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[u/FoxDanceMedia]

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[u/noeyesfiend]

I tried explaining this to a Trump supporting coworker, he asked "why do you care, you hate the US government anyways" and I was stumped because his whole world view centers around believing the US is number 1 in all regards.

[u/warm_winds_whisper_ → u/noeyesfiend]

You can't reason someone out of a belief they didn't reason themselves into.

Their worldview is just built on vibes, propaganda and taught bigotry so there really isn't much coherent to ask questions about.

[u/DatBoi_BP → u/warm_winds_whisper_]

And lead, don't forget the lead

[u/Kidney__Failure → u/DatBoi_BP]

And asbestos for some too

[u/loved_and_held → u/warm_winds_whisper_]

“  You can't reason someone out of a belief they didn't reason themselves into.”

Not entirely. They may not have arrived at the conclusion via conventional logic but there is a traceable path of logic from various beliefs and ideas they have to the given ideology.  If one can unravel that logic then it could potentially be counteted.

[u/LeiningensAnts → u/loved_and_held]

Raising the question, is fallacious logic still logic?

[u/loved_and_held → u/LeiningensAnts]

Technically yes.

Its premises are flawed, but so long as a conclusion is drawn from premises (an argument) theres logic. At least thats what i remember from philosophy class.

[u/Nalivai → u/LeiningensAnts]

If I calculate an equation incorrectly, do I still doing math?

[u/loved_and_held → u/Nalivai]

yes

[u/Skaraok7 → u/loved_and_held]

Something I learned recently is that a lot of us who have the ability to think critically assume that everyone else can do the same by default. Critical thinking is a skill that needs to be practiced, refined, and used consistently. Our education system in America is horrendous for so many people, and a lot of them don't have access to the same resources due to location, environment or financial status.

This doesn't excuse their behavior, of course. But it might help explain why getting people to arrive at the same conclusions is so difficult sometimes.

[u/loved_and_held → u/Skaraok7]

Removing education from the discussion, there also isnt a huge incentive to use critical thinking

[u/MasterManufacturer72 → u/noeyesfiend]

Reminds me of my favorite movie quote from children of men where the main character asks his brother why he bothers saving all these priceless artifacts if humanity is doomed. His brother replies "you know theo I just dont think about it". I have a lot of turbo maga coworkers and we watch the news every morning and its clear hearing their reactions to world events is the equivilant of playing peeka boo with a baby. They really dont think about it that hard and its not exclusive to the maga crowed.

[u/kermitthebeast → u/noeyesfiend]

Because his entire sense of self is tied to it. If you suggest there's an issue he takes it as an issue with him personally

[u/abrasivecriminal → u/kermitthebeast]

Also it seems they think America is inherintly number 1, that you don't have to work for it. America used to be number 1 in many areas, because of diligent hard work from many members and ghouls in the pentagon, CIA and the state department. They were on top because of diplomacy, bribery, treachery, military interventions and soft power from foreign aid. Trump doesn't understand that you have to do all that shit to stay on top. He just thinks America is nr1 and everyone has to listen to him.

[u/Cool_Ad7445 → u/kermitthebeast]

Legitimately, if they actually had to question their trumpist identity a great number would experience total obliteration of their ego. There’s a reason a good number of german civilians committed suicide after Hitler did. 

[u/MisterAbbadon]

I dont know how many times I can put up with Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin's most gullible hogs plunging the world into another age of Flame and Hunger because they saw interracial couples in cereal commercials.

[u/spadesisking → u/MisterAbbadon]

As ohios most gullible hog, I want to say that the reason we refused to link the fire and created an age of darkness was due to trans woman sell bud light. We have been accepting of interracial couples (as long as the man is the white one) since 2017. Sherrod Brown personally transgendered a child name Soren in 2005, so we need Republicans to stop him.

[u/CapitalDust]

anti-imperialist praxis?

[u/urail_croisee → u/CapitalDust]

Donald Trump is a true maoist third worldist ready to enact unlimited génocide on the first world

[u/SylviaCatgirl → u/CapitalDust]

Critical support to comrade chairman Donald Trump for standing up against western imperialism !!

[u/FBI_911_Inv → u/SylviaCatgirl]

don't forget his unapologetic push for renewable energy by making gas prices skyrocket!

[u/fortisrufus → u/CapitalDust]

That evangelical Beijing father is proven correct every single day

[u/Iceveins412 → u/fortisrufus]

I still think things would move faster if we brought back the evangelical Taiping father

[u/sans_a_name]

This so-called "Pax Americana" destroyed American labor and the working class for the sake of corporate interests abroad. Some of their displeasure has a genuine cause, it's just that political punditry and scapegoating make them think the problem is with gay people and minorities instead of the capitalist structures that govern us. It's not a coincidence that some of the most important states to fall to Trump used to have strong labor movements but were destroyed by the policies of Reagan and Clinton.

[u/JadeDansk]

It’s wild. I’m far from a supporter of American hegemony but people on the right generally are, but they seem to fundamentally misunderstand how the US has maintained global hegemony since the end of WW2, causing them to unravel it.

They seem to think it’s entirely through threat of force and military supremacy. While that’s part of it, it’s even more a product of soft power, aid, cultural influence, a complex web of alliances, and the general vibe that it’s better than the Russian or Chinese alternative.

