Or are just fucked and perma kicked out of NATO and the UN? Or will we have to do a big World Wide Appology saying yes we fucked up but we are trying/will fix it.?
As a non-american, the speed with which trump has dismantled international relations and the lethargic (even non-existant) reaction of the “checks and balances” that should prevent such things says to me:
If America has done it once, America can do it again.
It can spend 30-50 years building strong relationships, or it can devastated them in 1-2 years.
Seems better to work without America, and let America do it’s own thing.
If America wants to join in, fine. But it’s gonna be on the world’s terms, not Americas.Trump is just a symptom of a country that’s been sick for years, especially since Bush. The relationship you had before and the position the US enjoyed is gone thanks to Trump setting fire to whatever soft power the US had left. All the middle powers, such as the UK, EU nations, Canada, Australia, South Korea etc are pivoting away from the US, strengthening trade with themselves and China and reducing reliance on US tech, US banking especially Mastercard and VISA, and US military equipment. The end of the petro-dollar has also begun.
First of all, I think none of us here have a true say about global partnerships with the US. That is gonna be a long complicated mess that is bound to be very loose agreements at best with no real structure behind it anymore. As such that people will talk about the UN like they talk about the League of Nations.
Also, we all want to agree on what is bad but we still don’t seem to have any idea of what “Good” is. No one is running on it. No one is pushing for good things, no one is changing. We see leaders everywhere pushing for everything to stay the same or to “get rid of the bad” as if that is a thing that can be done.
Until we actually all get better, this is just a slow dumb saunter into hell.
I don’t think there is a plan other than: Republicans will retain power at all costs. I don’t see anything changing for the positive.
If Democrats somehow do win, they’ll pull their usual “we need to look forward not backward” bullshit punishing no one. Fox News, Newsmax, OANN, hosts will have visually disturbing bloody strokes as they scream every night about how the Democrats are coming for you and you conservative beliefs and the Democrats will lose again in the very next election, continuing the decades long trend of: Republicans break everything, Democrats talk about fixing it, have no power, do nothing, and lose again.
I’m fun at parties. :/
And this is why true grass roots movements are so powerful, instead of co-opted movements. Our local election cycles just finished, and there were some decent changes that occurred with city council members, who voted in favor of data centers, getting handed their asses. But guess what. The turn out was record setting, yet abysmal, sitting somewhere around 18-22%. You start putting in real progressives into positions of power, and not fake ones, and changes start to be made (a full on data center blockade is in the works), which gets people to realize they actually have influence, which they then get more involved, and increases turn out in the next election.
We need to send a message to these centrist Democrats so they realize they need us WAY more than we need them or their pandering to fascists for money.
The next fix i would say is that news media needs to become federated and/or open sourced. I’m not sure what this looks like, but probably something like a mix of Ground News (i currently pay monthly for btw) and Patreon, where journalist post their stories to a decentralized platform, that people subscribe to them. Idk, that sounds like that could get clickbait-y. But i would be willing to cut a streaming service off, and give some of that to something that’s decentralized and not owned by some billionaire handing down memos about what can or cannot be mentioned in a story, or straight up axing a story all together.
Then we keep hammering at the injustices and calling the leadership out and spreading the word, and putting up better progressives in the next election cycle.
But to answer the original OP’s question, like you, i don’t think the current Dem leadership has the spine to actually prosecute Trump or any of his cronies and billionaire Epstein buddies, or take a few pages from Trump’s play book and go the low road to hold those fake news organizations liable for things they say erroneously, or to prosecute corrupt foreign governments who helped facilitate this current mess.
Progressives should continue putting forth bills and amendments that force Dem leadership’s hand to show the people how they vote, which to no one’s surprise, it’ll be the same handful of useful rotational idiots. Then progressives should spend every cent raised campaigning in those districts to primary every one of them.
From the perspective of a non-influential Canadian citizen, you need to clean house before trust can be restored.
You don’t trust a crack addict because they told you they’re clean. Trust needs to be rebuilt and it takes a lot of time and effort.
Your democracy is sick, and Trump is the symptom, not the problem.
