The post WWII system was imperfect in many ways, but it was also mutually beneficial and worked out pretty well despite the problems.

And we're throwing that all out the window.

US military bases aren't what made those countries modern, prosperous, democratic places. It took the will of the people to rebuild something better after the war.

Britain essentially ceded its bases to the US at the end of WWII - these things aren’t as durable as they may seem.

It'd be nice to avoid that part.

Japan's economics are mostly rooted in population issues. Have you ever been? Even though wages are stagnant, the people are among the healthiest in the world and they're known for the way their society's public services ACTUALLY work.

Not sure about Italy, but Germany, while not without its problems, is a beacon of democracy, progressivism, and self-correction.

> Germany is still extremely weird about anything to do with Jews

> I've never been to Italy but they don't seem very productive either.

Ok green poster. You need to look up more about world economies if you are going to confidently say things like Italy isn’t that productive. Combined with your comment on Jews in Germany I just assume you’re here to push propaganda, but if not please read up more on Italian economic output compared to, I don’t know, maybe the G7 countries?

Their economy lifted a bunch of people out of poverty. That's positive.

However, in terms of 'democracy' they're still way worse off than the US right now, even if the US is headed in a bad direction.

>Oh but they put down a few solar panels

the few solar panels in question are a united kingdom worth of green energy each year, about a royal navy worth of marine tonnage every two and they lifted more people out of poverty over the span of two generations than most of the rest of the world combined. Shenzhen produces about 70% of the entire world's consumer drones, now the primary weapon on both sides of the largest military conflict in the world. Xiaomi, a company founded in 2010 15 years ago decided to make electric cars in 2021 and is now successfully selling them.

As Adam Tooze has pointed out it's the single most transformative place in the world, if you're not trying to learn from it you're choosing to ignore the most important place in the 21st century for ideological reasons

I used to pretend China wasn't absolutely smashing the USA, but it looks like it is. They basically make everything modern civilization relies on, that's an insane amount of leverage over the rest of the world. That combined with renewables and nuclear and their diminishing need for foreign oil because of that is pretty incredible.

They're also speedrunning a world class power distribution system and deploying a massive amount of renewable power amoung a whole mess of other infrastructure. They've got the ability to focus an entire nation into achieving technical goals and they're rapidly improving quality of life in average while maintaining an industrial base that the US can only remember fondly. They might not meet western standards for individual freedoms and rule of law, but they're undoubtedly a rising world power.

This doesn't make much sense. Since the late 19th century, every country that got rich also heavily polluted the environment, though increasingly less over time. As it stands, fossil fuel demand in China has plateaued. The "wage suppression" thing also doesn't track; their citizens got much, much richer since Nixon's visit, despite being on average poorer than Westerners. Their GDP per capita is low because there's like a billion of them in the country.

The only thing to say is that it's still authoritarian. Once that gets a hold of a country, it's very difficult to shed off. Interestingly, both South Korea and Singapore shifted away from being dictatorships and were not ideologically socialist. Countries taken over by Communists remain authoritarian. The true believers will never give that up.

> They're polluting

They absolutely are, but per capita, USA is polluting 49.67 % more than China.

Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/carbon-fo...

The latter, but both for sure.

This is an intellectually dishonest response. The person I responded to clearly attempts to place blame on one side, ignoring the facts of when the violation of norms began. It does matter that one side has destroyed all norms.

People only think nothing improved because thats what Republicans are saying. Anyone even mildly politically informed can see the progress that happens under Democrat leadership.

They have that in Saudi Arabia too but I would not want to live there. Set higher standards.

> neither are the candidates that are getting the most national attention like Talarico

It's a pretty close race with some recent polling indicating that Crockett will win the primary. Impossible to tell though. I clock her as being a more traditional democrat ultimately policy wise.

I'd expect she or Talarico has a good shot at winning in TX. They both have the potential to pivot to a more traditional position in the general election.

My main concern is the current elected leaders of the democrats and how the incoming dems view them. Frankly, if a candidate isn't saying "we need to oust Schumer/Jeffries" then I take that as a pretty decent signal that they align close enough with the moderate position to worry me about the future party.

I worry about the actions of the dems after election. I think they'll win the midterms, maybe even take the senate. I even think there's a good shot that they win 2028 presidental elections. The problem is that I think they'll run a biden style presidency and future campaigns once they get in power. That will setup republicans for an easy win in 2030 and 2032.

If Democrats actually knew how to message on what they accomplished instead of letting the other side control the narrative and refocus everything on to fringe issues that only the fringe of the party cares about, as well as matching every Biden brain fart/stutter/"senior moment" with the equivalents from Trump, I suspect a Biden vs. Trump rematch would have been a Biden victory.

But they suck at that. And when they failed to convince Biden to drop out early, they should have stuck with him and just ran hard on actual accomplishments during the admin. But Harris was a last minute pivot and it showed. I think she would have been perfectly fine as a president, and I voted for her, but not surprised in the slightest that she lost - and I expected her to lose bigger than she did.

The fact that Trump couldn't even get half the popular vote when running against a last minute ticket change that was never selected to be the presidential candidate by the party she was representing is a pretty big indictment of how unpopular he really is.

I think there's been learning that you can't just be "not Trump", but yeah - I don't know that the party in general has any idea how to handle messaging and narratives.