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I guess I'll just use this thread to say: I fucking hate this election.
I hate my choices. I hate having to choose which shitty option might taste slightly less like shit. I hate choosing from two stupid, bumbling mediocre embarrassments and knowing one of them is going to be the fucking President of the United States of America. "Vote for the lesser of two evils" has been a motto representing resigned acceptance of political reality my entire life (I have the Cthulhu for President t-shirt and everything), but never have I felt it so keenly. They're both bad and repulsive, and I honestly don't know which of them will actually be worse for the country because I expect either of them to be terrible. I have said before I probably won't even vote, for the first time since I turned 18. (At least for president; I'll still probably vote for local/state candidates.)
And it's entirely the fault of both parties for putting us here. The Republicans, for letting MAGA cultists take over the party and drive all serious grown-ups out, and the Democrats, for letting bad faith woke identity politics take over everything. And both of them, for turning us into a gerontocracy that very effectively shuts younger candidates out before they can even sniff a primary.
If you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose, I guess it would be Kamala. But I might take the bullet instead.
I think Trump will be more damaging to the economy, and I think he will epically fuck up what's left of America's standing in the world. I think he will be an embarrassment who fails to accomplish any of the things his followers think he will (just like last time) and what he does accomplish he will fuck up. I think Harris will continue our inflationary money-isn't-real spiral into economic doom, hand out more gobs of cash to whatever identity group is most effective at yelling and screaming, and I think Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping will roll her like a floured chicken breast. She's a midwit mediocrity who should never have come within line of sight of the Presidency, and I cannot believe how quickly I watched people in real time shift vibes to Kamala-enthusiasm, Kamalanation, Kamala is brat (W. T. F????) and pretend they had always been enthusiastic about her. Way back in 2019, when she was being floated as a Democratic candidate and I knew little about her, I admit I was tepidly favorable towards her because she seemed like maybe the least bad of a mediocre lot, but nothing she's done since has impressed, and she seems like Generic Extruded Political Product.
But, you know, Trump. I do not have TDS, I do not think he is Literally Hitler, but I do think he's a con, a huckster, an embarrassing buffoon who I believe actually loves America as much as I believe he goes to church on Sunday and has ever read the Bible in his life. I think he totally would become an absolute dictator if he could manage it, but it would require too much effort and political acumen and cunning, which he does not have. He has a huge personality and charisma, and some people think that translates into him being a skilled politician. He's not. He's got performer's instincts and a gift for graft. This doesn't really make him unique among American presidents, but it makes him uniquely bad in this time and place.
This sucks.
So I will repeat what I said a few weeks ago: my only consolation is going to be breaking out the popcorn and watching the wailing and gnashing of teeth post-election night. If Kamala wins, I will read the Motte and other places for the rage, the futile fist-waving, the impotent Internet tough-guy promises to Res1st and Retrn and start a civil war or some shit. If Trump wins, I will read Twitter for the wailing, the gnashing of teeth, and the hordes of smug, self-righteous fucks driven to existential despair, and I will drink their tears.
This is not nice, it is not charitable, it is not noble. It is petty and mean and beneath me. It is my coping mechanism, because this election sucks.
This is uncharitable, boo-outgroup Trump-sneering thinly disguised as "both sides suck" complaining. You should be ashamed of this comment and go vent your spleen some other place rather than bringing down the level of discourse here, especially given that you are a mod.
Uncharitable I'll give you (I said as much) but if you feel I booed Trump very slightly more than I booed Kamala, well, too bad. Sometimes both sides really do suck.
I am not ashamed of this comment, merely disgruntled that I am unable to achieve perfect indifference to outcomes. I would not mod it if it came from someone else. We are obligated to be even handed and civil, not pretend to be objective on all political matters.
I’m curious why you think Trump would damage American standing compared to Harris? Strikes me more that Trump would reduce American standing against fashionable Euros but fashionable euros aren’t the world
Ya know, people like to mock "fashionable Euros" like our relationship with NATO and European trading partners is a fake Gay EuroVision contest, but Europe (and the Commonwealth) is actually still pretty damned important - more important (at least to us) than the rest of the world, I would argue. I do not think Putin actually respects Trump and I think Trump is too susceptible to flattery. Do we think China, and our Japanese and Korean allies, respect Trump more?