We’re going to have to de-Nazify the entire system, from the leaders to the voters. Ban them from holding office, strip their voting rights, destroy the ability for wealthy individuals or special interests to buy politicians. There’s some good ideas at the core of American democracy, but we’ve not only fucked it up, there’s other countries that have come along since our founding and are doing it better. Strip the country to its bones, salvage what worked, fix what didn’t, and toss a lot of the hubris.
Canadian democracy has all the same problems as the USA. Housing crises, healthcare crisis, lack of economic growth for all but the top 10%, over-immigration, etc.
Y’all are just more polite about it. But you flip flop between two major parties that do nothing to improve things, and your third parties make a lot of noise, but also do nothing.
You aren’t wrong.
We’re stuck with the first past the post electoral system which is following the same route of falling into the 2 party trap. Corporations are buying those two parties and they are both further right than I think a lot of Canadians want, but the left leaning parties are a hard option to vote for, out of fear of the rightmost party getting the seat of power.
Trudeau did get elected originally on the promise of electoral reform with the NDP, but that promise was one of many he broke, and who knows how long before we can get it back as a voter issue.
Right now no one can get past the fear of economic uncertainty, which is being used by both the Liberals and Conservatives to ignore things that are much bigger in the long run, like climate change, and electoral stagnation.
Most 1st world democracies are stuck in this trap, because their voters won’t accept short term pain that is necessarily for long term gains. They won’t raise taxes, they won’t invest in long term capital projects, and they all want to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible and blow it on all hedonistic pleasure, hence why everyone seeks to financial everything and pursue asset value growth…
The problem being that asset growth makes the rich richer, and deprives those without assets from every having a piece of the pie. It also devalues labor…
The sad truth is if you made some bargain, like asset values deflate buy 25%, by salaries double over the next decade… the voters won’t ever accept it. Even if in the long run it would make everyone’s lives better. Because they want their homes and stocks to keep doubling in value every 10 years, even as the COL climbs 50% higher than inflation.
I think you’re forgetting some pretty key differences like ICE kidnappings, starting tariff wars, bombings, etc
You don’t have the capabilities to do any of that. Your navy can barely perform coastal patrol adequately…
Your military has been in shambles for 40 years, you have no border police, and your trade is still mostly natural resources…
your government systematically doesn’t develop your economy… and keeps doubling down on natural resource exports… which are 53% of your exports by value…
and your citizens get poorer and poorer…
Brother I don’t think you realize how much more messed up America is than Canada. No country is perfect but America has been in a state of complete chaos with no signs of slowing. Trump literally threatened genocide and you think you’re on the right side of history lol.
It’s not in chaos dude. You just pay way too much attention to Trump.
What should blow your mind is how despite Trump, our economy remains far better than pretty much every other developed economy… he’s trying really hard to drive it into a ditch and yet it still remains on the road. And how effective our courts and people have been at forcing him to back down repeatedly.
But don’t let that interrupt your doomer acceleration fantasy, I guess?
This was about the state of your democracy, you’re being a shining example of why your government is so corrupt. I promise you, nobody is impressed by your economy when your figurehead is an asshat. Americans are frequently ranked one of the most hated tourists around the world because of the personality you’re displaying. You guys had 10700 protests in 2025 alone and you still don’t see the chaos. That’s bewildering honestly.
Trump isn’t the disease, he’s just the most visible symptom.
Wilders still exists. Orban still exists. Netanyahu still exists. Weidel still exists. Putin still exists. Etc.
What I’ve come to understand is that even if Trump and MAGA become histories villains, with their ideology, ascetic, and personas become toxic and reviled, everyone will just forget after a few generations and it’ll happen all over again.
The only way to purge MAGA is to overcome American bigotry; the strongest god in the pantheon.
Unfortunately it’s not just a US thing anymore. Our far right cancer has spread.
UN: USA along with a few other countries have a veto. Anything they don’t like they can say no to and it will not pass. I’m not sure how you think you’d be kicked out.
NATO: has no provision for kicking out a member. The worst you can do and that can be done in return is that when article 5 is invoked US (or other allies) offer 3 copies of the book “the art of the deal” (other allies would offer the US how to win friends and influence people).
