The news isn't threatening allies, offending/mocking them, charging tariffs, subverting the very institutions that have been built together. A human in charge is.

In any case, they cannot be repaired without a change in the US political system to a representative and stable (in foreign policy) democracy.

As long as the system allows for complete 180 degree turns every 4 years making any arrangement bears little value.

Business and friendship is built on long term horizons of stability. If that's not possible, we can only adapt.

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ericmay a day ago | parent [-]

> The news isn't threatening allies, offending/mocking them, charging tariffs, subverting the very institutions that have been built together. A human in charge is.

No but they're getting you to click on every article where Trump is SLAMMED and Marcon is TOASTED and Canada RETALIATES or whatever.

> As long as the system allows for complete 180 degree turns every 4 years making any arrangement bears little value.

That's not true and nobody has ever really treated it as such. The entire history of the United States has pretty much operated by making changes every 4 years. I'm not sure the US has really executed 180 degree turns, but even so sometimes it's necessary to make abrupt changes because acting too slowly could be very dangerous. For whatever it's worth I'd hate to see Donald Trump elected to, idk, some 20-year term as president in the name of not making changes every 4 years.

Aside from that, this cuts both ways. You can't throw everything away after decades of helpful, and peaceful cooperation just because of 8 out of 12 years being annoying. There is no stability in that - it's just "agree with me or I go away" which isn't good for long-term relationships.

> In any case, they cannot be repaired without a change in the US political system to a representative and stable (in foreign policy) democracy.

To be clear we operate a representative and stable democracy in the United States. Other countries may not like our actions, but suggesting that US action == destabilization implies that any action that any entity takes is also destabilizing. Things don't happen in a vacuum.

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bdangubic a day ago | parent | next [-]

> To be clear we operate a representative and stable democracy in the United States.

We most certainly do not, the system is just nicely setup to make us believe that this is the case. In 2020 for instance, we were given an amazing choice to choose between a senile grandpa and the most vile and corrupt human being ever to walk the earth. all us elections boil down to this, the establishment decides who their 'best one' is at any given time and you get to choose A vs. B. there isn't a single other country on the planet where this is the case that calls itself a democracy. it is one step removed from china and russia, we just get one more choice than they do :)

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ericmay a day ago | parent [-]

Well, in that case I’d say our version of Democracy is just the better one and European democracies are just one step away from Russia/China and are very unstable and unrepresented in comparison to the US because of the EU.

We have only 720 members of the EU parliament representing over 600 million people. In the US we have more people representing fewer people, ergo we are more representative.

How is the president of the EU chosen? Is it a direct election across all citizens of the EU?

Don’t mistake gigantic bureaucracies for representative democracy.

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bdangubic 14 hours ago | parent [-]

EU is not a country :)

	▲	ericmay 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I didn’t claim that it was n_n

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epolanski a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> To be clear we operate a representative and stable democracy in the United States.

It's not a representative democracy.

A representative democracy is one where all voters are represented in a branch of government.

The US system is exactly the opposite. It's a winner-takes-all democracy. At all levels. And worse, the executive represents only the half that voted him, the other half don't exist.

There's many other flaws in presidential and semi presidential republics but they are beyond the topic of representative democracies.

And no, the US is clearly not stable on foreign politics.

> You can't throw everything away after decades of helpful, and peaceful cooperation just because of 8 out of 12 years being annoying.

It's a decision that's been made in Washington to revert decades of successful cooperation. We're merely reacting to the new reality.

> That's not true and nobody has ever really treated it as such.

That's a very US-centric way of looking at this. American exceptionalism is cultural, it's not tied to a specific administration.

> I'm not sure the US has really executed 180 degree turns, but even so sometimes it's necessary to make abrupt changes because acting too slowly could be very dangerous.

You don't build international and economic relations with abrupt changes.

Business and diplomatic relations require predictability, stability, trust.

Also, be careful thinking that "acting slowly" is the worst that can happen in a mature democracy.

Giving individuals the capability of acting fast and with little limits might be the most dangerous one. Each presidential republic is merely waiting for the right Erdogan, Trump or Putin to break it.

I'd rather keep our slow and inefficient European democracies where prime ministers have to win the trust of the parliament and their own party every single day with all the bad that comes with it, if the alternatives are what I see around the world.

	▲	ericmay a day ago \| parent [-]
		> It's not a representative democracy. It's a winner-takes-all one. In US the executive is one single individual representing only those who voted him. Sometimes it's even a minority vote like in Trump #1. The US is literally a representative democracy as a matter of fact and definition. Winner-take-all in contested elections does not make the US not a representative democracy. > And no, the US is clearly not stable on foreign politics No country is then. > It's a decision that's been made in Washington to revert decades of successful cooperation. We're merely reacting to the reality. Ok then we should just do whatever we want and who cares about alliances or whatever. Withdraw troops, normalize trade relations with Russia, take over Greenland, whatever. All the decades of successful cooperation are nearby reverted and so we can now take different actions with that in mind. > That's not how you build stable relations, trust and business. In that case any time a country or bloc takers abruptly actions they now no longer are building stable relations, trust, and business. For example if the EU takes an abrupt action we can make this same claim. > Also, I really don't agree with your view of the "acting slowly". What is my view that you disagree with? > We don't need big changes, but small compounding ones. Maybe. Sometimes you need big changes. Like climate change. We need to make big changes (at least in my view) to address it because small changes won’t save us in time.