or Apache helicopters, or any armaments or vehicles from an unreliable former ally that can cut off parts support for any reason with a change in government. Much better to make your own aircraft than buy an American one- oh, and having done so, become a competitor to the US manufacturers on international markets.
And yet the heads of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, et al, continue funding the republican traitors to the US with their donations.
And the same thing applies to US bases overseas, why have a military base on your property, in your country, when the people running it are pursuing policies opposed to your own country’s policies. America couldn’t run it’s middle east operations as cheaply or efficiently without their bases in Europe. Ramstein Airbase sits on quite a large piece of valuable land, why give the USA free run of it? The same with the British bases too.
All this because republicans can’t even plan for tomorrow, let alone next week, or next decade.
There is another matter, too. Americans seem quick to forget that only ONE nation has invoked the NATO doctrine to bring others to it’s aid, The USA, after 9,11.
Then, in accordance with the treaty, other NATO members came to the aid of The USA, and sent their soldiers to help in Afghanistan in the fight against terrorists, many of these soldiers shed blood or lost their lives in the fight to support the US led operation. An operation that was stymied and ruined at the last minute by Dimwit Donny negotiating directly with the Taliban enemy to withdraw troops WITHOUT CONSULTING the numerous allies also involved and thus directly risking their lives. The Afghan pullout was a rushed, appalling disaster mitigated only slightly by the heroic efforts of those forced to try to make it work.
There is now ABSOLUTELY ZERO tolerance for any corruptly informed recalcitrance or duplicity by The USA in any further operations with NATO allies by NATO.
The ‘soft’ power wielded by America since WW2 is now almost entirely gone, at future great cost to The USA.