281–290 of 338 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, so apparently the claim that "no one will ever trust the US or their commitments again" means that businesses and governments will still enter into all manner of trades and alliances and business arrangements with the US, but in their heart of hearts, they won't actually trust the US?
Yes, but it will be much more expensive and inefficient compared to the trades and alliances with nations that are trusted. Basically the US is a failed state. Functioning nations can make agreements that survive leadership changes. The US is not one of those.
Makes sense.
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Trump is certainly the most overtly corrupt and immoral US president in history. But I try to focus on policies rather than their personalities. I'd rather see $1 billion lost to graft than $100 billion lost to bad policy. But I'll admit, Trump's flagrancy makes it hard to ignore. I'm generally libertarian or classic liberal, so I agree with maybe 70% of Republican policy and 30% of Democratic policy (assuming those…
Maybe I'm really uninformed but classic liberal and libertarian are polar opposites. Republican policy is insanely archaic and constrains human freedoms much more that Democrats, so I'm struggling to see how a libertarian could support the guys putting militarized unaccountable secret police into our cities to terrorize and kill Americans. They're also much more into thought crimes than Dems, so I'm really wondering…
Militarized police is definitely one of the areas I disagree with Republicans on, along with abortion restrictions.
As for thought crimes, it's a toss up IMO, but I view Democrats as more likely to try to legislate against them.
I'd like federal government to be a whole lot smaller with more things being left up to state and local governments, so that's why I tend to side with Republican policy more often, but they're not much better either.
Curious: are there any republicans left on HN? I have no concept of how you can defend this
If most were being honest, they would probably admit that the corrupt behavior like this is bad, but that the overall balance of good vs bad policy decisions still favor having Republicans in power vs Democrats.
Some examples:
- Starting a war with Iran even after being warned about consequences including the Strait of Hormuz and having the US in a worse position now than before.
- Deciding to end birthright citizenship, allowing race-based stops, and a slew of unconstitutional actions that are helped along by a GOP-appointed SCOTUS majority. This includes rulings under shadow docket so they don't have to explain themselves.
- Literally pretending the 2020 election was stolen and creating legislation like forcing states to provide voter data and targeting election results in a very partisan way.
- A hodgepodge of tariffs that seem to change at the whim of Trump and exert significant complications downstream including inflation.
- Undermining public funding of US research in the sciences in what seems to be an unconstitutional manner. Examples include withholding granted funds based on political interference.
- Completely politicizing DOJ and many other critical government departments to the point that even conservative career government employees resign noting politicization of their offices. This is one reason we see such obvious corruption -- because the watchdogs can't investigate let alone prosecute people favored by this administration (e.g., Epstein files).
- Degrading US health care policy substantially with RFK Jr and bad appointments in a number of positions.
All of the above are well-supported by court cases, investigative reporting, and even official declarations by this administration. What happened to the fundamental belief in the GOP of executive restraint, state vs fed power, fiscal discipline, free-market trade, rule of law, and democracy?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, so apparently the claim that "no one will ever trust the US or their commitments again" means that businesses and governments will still enter into all manner of trades and alliances and business arrangements with the US, but in their heart of hearts, they won't actually trust the US?
Think of it this way: You loan a friend $5k. They promise to pay it back. They don't. You may still hang out! But you may never loan them money again unless they give meaningful evidence they've changed. The US probably has one concrete chance left to prosecute, convict, and jail these folks to rebuild trust. My vibe from the Democrats is that they'll whiff that opportunity.
Don't get me wrong, I loathe Trump and what his band of nutjobs has done to this country. The damage is deep and long-lasting.
But we're not quite yet a global pariah that no one will touch with a ten foot pole, nor are we (as some other commenter hilariously suggested) a failed state. Not yet. Not really even close.
Honestly, these discussions usually look more to me like what people wish was true, probably because they're both angry and powerless, than any kind of sober assessment of reality.
All that said, it'll be interesting to look back on this moment in a decade or two and see where it was going. History is notoriously difficult to predict.
EDIT in response to your links below: of course these all have been impacted!
We're talking about the claim that "Nobody and no country will trust the US or their commitments ever again."
Which is nonsensical, as proven by all your handy stats showing that many, many people, companies, and countries still trust the US.
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it's also likely that some (but not all) historians will put the peak of the American Empire in the 1960's somewhere Based on what metric?
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/61z8jv/oecd_life_...
The health care cost one is so dumb I won't even bother with it.
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https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/61z8jv/oecd_life_...
Yes, historians notoriously focus all of their analysis of the rise and fall of an entire country on the ratio of worker pay to productivity. The health care cost one is so dumb I won't even bother with it.
There's… substantially more than one chart on that page.
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Think of it this way: You loan a friend $5k. They promise to pay it back. They don't. You may still hang out! But you may never loan them money again unless they give meaningful evidence they've changed. The US probably has one concrete chance left to prosecute, convict, and jail these folks to rebuild trust. My vibe from the Democrats is that they'll whiff that opportunity.
But...countries, individuals, and companies the world over are loaning the US money right now . They're trading with the US, they're doing joint military exercises, they're forming new alliances, they're visiting the US, they're sending their kids to school here, they're buying real estate here. Don't get me wrong, I loathe Trump and what his band of nutjobs has done to this country. The damage is deep and long-lasti…
Some of them to protect against us! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Arctic_Endurance (Which, for the record, is pretty new, at least for NATO.)
> they're visiting the US
Staggering dip in US tourism is a troubling sign for the future: https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/25/travel/analysis-tourism-fewer...
> they're sending their kids to school here
https://time.com/article/2026/05/12/us-university-higher-edu...
"Foreign student enrollment at U.S. universities for the 2026 spring semester fell by 20% from last spring, according to a new report by organizations including U.S.-based international education nonprofit NAFSA."
> they're buying real estate here
https://www.newsweek.com/foreign-buyers-flee-u-s-housing-but...
"Foreign buyers continue fleeing the U.S. housing market, with their activity falling 14 percent between April 2025 and March 2026 to the second-lowest level since the National Association of Realtors (NAR) started tracking purchases in 2009."
> Honestly, these discussions usually look more to me like what people wish was true…
Indeed! See above.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, historians notoriously focus all of their analysis of the rise and fall of an entire country on the ratio of worker pay to productivity. The health care cost one is so dumb I won't even bother with it.
Scroll bar doesn't work, huh? There's… substantially more than one chart on that page.
I would assume that you can take virtually any society that goes through rapid change over the course of a few decades and make all manner of cherry-picked charts like this. Just ignore all the charts with shapes that don't fit your hypothesis (like they show divergence way outside 1971, or gasp, they show positive changes!).
Honestly, I find the attitude that the best times in America were 50-60 years ago to be baffling.
So let me ask it this way: you can be born at a random place as a random person in America. You can't control your gender, your race, your sexual orientation, your intelligence, your socioeconomic standing, your family, your health, nothing. The only thing you can pick is the year.
What year are you going to choose?
I'd love a serious answer too. I never seem to get one that supports the idea that America's best days are behind us, but maybe you'll provide some reasoning.
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Scroll bar doesn't work, huh? There's… substantially more than one chart on that page.
Fair, I did not see that :) I would assume that you can take virtually any society that goes through rapid change over the course of a few decades and make all manner of cherry-picked charts like this. Just ignore all the charts with shapes that don't fit your hypothesis (like they show divergence way outside 1971, or gasp , they show positive changes!). Honestly, I find the attitude that the best times in America we…
2012, as long as I can bring some news articles with me, to convince people that https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/10/473709316... was, if anything, understating things.