Africa and MENA might or might not like Trump more (Harris they will probably see, correctly, as an easy mark for more American largesse). I guess you could say that Iran and the Arabs and North Korea are more afraid of just how crazy Trump might be. It's somewhat of a toss-up but on the international front I think Harris is very marginally better for us. I think world leaders will mostly roll their eyes behind her back but carry on business. Trump throwing a monkey wrench into everything may be a feature and not a bug to his supporters, but I don't think that actually helps us. All his promises about tariffs evening the playing field and "making NATO pay its fair share" are going to be either empty, or disastrous, and "make them believe you are crazy enough to start a war" is not, IMO, actually a good strategy for preventing wars.
But you didn't argue that. You didn't even claim that. Your argument was scoped to 'the world,' not 'the pretty damned important (at least to us) Europeans.'
That is a common eurocentric tendency, and eurocentricism is as defensible a geopolitical bias as any other, but while Europe may be a peninsula was an ego problem, it is certainly not the world. It's not even the most important part of the world to the US- and that's a point of US bipartisan consensus for nearly the last 25 years.
This is without touching on whether the Europeans should be 'more important' is a prescriptive argument, not a descriptive argument, and one where a lot of lobbying occurs precisely to shape your perception in that direction. You later arguments in this very post reflect the narrative priorities of non-American states whose objections are grounded in zero-sum interest differences (such as how the relative tariff advantages should be between the European Union negotiating block and the US economy, and whether European non-investment in defense spending should shape American security commitments to the Europeans).
Sure. Why not- it's not like they have any particular respect for Harris (whose start as a girlfriend of a connected politician is not exactly secret), or Biden (probably the most credible madman-theory nuclear leader in a generation), or even Obama (whose own susceptibility to flattery was well known and for whom the derogatory comics abroad would generally not be printed in any reputable American media).
But it's also irrelevant on two fronts.
First, as a matter of argument, because you've shifted your goal posts to 'respect Trump' from 'America's standing.' This is a fine motte to retreat to, but it's still an abandonment of the bailey.
Second, America's standing on the global stage doesn't derive from personal respect for the President of the United States as a person. It derives from the fact that the Americans have a lot of money, a lot of military logistical power, and a government able (and willing) to use them. The opposition to Trump in many cases does more to harm American standing than Trump himself, because it gets in the way of what the US government could do for them in any quid-pro-quo.
Is your opinion on global politics or good strategy well informed enough to be worth valuing?
You've given a lot of tropes here, but please believe me when I say that not going through them line by line is a courtesy to forum standards. Suffice to say, it's a classic ethnocentric American perspective with many of the classic American tells (poor latin america, unworthy of American attention as ever), and lacking any significant demonstration of awareness of how American presidents actually impact other country's politics. In so much that it reflects a foreign perspective, it's an obviously European-based foreign perspective... which is to say, one of the most compromised by American political feedback loops in the world, which frequently blends American and European ethnocentric narratives, and a dynamic completely non-generalizable to the world as a whole.
While European-American political overlap (and contamnination, if one prefers) is certainly a valid topic of discussion, it's not a particularly relevant one to the world that doesn't share major American-centric media constellations or have as active an effort of purposely shaping and influencing American political-elite opinions through major media organization relationships.
Obviously the president is not the nation, but I think the regard with which other world leaders hold the POTUS reflects the regard they hold America (and specifically, America's likelihood to take action in its best interests). I'm not sure what your grievance here is; you share the silly belief that I'm concerned whether State Department officials will be welcomed at European wine and cheese parties, or you think I dramatically underestimate how well Trump can play other world leaders and not be played by them? (I have already said I think Harris will absolutely be played by them.)
I think very few people here have opinions worth valuing. I didn't ask you to value mine. (I do value yours on global politics and strategy, fwiw.) I confess I am not sure what exactly you think I am wrong about, other than apparently not having a high enough opinion of Trump, and overestimating Europe's importance? I am willing to be persuaded on the latter point (and maybe on the former, but you haven't really tried).
I dispute that the regard other world leaders hold the POTUS reflects American standing, and think you are falling victim to the classic conflation of being popular with being influential while tethering yourself to a stunted view of who the audience that matters is.
In diplomatic contexts, a classic basis of leveraging/manipulating people is to go after those whose self-image is centered on being perceived well. If specific person(s) can convince you that your reputation depends on their approval, you will not only prioritize their interests over your own (because you will rationalize that their good opinion is your interest), but also their views over the views of other observers. Because 'they' are/should be the more important partner, 'their' opinion matters more, and 'they' can speak for the rest of the partner-population because they are more important.
