• Schwim Dandy@lemmy.zip
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    23 hours ago

    I suspect you’re going to get mostly sarcasm and mockery tropes but there have always been countries that have allied themselves with American interests. When you say “when help when needed”, if you’re thinking of an actual war on home turf, invasion or something similar, that’s unlikely to ever happen due to our geographical position. If you mean financial help, we take loans from a lot of different countries. If you’re asking about assistance when we engage in war elsewhere, again, that would be all the allied nations.

    Militarily speaking, the US is still one of the superpowers just because of the mind-boggling amount of money we spend on it. There’s not many countries that can compete with just the sheer number of US things that are designed to go boom.

    Things like goodwill and assistance are currently in a downward transitional trend due to the current administration. It seems a lot of countries feel ostracized by the US due to Trump’s constant foolish and often hostile actions towards them but these types of things follow an ebb and flow, the next administration to reside in office will begin the process of patching things up and relationships will improve.

    • dhork@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      I am one of those people who engaged in the sarcasm and mockery, particularly mocking American Exceptionalism. But you can argue that American position as an Indispensible Nation is (well, perhaps was) a real thing. But it’s important to acknowledge that status was not accorded to us because we’re special, but because we aligned our interests to many of the world’s democracies. They didn’t follow us because of any inherent birthright, they followed because we shared their values and interests.

      John Kerry got skewered when he implied that American interests might be subject to a “global test”, but he was 100% correct. Other countries backed us because we backed them. If looking to America for leadership is no longer in their best interest, they will shop somewhere else for leadership.

      And that’s what makes Trump so insidious. Generations of Americans (politicians, service people, etc.) put this country in a position of respect, and this guy is tossing it all out the window by being a pety asshole who doesn’t listen.

    • spittingimage@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      the next administration to reside in office

      Unless the US’ current trajectory changes sharply, I don’t think there are going to be any more elections.

      • Schwim Dandy@lemmy.zip
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        17 hours ago

        I know it’s very popular for the doomsayers to propose but time will tell and I’m guessing we’ll have another election or two. Perhaps even three.

        Four’s not out of the question.