David Nakamura and Ashley Parker look at Putin puppet Donald "Rump" Trump's trip to Asia as proof that, with Rump's withdrawal from the Trans- Pacific Partnership in particular, the U.S. is now "America alone":
But on the 295th day of his presidency — during a trip to the region where the trade pact was most vital — a competing narrative emerged. Trump’s “America first” slogan has, in many ways, begun to translate into something more akin to “America alone.”
As the president’s motorcade wove up a mountain road Saturday to a regional summit in the Vietnamese city of Danang, news broke that the 11 nations that had once looked to U.S. leadership to seal the deal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership had moved on without the United States and announced a tentative agreement among themselves.
It marked a stunning turnabout that foreign-policy analysts warned could further erode U.S. standing at a time when China is embarked on a major economic expansion and further undermine global confidence in the United States’ ability to organize the world around its own liberal values.Liberal values? From someone who wants us to believe Putin's version of election meddling versus the entire U.S. intelligence community? This trip was a complete bust in all aspects, from Rump getting his fragile ego massaged while getting played in the most transparent and laughable ways, to getting sidelined with no trade deals, to the aforementioned backstabbing of the American intelligence community, to his playing footsie with violent Philippine human rights abuser Duterte. Well done, "f*cking moron."
Our friend P.E.C. drew our attention to a great long- read article in The Atlantic by Kurt Anderson, "How America Lost Its Mind." From the magical thinking and love of conspiracy theories, to the related abandonment of empirical and critical thinking ("post- truth" and "alternate facts") by vast numbers of Americans (not sparing the left, by the way), Anderson examines the past 50 years and identifies when the right became unhinged and why:
One reason, I think, is religion. The GOP is now quite explicitly Christian. The party is the American coalition of white Christians, papering over doctrinal and class differences—and now led, weirdly, by one of the least religious presidents ever. If more and more of a political party’s members hold more and more extreme and extravagantly supernatural beliefs, doesn’t it make sense that the party will be more and more open to make-believe in its politics? [snip]
Religion aside, America simply has many more fervid conspiracists on the right, as research about belief in particular conspiracies confirms again and again. Only the American right has had a large and organized faction based on paranoid conspiracism for the past six decades. [snip] The right has had three generations to steep in this, its taboo vapors wafting more and more into the main chambers of conservatism, becoming familiar, seeming less outlandish. Do you believe that “a secretive power elite with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government”? Yes, say 34 percent of Republican voters, according to Public Policy Polling.Anderson also scores the rise of the post- Fairness Doctrine right- wing media conglomerates and the advent of the internet that enabled "full Fantasyland" in politics. It's a really comprehensive dive into what took us to where we are today, and also offers Anderson's thoughts about what can be done at this point.
Finally, we always like to recommend the link round- up pulled together by fellow blogger Infidel 753 for its wide- ranging and eclectic mix of topics. Check it out.