Which is how you get the Europeans/Americans conflating 'Europe/America' and 'the west' and 'the world' depending on whose gravitas they want to speak with.
The issue being, of course, that the interlocuter whose good opinion you want does not represent more than themselves, and their interests are not your own, and when you start changing yourself for their regard you are giving them power over you to the detriment of not only yourself, but your own power base.
In the domestic American political context, this dynamic is analogous to the (now former) Republican elites who were more interested in Democratic-aligned media respectability than in the issues Republican voters cared about. Republican party elites who were concerned about respectability politics routinely made observable concessions on party base priorities while seeking accolades from respectable media. They did so despite even though increasing majorities of those interlocuters sympathized with, were members of, or actively cooperated with the Democratic party against the Republican party positions.
This parallel's implications should not be subtle, because they are not unique.
My 'grievance' is that you are raising a concern of a situation you were already happy with. You've already had a president who was played and flattered to- that was Barrack Obama.
In a geopolitical sense, Obama was an exceptionally vain president whose primary theme was wanting to be seen as historic and symbolic and appreciated for his ideas, and Obama's focus-zones-of-choice were those that played to glowing coverage. As Obama was more or less a Eurocentric Atlanticist by instinct, and the Europeans were very happy to flatter that, that's where he spent most of his time (and where he spent a good part of his initial retirement). In areas far more removed from American political sensibilities and where the coverage was less consistently glowing- such as Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and most of Asia- Obama was far more distant after the initial honey moon and usual requirements.
This might be fine if Obama's popularity in Europe actually translated into major policy wins in Europe, in using increased popularity to shift the Europeans in more advantageous ways, but not only did this not happen, but Obama was instead lobbied into European-favored paths to American and even his own detriment.
Not only were longstanding American grievances not resolved by the EUropeans (NATO underinvestment, growing Russian gas-dependency, increasing Chinese network/infrastructure access, asymmetric protectionism by the Europeans), but the Europeans alternatively were able to lobby the Obama administration into, among other things,
-The Russian Reset (part of the German-preference for prioritizing Russian economic engagements over more pro-US eastern european partner security concerns; the aftermath of this helped lead to the Democratic over-compensation and russia-gate scandals)
-Brexit campaign lobbying (which was not only likely detrimental to the intended effect, but cultivated a higher level of partisan-driven political influence efforts)
-The Libya intervention (which was European grudge match against a former cold war foe who actually acceded to major US demands in the previous decade)
-The Syria Red Line debacle (a product, and then consequence, of Franco-British intervention partnership)
-The Iran Deal (a Congressionally-unpassable arrangement which offered major economic opportunities for the Europeans)
-The Paris Climate Accords (another Congressionally-unpassable arrangement which furthered anticipated EU-protection policies but which contributed to American political polarization due to its adoption into EPA regulation and following court cases)
These are not things that are in and of themselves 'bad' or indefensible in why they were approached, but rather indicative of high-profile ways in which the Europeans were able to assert more influence on how the US approached certain issues than vice versa, in ways more clearly beneficial to European than American-consensus interests (not least because many were beyond any American consensus but hoping to create new fait accompli).
Sometimes this is fine, quid-pro-quos are often one-sided in isolation, but the failure-state of pursuing regard (which Obama got quite a bit of for agreeing with what the Europeans wanted) and falling to flattery (clearly the Europeans were quite convinced by Obama's high-intelligence rationales).
To return to the grievance- your complaint, even when shadowed in both-sidisms, has already come to pass. The most recent well-regarded president is a president who was so routinely flattered for his wit and charisma that it generally isn't even recognized as flattery. This has already happened. It was not an objection at the time. It is not a credible objection now.
I did not claim you did. I will now ask why you made an argument based off of your opinion, if you don't think it's well informed enough to be worth valuing.
It's the same sort of self-negation that accompanies several of your criticisms and predictions. 'Everything Trump does will be terrible and fail, unless it succeeds in which case it was/will be worthless.' 'My opinion is strong and argued at length, but I won't claim it has worth worth defending.'
Well, which is it- is your opinion strong, worthless, or both?
