Since, at least, WWII, the United States of America has been, to the rest of the world, like a “big brother” in, mostly, all the worst ways. Having flexed our ultimate muscle, Little Boy and Fat Man, on Japanese civilian cities and demonstrating to the world that we are willing to do anything (even risking destroying the planet) to win, like a large child who has gotten away with intimidating smaller, younger siblings our international reputation went from “hero to zero” in less than a generation. Most of our political leaders and all of our corporations who did business overseas, buying and selling other nation’s natural resources, saw that as a win-win situation. Those American who risked everything to stop Hitler’s Third Reich were betrayed by their government and idle, entitled, generational wealth even before their feet hit French shores at Normandy. Politicians like Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy ingratiated themselves to the rich and powerful by overinflating their far-behind-the-lines-of-battle “{war experience” to gain political power before the real soldiers returned to their ordinary lives.
Of course, before WWI the United States had been fucking up other countries’ governments, stealing territory and sovereignty, and installing “friendly governments” since American money interests decided to “acquire” large chunks of Mexico in the 1840s. Between 1846 and 1867, even with the distraction of an internal Civil War, the US found time to “annex” what became the states of Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. All of that is consistent with the original “Manifest Destiny[1]” bullshit with which justified murdering 20 million indigenous Americans who were living peacefully, creatively, sustainably, and far above the standards of immigrant Europeans in the 1700s. Since the Civil War, the United States has interfered with Samoa, the Kingdom of Hawaii (another hostile annexation), the Philippines (1899), Columbia (1903), Honduras (1903-1925), Cuba (1906), Nicaragua (1909-1933), Mexico, again (1913), Haiti (1915-1933), Dominican Republic (1916-1925), and that was all before WWI. The freakiest fact about this country is how much we love war. In its 239 years of existence, the United States of America has only been at peace for 19 years of its 249 years of existence. In almost all of those wars, we have been a principal aggressor/invader. For a country that considers itself to be some kind of force for good, a democratic role model for the world, we’re pretty damn awful looking from the outside.
When Trump took office and started dismantling the federal government, making it look more like his own chaotic, dysfunctional, cash-burning, failed, misogynist and racist “businesses,” most Americans were shocked and dismayed. The Trump cult, of course, remains “resolutely” staying the course all the way to economic and social collapse. Once you’ve committed to drinking the Kool-Aid you’ve got to drink the whole pitcher. Now that Trump is purging the Smithsonian Museums of all evidence that every moment of US history was directed and driven by old white men, there probably isn’t any way back to decency or reality. He’s already driven out any semblance of competence, expertise, honor and decency from the rest of the federal government. Republicans are lining up behind one stupid Trumpian idea after another and it’s pretty obvious that the country is following 1930’s Germany down the “4th Reich” nonsense, all the way to destruction.
2025’s “Rural Goober Policy” (aka “Southern Strategy”) from Nixon’s disastrous administration is in no way more sophisticated than it was in 2016 or 2020, but rural America is solidly a decade dumber and more gullible. When Republicans are done dismantling public education, public health, the 1st Amendment, and the federal government, they will have done everything Vladimir Putin has paid for and Russia and China will be battling for the world’s super-power position. Either way, the US will likely continue to decline into a minor power and might even come apart like the Soviet Union in the 1990s. As off this past month, more than 60% of Californians told a poll that the state ““would be better off if California peacefully seceded from the U.S. at some point in the next 10 years.” Secession is in the air all across the country, in fact. Although, the funniest secessionists are in the Southeast where dependence on Blue State subsidies is the highest. Again, all of this is playing directly into Russian and Chinese hands and the dumbest Americans are in the drivers’ seat at a time when the country most desperately needs expertise of all kinds.
Between threatening to annex Canada. Panama, and Greenland and betraying Ukraine and Europe to Russia, the USA is shedding friends as fast as a Trump business blows through coke and cash. Unless something drastic happens to stop the bleeding, it’s hard to see a positive outcome from this round of chaos.
[1] The link I used is for the Smithsonian and it will be interesting to see how long the Trump fascists allow that institution to remain untainted.