One more of these things.
The problem with Trump is the same as always: he just adamantly refuses to represent his base, on anything. He’ll do everything but that of course, and he’ll do all of that with as much effort as he can muster. But when it comes to doing the things that the people who voted for him actually might like, he sits there and does nothing.
In that sense, he’s like the rest of them, in that he just doesn’t care about anyone besides himself, and perhaps his immediate family of course.
Our foreign policy still doesn’t make sense. Nobody knows who we’re fighting or why, or why we’re even fighting at all. That whole Russia/ISIS confusion is just such a perfect symbol of this. Which of these two is our enemy? Do we stand against Russian secularism or fanatical Islam? Does anyone even know? Is it even possible to tell?
It’s just confusing as hell, and frustrating beyond belief for others to even figure out what we’re doing, anymore. Case in point: Germany, who is pushing the US out for a rapprochement with Moscow, which is something I talked about as being inevitable on twitter like 5 years ago.
Nobody gets what we’re even doing, anymore. We’re attacking everybody in the world, all at once, for no logical reason.
The problem here is the one I keep talking about, over and over again, which is that the US oligarchs refuse to compromise on anything, even a small amount. They will not even consider budging on any one issue, even an inch. It kills…. everything. It destroys any hope of a successful agreement with anyone.
And it isn’t just international. It’s domestic. Time and time again, decade after decade, generation after generation, the people here in the US express their interest for reduced immigration. They try over and over again to make their point heard, to put their ideas out there, and they get nothing, ever, for their efforts. It’s baffling and endlessly frustrating. Even Trump, who is literally only in office because of this one issue, has refused to budge an inch on immigration after being sworn in.
It’s amazing, really. It just is. If Trump had just built the wall, like everyone in the country wanted him to, and like I recommended he do, he would have left office as one of our most beloved Presidents ever, regardless of his other actions. But instead, he worked on… a whole bunch of idiotic crap that nobody wanted or cared about, like Trumpcare, the Jesus nonsense, and other stupidities. He literally did everything besides the one thing that would have immediately and permanently made him one of the most popular Presidents in American history. Logically, it’s baffling to the point where one suspects deliberate sabotage of his own base, you know, like every GOP President has done since WWII.
And so it goes, exasperatingly, endlessly. The ruling families here are trapped within their own little opulent bubbles. They’re so trapped that their isolation seems to have driven then insane, so they lash out at everyone, everywhere. And so the world turns to others, then.
So China and Russia forge ahead with their own projects, which are built on compromise and LISTENING to others- and most especially, listening to those people within their own borders- and the world turns to them, instead. And so the US sinks further and further, with each passing day, down into the morass of the third world. Every day that passes now, this country more closely resembles a tinpot South American narco state rather than a developed nation.
The comparisons to late-collapse Rome are still poignant, too, with the Jesus stuff still on my mind, here. Late Rome tried a bunch of tricks to keep their empire together in it’s final stages, with the forcing of Christianity on the public being one of them. It was a way for them to try to enforce a kind of universal conformity on the too-diverse and upset people of Rome. Ultimately, it failed, for the same reasons that it will fail here, too. Because fairy tales are a poor substitute for fixing real problems.
The whole point of this essay is just that there’s no talking with these people. The oligarchs, I mean. The ruling families and the rich people. Nobody can even sit down and discuss anything with them.
So, they don’t.