No. of Recommendations: 31
"I believe the underlying water table, soil quality and the climate are all just fine.
We hired a know-nothing who thinks he knows everything, looks out for himself first, and has bankrupted most everything he managed.
Now, he can salt the Earth, send some water away to the Eastern corner because there is a fire in the Western corner, beat up the nice neighbors thinking that maybe now people will consider him to be a real man and so on. The question is, can he cause lasting damage or can we bounce back? At some point, being mortal, he will be gone. Call me an optimistic fool, but I think America has bounced back from worse, although I don't know if this will be worse than the worst so far."
While I appreciate your optimism, I am not quite so sure the fundamentals (the underlying water table, soil quality and the climate in Jim's metaphor) are truly fine.
Yes, the know nothing (criminal, lying, con artist, etc. etc.) we hired is mortal and will be gone at some point, but that doesn't change the fundamental fact that America hired him in the first place when it was blatantly obvious to any moderately informed person that this is what was going to happen.
Recently I travelled to Europe to play in a minor poker tournament, the tournament was made up of 80% European players, 15% Asian players and 5% Americans, so the discussion of American politics wasn't as taboo (or impolite) of a subject among strangers as it might have been if the tournament was in the U.S. American politics came up a lot (for obvious reasons). It was mentioned over and over again about how other countries can no longer trust the U.S. on anything (mutual defense, trade, or agreements/treaties of any kind). At one point, another American I was sitting with expressed the same optimism you have. That the know nothing will be gone eventually and things can go back to normal. Every non-American at the table disagreed with that point. Given the fact that everything happening since the new administration took charge was easily foreseeable, it can never go back to normal. It was quite clear what the Know Nothing was going to do to foreign relations and the American electorate said "I don't care, we are going to elect him anyway".
It is one thing to be fooled once. Every democratic country has elected at least one leader in the past that most of the population later regrets. It happens, however voters should learn. America had that "Oops" moment in 2016. The rest of the world thought America learned and corrected itself in 2020, but then in 2024, the American electorate said "You know what, I will have a little bit more of that".
After electing the Know Nothing a 2nd time, why would any other country trust the American electorate? Just because the Know Nothing is gone does not mean that there are not other (more competent, but still evil) politicians who can use the same playbook? The Know Nothing in charge is only a symptom of the fundamental problem: the American electorate. Even if America elected the most sane president ever in 2028, who is to say it won't elect another nutty America Firster in 2032?
Paraphrasing Buffett, it takes decades to build a good reputation but only seconds to destroy it. America has shredded its reputation as world leader with the 2024 election. It will take decades for other countries to ever trust America again. Sure, America still has a big economy and nuclear weapons so it will always be an important actor on the world stage, but it will never again be a leader.
As a representative democracy (yes I know, America is technically a Republic, but the lines have been blurred enough to make it a semantic distinction), the politicians elected are supposed to generally reflect the will of the people. However it is more than that. The politicians elected also reflect the intelligence, wisdom, laziness, strengths, weakness, etc. of the people. Unfortunately, there are too many sources of misinformation out there that try and confuse voters and the American electorate has become too fat and lazy to put forth the effort to educate themselves about what the true facts are.
There are some very smart voters who actually thought the last election was about tax cuts or cutting government waste. They were easily fooled because they didn't want to educate themselves about the candidates and what they would really do when elected.
