- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
The 21-country survey for the influential European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank also found that under Trump, the US is less feared by its traditional adversaries, while its allies – particularly in Europe – feel ever more distant.
The poll, of nearly 26,000 respondents in 13 European countries, the US, China, India, Russia, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa and South Korea, found majorities in almost every territory surveyed expected China’s global influence to grow over the next decade.
He has made the US the weakest it has been for a long time, probably the weakest it has ever been.
The US was already been past its peak as an Imperial Power since at least the 2008 Crash (though if you look at things like social mobility in the US, the seeds of it go all the way back to the 70s when the country started becoming ever less a “land of opportunity”), but Trump has definitelly accelerated the decay and by a huge factor.
That said, at some point a far-right populist portraying himself as “man of the people” and somebody who will “bring back national greatness” like Trump, getting power is historically pretty common in nation which have reached a peak of great power and started decaying from there - in other words, if it wasn’t Trump this time in the circle of prosperity and decay for the US would’ve delivered power to a similar character.
Reagan is the one who really started the downfall of the US. Killed the marginal tax rate and mental health care, among other things. Citizens United was the nail in the coffin.
Pretty much everything wrong with the country is a game of 6 degrees from Ronald Reagan.