Are you old enough to remember the Iraq war in 2003 and the general sentiment among other western countries back then?
Yeah I don’t think there’s fixing what America’s got anymore. The country is orcs and people too morally weak to handle an orc problem. I don’t know about you but I need to look inward about why I fall into group 2 before considering what the country is in the context of the world.
At this point, it’s hard to say. It’s still a bit early in the presidential cycle to ask if anyone has a plan for post-trump. You won’t really see that rhetoric popping up until early 2028.
Is it possible/likely the next admin will be able to repair America’s reputation abroad? Again, hard to say at this point. Anyone telling you we’re all fucked forever or whatever is a silly doomer. Even someone worse than trump couldn’t dismantle the kind of influence/power America has diplomatically irreparably in such a short time. However, to help inform us of how things might look in the future; every region is the world has pivoted to moving to be more isolationist. Distrust and tensions are and will probably continue rising. Corporate capture is continuing to be a major worldwide problem. Conflict due to climate change is also on the rise. Many conservative movements, strongly encouraged by corporations, are doubling down on old tech in energy infrastructure and strongly pushing a [kinda] traditional nuclear family. Now without consequences, corporations are jumping hard into enshittification. Polarization in American politics just keeps getting worse and so much more stupid. I think these are many of the major issues that the trump admin has been directly responsible for either creating or making worse.
Many of the elements that are currently changing the political landscape because of the trump admin really falls into two major categories: alignment of foreign powers and the problem of domestic corporations. NATO is likely to survive as-is. However, Europe is not only talking about becoming more independent militarily, they’re already actively making it happen. NATO will still be the primary military alliance for the foreseeable future, but if the American government continues to prove unreliable and the EU military reorganization is successful enough, I don’t see NATO continuing to be relevant. As for the trump admin cozying up to dictatorial states, I don’t think those relationships are sustainable due to their very nature, let alone the kind of attitude a Democrat administration would have toward those countries. More neutral countries are finding the increasingly unstable nature of American politics as a kind of vindication. While they aren’t exactly running into China’s arms or whatever, they’re certainly using the time of trump’s second term to ‘play both sides’ and are building some economic goodwill with China. Optically, China is looking pretty alright right now. It’s nothing that will guarantee China true superpower status that the ccp seems to be so horny for, but they can be kinda comfortable with their current position. Their aggressive rhetoric and economic practices will continue to hold them back in the eyes of the rest of the world, though. Russia/Putin? lol.
So, all these things considered, America losing superpower status is extremely unlikely still. The dollar still reigns, the American military is still oversized, and American political influence is still very strong despite being weakened. Life in the west is still too comfortable to shake up the world order. While the trump admin is really fucking it up, the infrastructure to leave American hegemony is still fairly nonexistent. China is still not trustworthy and just not really built right for the task. It seems American allies are kinda holding their breath for the next admin to be more cooperative because they don’t have much of a choice. However, for Europe being put in this kind of position, it seems as though it was enough of a wakeup call for them to seriously make an effort to build themselves an exit. Canada is kinda geographically and economically stuck with the US. And Australia? lol, their government officials are basically just as unhinged as their American counterparts. While the political rhetoric of traditional US allies has been pretty vocal about permanent loss of trust in the US, it’s far from being so irrevocably broken as to kick the US out, less so because they don’t really want to leave, but more so because American power and it’s resilience tends to be underestimated somehow, realistic and desirable alternatives don’t exist, and the amount of damage trump can do/has done is usually blown wayyyy the fuck out of proportion. American hegemony isn’t under existential threat, but it has been weakened. Less like “THE CRACKS ARE SHOWING” and more like HP is at 95%. I’d keep an eye on how things develop over the next two years, but the needle only just showed it’s ability to move.
We need someone to stand up and be a leader.
Obama was. Biden wasn’t. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious break-out political star like Obama or Clinton was. Both of whom were rather radical candidates for their time.
And doesn’t look like there is any successor to Trump, who also won on star-power.
Weirdly, the pols and campaign managers don’t seem to understand that to get people to vote… your candidate has to be likable and relatable and have a clear message. Probably because they are all well-off professionals living in the DC bubble, totally detached from the ordinary voters who decide elections.