I am poking you in the eye on this because part of the derangement in TDS comes from the totalizing mix of simultaneously asserting 'worst thing ever' and accompanying 'can't possibly be good' when worst thing ever doesn't occur. Not only is this contradictory in its own right, but it's a form of patronizing dismissal of the opinions of others by dismissing the relevance of the not-failures others may value as successes... which goes to part of why Trump is simultaneously successful and so triggering to PMC types with TDS, because Trump champions issues that are/were dismissed as unimportant, and disregards things claimed to be important.
Hence the blunt challenge on if you think your opinion on Trump foreign affairs is worth valuing. If you do, it's fine to say so and we can go into challenging that basis- but if you don't, but you are making strong claims anyway, that is itself unsound / not logical / the D in TDS.
And I shall probably not, since I just lost a bloody lot of effort trying to put together an effort response, including a post on issues with your previous post. That was lost for good, but here is try two for your question on overestimating Europe's importance.
/// Trump's Effectiveness Abroad ///
On Trump's effectiveness abroad, the short version is that unless you have a second language skill I'm not aware of, your impression of how effective Trump was and how he was perceived is shaped by the Atlanticist-dominated media coverage of international relations, i.e. Western European and State Department liberal types (many of whom are reading western european media company coverage) who are the prime targets of TDS. This is not an unbiased or objective audience. Outside of Europe, Trump's reception was 'normal.' Lower general opinion than Obama, who was and cultivated a rockstar popularity, but Obama was also rarely willing to press issues at the cost of his popularity.
Trump acceptance in turn followed from that he was generally willing to let partners focus on what they wanted without 'usual' levels of US interference (read: Trump was willing to buck the local ambassador and not make issues of things the local embassy might ask for government pressure on), as long as he got some signature concession. Mexico got substantial lack of pushback on its internal reform priorities (including rolling back the Mexican oil industry liberalization) after it supported NAFTA renegotiation and did Remain in Mexico, Japan got to play a leading role in the Quad and facilitation in Philippine influence and access after its own trade agreement, Korea got to pursue sunshine policy 2.0 with American facilitation (including the Trump-KJU summit, which was a South Korean success that tends to get ignored), and the Israeli-Arab normalization had a bunch of different angles of who got what for what.
When you (sarcastically) claim you are accused of not having a high enough opinion of Trump, this is true, but not because you should have a high opinion of him. Trump's effectiveness abroad was quote / unquote 'normal.' It was not terrible, it was within historical norms. Trump was a transactional president who did far less to meddle in some places than other presidents have in the past, and while that may seem a low bar to clear that is a still a bar many American presidents failed at.
/// The Europe Exception ///
The only place Trump was particularly 'bad' at was Europe, which is also by design the part of the world with the most reverse media influence back to the US (because when your national security for 50 years depends on American opinion, you invest in shaping American opinion).
There's plenty to be said about the extension of US politics into European political thought (such as how BLM protests of the Obama administration were echoed in European countries without the issues), and how the Obama administration tried to subvert Trump (at the same time the Obama administration was locking in the Russia-gate narrative domestically, Obama in his farewells to Merkel more or less encouraged her to consider herself the leader of the free world- imagine what your perspective is if the American president says 'don't trust my successor' even as American intelligence leaks are insinuating a Russian stooge), but the crux of the policy differences between Trump and Europe was the already emerging breakdown of the strategic logic of the cold war-originated alliance.
During the Cold War, the US granted European countries systemic economic advantages vis-a-vis US industry in exchange for strategic deference. Sometimes this was for things like the Marshal Plan, but it was also done to help other parts of the US alliance, such as trading concessions to American markets for letting Korea get access to European markets. The EU, when it was forming in its current form in the late 1990s/early 200s, inherited many of these concessions, even as EU collective bargaining had an often explicit purpose of improving European negotiating positions against the US.
This was because European and American competition is an explicit policy consideration of the relationship. Again, the stated purpose of the EU common market is to get better deals (for Europe) at the expense of others (the US). A united European polity was considered a way for the Europeans to compete with the US in the post-cold war, and there's no shortage of international relations scholarship about how European rule-making would restrain and shape others (including the US) to European benefit. European centralization and unification has been a common idea and explicit goal of many relevant European elites involved in EU politics. However, during the post-9-11 Iraq War, the Bush Administration broke the back on European solidarity when the Franco-German attempt at a pan-European objection to the Iraq War (in part because of their particular bilateral interests in Iraq) was undercut by the UK and coalition of the willing who supported the US invasion of Iraq. While this broke the attempt at a European common position, you will also note that this effort was breaking the core logic of the alliance- an inherited economic incentive for Europe, but not a deferential strategic asset for the Americans.
