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So Trump had a fun day on the golf course.
While golfing yesterday, he got the news that Colombia will not be accepting two jets full of repatriated criminals. So he goes on TruthSocial and posts that, immediately, Colombia will get slapped with 25% tariffs, as well as visa revocations for ruling party members.
This causes an immediate reaction from Petro, the unpopular socialist leader of Colombia, who offers to fly convicts back to Colombia in his Presidential jet.
There is much celebration and dunking from Trump supporters.
Not so fast. It turns out Petro might have been drunk, because he later goes on to post this insane rant on Twitter and then threatens the U.S. with retaliatory tariffs.
Now the Democrats are celebrating (because obviously it's good to hurt Trump even if it's bad for America). We are driving Colombians into the arms of China! Who will work our coffee fields? That kind of stuff.
The evening goes on. Trump finishes golfing. Petro sobers up and probably gets some, um, interesting phone calls from prominent Colombians who will have to pull their daughters from American finishing schools. Petro apparently caves, as the White House posts this, announcing that Colombia will accept unlimited flights. No tariffs for now, but the visa restrictions remain in force until Colombia follows through.
It's hard not to see this as a massive win for Trump and for America as a whole. He accomplished more in a few minutes, while golfing, than a normal administration would in weeks. Sometimes you can just do stuff.
MSN reported it like this: Donald Trump starts massive diplomatic crisis with Colombia while playing round of golf.
I'm not sure what use 'soft power' is if you can't do something as simple as returning a country's citizens back to their homeland.
That's what all the liberals are whining about on twitter and reddit, about American international standing.
Not like they already hold America in contempt, and blame them for all their problems. Dumb South American leftists.
It feels like international relations majors are jerking themselves off to the concept of a rules based international order.
When you govern for results instead of the approval of an international global elite, the difference in outcomes is obvious.
I mean I think most liberals see standing and power and prestige as a dinner party kind of way. They see it as popularity, being invited to cool parties, and so on. It’s a false view of power and prestige in my view. You can like someone and laugh at them at the same time. You can think of them as wimps and fools and still invite them to parties.
Power, prestige and standing instead has to do with getting things done, and especially getting things done that the other party doesn’t necessarily want to do. If you have a boss who wants you to stay late, even though you wanted to go home, his power can compel you to stay, because he’s shown that defying him can put people in the doghouse. You don’t have to be mean about it, but you have to back up the words with consequences. I’ve seen this a lot because I have a lot of teachers in my family. If you don’t back up your words with consequences, the kids might like you, but you really only have control as long as your agenda matches with theirs. If you do, then you’ll have control and you can go on to maybe have fun or whatever you need to get done. But the minute a ten year old realizes there’s no bite behind the bark, he’ll just ignore the bark.
I’ve noticed this before too. I’d go further and say it’s not just the dinner party metaphor but a fixation on formal power.
This mainly manifests in my experience when discussing power dynamics between men and women. The idea that a pretty intern could have “power” over her boss simply does not compute. It’s a form of mistaking the map for the territory I think.
I agree with your definition as the ability to get things done, but that doesn’t yield as readily to systematic analyses and also I suspect doesn’t quite align with the story they want to tell.
I think there’s a category of error of reading too much into how things look on paper. Like another example I use is to ask whether or not an infant has power over her parents. To me the answer is obviously yes, but if you’re caught up in systemic analyses and legalism and dealing with formal “power structures” you will struggle to explain why or might even deny it outright.
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