That's an odd take. The thing that's going to make China think twice would be good relations with Europe, and a joint willingness to isolate China if it comes to that. I don't know any politicians on the left or center who are hostile to Europe.

China's relative advantage is like a club level tennis player: all you need to win is to make fewer dumb errors.

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FloorEgg 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As an outsider with no loyalty to any US political party it looks to me like both sides are weakening US hegemony in entirely different ways and have been for a while now. It's also clear there are two distinct incompatible realities projected via the media, and the Americans who only expose themselves to one of the realities only judge, and therefore can't empathize, with the other.

I'm sure that anyone who is e.g. a Democrat is offended by me saying that I've noticed the both sides weakening the US and will want me to list examples, but I'm not going to do that because anytime I have in the past people respond with extreme hostility instead of curiosity. If you don't agree with me that's fine move along.

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atmavatar 12 hours ago | parent [-]

> it looks to me like both sides are weakening US hegemony in entirely different ways and have been for a while now.

That's a pretty bold claim, especially insofar as it (perhaps unintentionally) sounds like you're claiming both parties have weakened the US to the same degree.

It wouldn't surprise me if you listed out some ways in which Democrat incompetence has hurt US soft power, since screwing up is kinda their thing. However, given what Trump has done in his two terms so far, it's a tough sell that the two parties are playing the same sport, let alone fall into the same league in terms of damage wrought. It sounds like a strong application of Murc's Law absent your actual list.

My insider's view is that the Republican party will burn my house down, while the Democrats will form a committee that concludes they cannot send a fire truck to put it out and they absolutely cannot hold the responsible Republican members accountable unless they can get bipartisan support. Both need to go, but I have no illusions that one isn't better than the other.

1. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=murc%27s+law

	▲	FloorEgg 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm just one person in another country (outside the us) who is exposed to the information I'm exposed to. I have the benefit of sitting back, relatively unattached, and being curious about what is going on. I'm well aware that what I don't know far exceeds what I do know. From speaking to my US friends who span several states and both parties, and are all intelligent, kind, and thoughtful people, it really seems like the US is being ripped apart - and people who are on one side or the other aren't really seeing the full picture, likely by design. To what degree the leadership is involved in the ripping is really impossible for me to know. I look at one place and it looks one way, I look at another place and it looks another way, and the ways it looks are mostly incompatible with each other. The one consistency I see no matter where I look is that we as in all of us living in western democracies are being divided, trust is being attacked and game theory lose-lose is being promoted. There are pockets of resistance, but the consistent theme is of dissolution. So I may ask some question that comes off as weird, it's because I'm skeptical of whatever media says and asking questions I haven't heard anyone else ask - mostly just to poke at reality and see what happens.

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lovich 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You don’t know if any politicians who are hostile to Europe via threatening to annex Greenland, not recognize the UK’s sovereign claims to the Falkland Islands, or literally stealing their money after the Swiss put a pause on advanced payments for missile systems that were going to be delayed for 4-5 years?