This was the start of the 'modern' call for European strategic autonomy from the US- the notion that an autonomous Europe is needed to not get into American wars 'it' didn't want to get involved with. Given that the coalition of the willing and American coalitions in general are voluntary, the primary way to advance European strategic autonomy and not get involved in an American conflict was to... not spend more on NATO, which would bring into conflict with Russia, at a time that the Franco-German consensus was that Russia was a critical economic partner and also a counter-balance to American influence in Europe (and also extending that peace dividend could help prop up the post-financial crisis challenges to the governments).
The Trump-Europe issue, for all its messiness and propaganda, basically revolves around the context that a critical mass of the European elites wanted the benefits of an inherited economic-concessions-for-military-deference bargain, except to cut out the military or deference requirement and disagreement of who the threat actually was.
If this doesn't seem unreasonable, consider why typically states pay mercenaries, and not the other way around.
Put another way- in so much that trade concessions are a form of payment for future services, the Americans are not the mercenary in the US-Euro security relationship: the Europeans are.
/// How Much Would You Pay For European Allies? ///
The strategic value issue, in turn- the 'why is Europe important to the US'- is that Europe simply can't offer much value as a military asset, even if it wanted to.
Europe is a critical enabler for the US to fight against Russia, but the primary reason (besides morality) to fight Russia is if you are allied with the Europeans who Russia's revanchism threatens. There are separate issues of what Russia would do to prolong conflict with the US for ideological/revanchist/other mockable reasons if the US did pull out of Europe, but fundamentally there is no need to fight the Russians over Europe if you don't consider Europe worth fighting for. Europe helping the US ability to fight Russia is an advantage for the Europeans, not the Americans, and in so much that there is a cost saving here, it is enjoyed by the Europeans, not the US, who would be avoiding far greater costs by simply not being obliged to fight.
The challenger the Americans care about, on the other hand, is China. This is one of the few bipartisan consensus points for the US over the last 25 years. Russia can break itself and half of Europe apart, and the US would be fine. China is the only power with the mass and industrial capacity and- critically- naval potential to threaten not only the American ability to go where it chooses, but to reach back to the US.
The things is, all the reasons that applied to the Europeans not wanting to align with Trump against Russia apply even more so to China. China is not a military threat to Europe per see. Unlike Russia, there are not territorial conflicts or near-term revanchism. China is a major potential market (that Germany is hooked on), China is a major potential investor (that post-financial crisis Europe is struggling to find sources of). China is a very clear advocate for a multipolar world order, and while China would prefer to be the biggest pole it's also not exactly going to be competing for Europe, so a Chinese multipolar order has overlap with a European multipolar order.
When the Europeans say they don't want to get roped into an American conflict, the American conflict they're thinking of is typically going to be the US-China conflict.
And here the value of the Europeans as military allies is dismal. Not only has NATO underinvestment crippled European military in general, but the Europeans haven't had the right kind of capabilities. A US-China war is functionally a naval war, and the European armies undercut by decades of underinvestment are far easier to fix than navies with the same restraints. There's a reason when there's talk of European Indo-Pacific power, they are talking about small islands on the wrong sides of the Pacific.
Now, this doesn't mean that the Europeans can't contribute anything to the US in a china conflict. However, the most valuable things the Europeans bring to the table is not their military support, but other things. Like... money and trade flows.
Which is the conflict that the US and Europeans have over NATO costs. And trade relations. And which the Europeans with significant China exposure threaten to lose quite a bit of if they side with the US over China in a US-China conflict. And which competes with the strategic logic of who is paying who for their geopolitical support.
Good post, pokes in the eye notwithstanding. There is a lot to think about. You have not convinced me that Trump was or will be a good president, but I do see what you are getting at about my overvaluing Europe, and I will try to adjust my position going forward.
This was much better than "Trump is Naruto and we should worship him," though I still disagree about "TDS," though maybe that's term slippage.
So assuming a second Trump term, do you expect him to actually be good on foreign policy? What is he going to do about Ukraine, about Israel, about Iran, and about China?
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