Hacker News Reader

Comment by jorblumesea | Hacker News Reader

You're witnessing the collapse of American soft power, economic power, and our transition to an authoritarian isolationist state. Some of us accept it while others still have to grasp the situation.

The death of the post cold war neoliberal world order and the death of the American century. to be replaced by... ?

View on HN

The thing that I find strange about it is that it's being pursued actively, from the inside, as opposed to it being forced on them by an stringer outside force (ie. China). The US has chosen to retract from it's global power and influence.

Mind-blowing, except, kinda-sorta, for the fact that the effort is helmed by a (short-term thinking) businessman rather than a seasoned politician with familiarity with, or even the ability to consider, long term consequences of actions and decisions and the interplay of other countries and their leaders.

Nearly every decision made since the late seventies has been with the intention of making the most money in the shortest amount of time. Not just in government. In everyday people’s lives, in companies.

And it always fails long term. We lose so, so much and then we just ignore it and do it again. We’re getting to a point where we don’t even remember where we started.

This has been a long time coming, IMO. You can only be selfish for so long before you implode. If everyone is selfish, you’re living on borrowed time.

Oh, Russia is still the outside force pulling Trump's puppet strings. They just did such a good propaganda job with "Russia Russia Russia" that people are afraid to say it.

Based on trump's wants around Canada and Greenland it doesn't sound like you'll be very isolationist, more like a bully.

China will benefit the most from this. Europe has zero interest in backing up the US in a fight for Pacific dominance. Good luck trying to form a trading block that excludes China now.

I think this is exactly right, but very discordian. It shouldn't happen, it makes no sense. No country in the world has benefited more from the post cold war, neoliberal world order, than the US. It's the very foundation of all of America's wealth and power. It makes zero sense why the imperialist-core would willingly step down from it's bloody iron throne it has worked for 80 years to create for itself. What was the point of it all then? All the wars, all the coups, all the covert-action, all the forced liberalization, the neocolonialism and the establishment of the liberal world order?

If this is genuinely what is happening, this can only be some sort of hostile takeover enabled by the legitimate grievances in the domestic depoliticized populations. Neoliberalism made itself vulnerable to be destroyed from within, it's greed went too far, the inequities to much to be sustainable, the post-political ideology became so extreme that it forgot the old lessons of empire, bread and circuses.

Or as Merkel and Thatcher said, "There is no alternative". Wanna bet?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com