The Republican’s second presidential term heralds a more inward-looking US where resentment has replaced idealism and nobody wins without someone else losing

After one Trump presidency and on the eve of another, it is now clear that a once mighty global superpower is allowing its gaze to turn inward, to feed off resentment more than idealism, to think smaller.

Public sentiment – not just the political class – feels threatened by the flow of migrants once regarded as the country’s lifeblood. Global trade, once an article of faith for free marketeers and architects of the postwar Pax Americana, is now a cancer eating away at US prosperity – its own foreign invasion.

Military alliances and foreign policy no longer command the cross-party consensus of the cold war era, when politics could be relied upon to “stop at the water’s edge”, in the famous formulation of the Truman-era senator Arthur Vandenberg.

Now the politics don’t stop at all, for any reason. And alliances are for chumps.

  • @tburkhol
    28•3 days ago

    There’s a lot more than Fox out there echoing the narrative that times are hard, inflation is killing you, and there aren’t enough homes to go around. Wapo and NYT would happily recount Trump’s claims that it’s because immigrants are taking all the houses and jobs while Biden policies are making everything expensive. Doesn’t matter if they follow up with long-winded explanations that his claims aren’t true, because most people stop listening when they hear there’s someone to blame.

    • @PoopSpiderman
      13•3 days ago

      You make excellent points. The divide in this country was well researched, and well planned. The fears, and insecurities of the conservative base have been coddled, and amplified to great effect.

      • @nomous
        12•3 days ago

        You see and hear it all the time, the “news” repeats the lie and says something like “and while there’s some truth to that, what’s more impactful…”

        So they sort of disputed it but not really and they got to repeat the lie.

        Trump was right about one thing, the media are not our friend. They’ve profited from him at every step, propped him up, coddled him, both sides of the media are complicit. When the pogroms start, I hope the talking head media elite are on the lists.