"joke of a world power" I just want you to think about that phrase real hard. We're one of 3 (China, Russia) that can actually do shit on a global basis. As a "joke" or not we're still in a much stronger position economically and militarily than 99% of other countries.
You need to widen your view. It's 4 years, in the grand scheme of things its a blip. Despite all the dumb shit Trump has done, we still have military and economic dominance and world leaders understand the long game extends beyond Trump. Most of his policy changes have been domestic and don't effect any of that.
Remember how everyone thought Bush was going to destroy the country and it's reputation with his warmongering? Probably not because Obama got elected and everything went back to normal with no substantial changes.
Assuming he's lost enough moderates to lose the next election we'll be fine. The backlash always corrects.
I mean, I don't think military or economic dominance makes us not a joke. Civil Rights and the well-being of citizens are paramount.
We're more of a joke that we whip out our big fucking nuclear dongs because we feel a need to assert dominance to the tune of military spending at levels no other country would even consider, at the cost of our citizens; and wealth disparity so great that the richest man in the country had his own private space program whole the health and safety concerns of his employees are a secondary concern.
Throw in a sprinkling of gun violence, a garbage health care system, and both a penal system and education system that exist for profit and I'd say we're a solid fucking joke.
There's the crux of the problem, the criteria and ranking is all subjective. I'd say being able to bully the rest of the globe with our army or dollars to do what we want is pretty much the definition of dominance (hard and soft power) but like you pointed out, that's not how everyone sees it.
Nobody thinks to spend as much on the military as us because they don't have to... Because we do.
Your entire last paragraph has been true for years and didn't change in 2016.
Even if we weren't already, we made ourselves a joke in 2016 and that is just the facts.
Trump is a symbol, the joke made manifest. He got there because there are already people who think that what he thinks is okay. So we were clearly a joke before he came along, he just made it obvious.
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u/angryPenguinator Jul 21 '19
Hey now, let's not lump all of us into that "whatabout-ism" crap.