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.

  • @Catma
    28•2 days ago

    I dont think he makes it 4 years. He is just the means to an end. Vance i think 25th amendments him Jan 21, 2027. That way he wont serve 2 years and can run for 2 full terms. Its that or they just kill him. Dems will 100% get the blame and it could get even worse.

    I think it is if you serve more than half a term it counts as 1 term for purposes of the 2 term limit.

    • @AngryRobot
      23•2 days ago

      You’re cute that you think we’ll have elections again. Before the midterms, they’ll run a false flag operation so they can declare martial law and cancel elections.

      “If I’m elected, you’ll never have to vote again!”

      • @RiccosuaveEnglish
        7•2 days ago

        This has been my thought lately as well. Donald Trump is simply a convenient means to an end. He is so ignorant and narcissistic that he will never see it coming when he is eventually given the Julius Caesar treatment by the techno-fascists.

        The real oligarchy that is actually wealthy instead of pretend wealthy is chomping at the bit to get in the big chair permanently. Now that there is ample precedent with multiple assassination attempts on Donald Trump’s life, all they need to do is have him assassinated for real, declare martial law as you said, and then install their chosen dictator as the public lever puller.

        They can blame this on whatever patsy is most convenient to allow them to swiftly tighten controls on an unsuspecting public. The ironic part being that in a twisted turn of fate, we may eventually end up in a situation where some of the people who got deported turn out to be the lucky ones. As Aimé Césaire warned, fascism is colonialism turned inwards, and whatnot…

    • @Mirshe
      19•2 days ago

      This, of course, assumes he doesn’t just drop dead of any one of a dozen age-related health issues one day.

      • @[email protected]English
        14•2 days ago

        If Trump dies in office, I’d prefer it to be a lighning strike while he’s golfing.

        Something that even the craziest of the MAGAts can’t get away with blaming on the democrats.