My point is that our former allies seeing the US as an enemy, with only one way to deal with it, going forward, is not inherently the realm of angsty teens.
We're monumentally and fundamentally fucked, and can't be trusted.
As atrocious as our foreign policy has been over the years, we have been far more keen to pressure authoritarian allies into democratic reforms than other major powers with their allies.
PR matters - it isn't separate from policy, it both shapes and is shaped by policy. And our PR was centered around the idea of being a friend to democracy. That doesn't mean we actually were a friend to democracy - but it does mean that every action against democracy, or every inaction failing to defend it - carried an additional cost - in more intensive propaganda, in lies or subterfuge, in manufacturing issues - that it will no longer carry going forward.
tl;dr; you thought our foreign policy was shitty before? You ain't seen nothin' yet.
The last tranche of investment in clean water infrastructure was some $35 billion. Cost of an F-22, from development all the way to production, over the course of 20+ years, is about 350 million per unit.
So for slightly over half of all F-22s in the USAF, you could get a one (1) time investment of insufficient size and scale of the kind we had during the Biden years.
Where that leaves the number for a successful investment in clean water is probably quick gruesome.
What I mean is, when you revel in Americanism, you must also accept shame in Americanism. There's no "I want all of the credit and none of the blame" option, except for shitwits like MAGA et co; and THAT is a strange and elaborate form of public self-humiliation that can only be perceived by those who read above a second-grade level, and I would not recommend it.
Do you realize that when you criticize Hillary and Kamala for running a “bad” campaign, you’re implying that Trump ran a good one?
No.
If I play a terrible game of chess, just absolute dogshit, and lose, that doesn't necessarily mean my opponent played well. They could miss a checkmate 10 times in a row. They could sacrifice their queen for no gain. They could leave themselves open and only be spared by the barest fate of wandering attention failing to see any number of perfect attacks against them.
Ya think maybe, just maybe the thing Kamala and Hillary have in common that America rejected is the obvious answer?
Their lack of charisma? A tempting thought, but no. Their moderate politics? A popular position on here, but not really what I'd buy.
What Kamala and Hillary truly had in common is that they campaigned before an audience of malicious idiots. And malicious idiots always prefer their own.
You don't get to be an American when it makes you feel good, and then disavow the collective identity when it makes you feel bad. We, as Americans, have a collective responsibility, just as we have collective achievements, collective loss, collective memories. You either own up to it even when it's shit, or you give it up. Wearing your Americanism as a fashion statement, only when it's in season, is risible and pathetic.
I'm 30. I've spent most of my life on the left as an unusual patriot. Nationalism, even of the civic variety, is not always welcome on the left. Still, I wore my colors proudly - for all of America's faults, for all of our mistakes, for all of our crimes, we were always also capable of great good.
Since last November, I've been putting the burial shroud over Uncle Sam. There's something more comforting about a funeral. Something that was, and then wasn't. Nostalgia and loss can poison the truth of the memory, what was bad, sometimes, hell, what was good - but something was there. And what passed is worth mourning. I prefer that to affording this any sliver of legacy of what we were - and make no mistake, what we were was always a very deeply flawed country. This grotesque charade doesn't even deserve that.
We can't even refuse open, plainly stated fascism, when the only thing on offer is fascism, and the only punishment we would have recieved for refusing is 'not getting fascism'. We've sold out every ally we have. We've sold out most American minorities. And for what? For the worst cause imaginable, to one of the worst human beings (and I use the term lightly) imaginable. We weren't seduced by some charismatic, quick-thinking ubermensch. Some shitwit went up and shat incoherent racist babble out of his mouth for an hour at a time, and half the fucking country said not only "I want him to lead the nation", but "He is the greatest leader of my lifetime!"
There was no secret deal. No complex backroom politiking. No elaborate concoction of carefully constructed lies and half-truths laid bare to the public only long after the fact. We were shown, full well, in our faces, undeniably, what was being offered. And we still chose it, or, nearly worse, chose not to care. A supermajority of the country.
This is a sickened people. What remains of the US is only the husk, a grotesque puppet of the shapes and forms we've battered together over the years to keep the grand experiment together, with none of the innards which made it worthwhile. Nothing left for guts but a writhing, verminous mass of stupidity and malice, contained by the vague, half-washed out outline of the ink of the Constitution.
Many of the Americans who are going to suffer do not deserve it. Many of the Americans who are going to suffer deserve America, as the dream, the ideal. But all of them - all of us - have been betrayed by consensus of the American people. And any of our international allies would be monumentally stupid to think they'll retain more loyalty from this homunculus than the nation's own sons and daughters.
Papers over the many, many things they both were not right about. Clinton especially - whatever bad decisions Harris made, and she certainly made bad decisions, she was also dealt a bad hand. Clinton had a decade of planning and still screwed the pooch.
We voted away democracy to a senile, racist, rambling, rapist, treasonous, bootlicking, servile, incompetent, moronic, gullible, manipulable, greedy, gluttonous, slothful, cheeto-encrusted pig-eyed slug of an excuse of a human being.
"Aw, now they're warring over whether to prefer a market-oriented potato chip economy with elements of state control, or a state-oriented potato chip economy with elements of market direction! How quaint!"
A triumph, in Ancient Rome, was accorded to a general who had defeated a major foe in a war, not just a single battle. In a triumph, the conquering general would ride through Rome on a chariot with his army, to the acclaim of the crowds.
IKE WON THE WAR. ROME ITSELF WAS IN ALLIED HANDS. IT WAS RIGHT THERE, RIPE FOR THE TAKING!
Lead paint is fairly low on the scale, though obviously not great; leaded gasoline puts much more lead into the human body. Leaded gasoline was banned in both the US and EU in the 1990s.
This is the price to pay for trading with the US and the EU
OP is a genocide supporter, not an opponent of genocide mourning the US abandoning a nation that was subjected to an imperialist and murderous invasion by its larger neighbor, in which mass civilian executions have occurred and the kidnapping of, by Russia's own estimates, some million Ukrainian children into Russia.
Can't speak as to every town, or hell, even the regularity of my own hometown, but when I was a young man (read: early 2010s), the K fucking KK decided they were going to show up for some reason or another at one of our historical buildings. I don't even remember which one, they're all clustered together. Anyway, the town went into an uproar about it on Facebook, organized a silent counterprotest. We all showed up there, deadly quiet except for the traffic backing up the tiny streets as everyone and their brother struggled to show up, and when the appointed time came, lo and behold! The KKK fuckers pussed out and didn't even show up.
So we spent the rest of the time having an impromptu grill instead, since it was a warm summer day.
It was a nice moment in a town that wasn't always all that functional.
My point is that our former allies seeing the US as an enemy, with only one way to deal with it, going forward, is not inherently the realm of angsty teens.
We're monumentally and fundamentally fucked, and can't be trusted.