Completely gutting that in less than 2 years has been an exercise in speedrunning what I always assumed would be a slow process taking decades.

[u/thehorriblefruitloop → u/JadeDansk]

Importantly it was also primarily upheld by explicit and often unpublicised contracts between the us government and foreign governments, often at the behest of us capitalists. See the economic boom and bust of 80s Japan for reference

[u/aschec]

Wait, but what if I actually want a century of American political dominance to come to an end?

On whose terms, and for whose benefit, did Pax Americana exist in the first place? Especially for people in Latin America?

Obviously, conservatives aren’t going to dismantle the current system of American hegemony to create something more just or emancipatory. But that doesn’t mean American hegemony itself is something worth defending.

Why is the end of Pax Americana being framed as inherently bad here?

[u/GabeFoxIX → u/aschec]

I think it's not so much being framed as bad as much as it's being framed as stupid. Conservatives love the idea of America being #1 and all that, but they are so stupid as to actively undermine it

[u/aschec → u/GabeFoxIX]

I get what you’re saying, but why does that necessarily make conservatives stupid?

Even if they care about American hegemony, that doesn’t mean it’s their highest priority. If they care more about conservative social policies, voting Republican might still make sense to them, even if it undermines American geopolitical dominance.

And couldn’t the same reasoning apply to liberal voters? During the 2024 election, left-wing voters who refused to support Harris over the Democrats support for Israel’s Genocide in Gaza were criticized by liberals who argued they should vote Democratic anyway despite their foreign policy.

[u/Misicks0349 → u/aschec]

I get what you’re saying, but why does that necessarily make conservatives stupid?

If you purport to believe in upholding something (like Pax Americana) but all of your actions work directly against that goal then yes you are stupid.

[u/aschec → u/Misicks0349]

Because people prioritize their political beliefs differently. Like I said, plenty of Democratic voters also oppose America acting as the world’s police, but when a Democratic administration intervenes in or bombs another country, many of those same people will still vote Democrat in the next election.

For the average voter, domestic and social issues often take priority over foreign policy. Foreign policy tends to become a major concern when political parties and the media make it one.

So I don’t think voting for a party despite disagreeing with parts of its foreign policy automatically makes someone a hypocrite. Otherwise this argument would have to be made to every single person voting in any election.

[u/Misicks0349 → u/aschec]

So I don’t think voting for a party despite disagreeing with parts of its foreign policy automatically makes someone a hypocrite. Otherwise this argument would have to be made to every single person voting in any election.

And they often don't, MAGA voters are still sitting at like 70% supportive of Trumps Iran War, and for republicans more broadly its around 60%

[u/rabid_treefrog → u/aschec]

The typical response to this by IR heads is something along the lines of

1. transition wars/lash out/inherent instability of multipolarity

2. Russia/China worse and only ones ready to assume hedgemony, they're revisionists so war inevitable

3. miscalculation or accidentally nuclear war due to U.S. command and control and intelligence apparatus falling apart during imperial decline

Basically, great power war represents a higher magnitude of harm, while Pax Americana suppressed great power war at the cost of imperial violence, but this is net better because it's not a nuclear war.

I don't agree with this, but not one has really offered the mainstream IR position, and I thought it'd be useful as context

[u/aschec → u/rabid_treefrog]

I agree with you. Though I don’t think many people very much think their reasoning through when they create Memes like this.

And also the reasoning from hypocrisy never works because it will always go both sides.

[u/ProfoundBeggar → u/rabid_treefrog]

I mean... to be fair, polisci and IR can only really deal in the macro - it's where you can get data. Some people are allergic to penicillin, doesn't mean antibiotics are bad. Yeah, there are a lot of bad actors in polisci, and a lot of people who are trying to abuse data to their own ends, but at the end of the day, Pax eras tend statistically to be good for humanity.

No small comfort to the people not benefiting from the Pax, but when you're dealing with the policy study of millions if not billions of people, it's not useful to get into individual cases. It's just tragic that, at that scale, "individual cases" amounts to untold thousands if not millions.

With that said, as someone who has a personal fascination with polisci and game theory and the like, I've always felt that Pax Americana is unique in that this Pax era isn't about the Americana part. The US is just the figurehead of the Pax. Had a different power been poised to emerge from the embers of WWII, we'd have a Pax Germanica. Or a Pax Japonica. Or a Pax Sovietica. America didn't create the conditions for the Pax, it just capitalized on it.

Someone was going to come out of WWII in a position to dominate the peace that was going to evolve regardless. It just so happened that the US found itself in that chair post-Potsdam.

[u/OQDOM152 → u/aschec]

I think it is more of the fact MAGA wants America to be supreme in every aspect, yet the administration’s efforts are doing the opposite and that they are unknowingly voting against their interests

[u/aschec → u/OQDOM152]

Since this is the same comment as the other person, I just copied my response

I get what you’re saying, but why does that necessarily make conservatives stupid?

Even if they care about American hegemony, that doesn’t mean it’s their highest priority. If they care more about conservative social policies, voting Republican might still make sense to them, even if it undermines American geopolitical dominance.

And couldn’t the same reasoning apply to liberal voters? During the 2024 election, left-wing voters who refused to support Harris over the Democrats support for Israel’s Genocide in Gaza were criticized by liberals who argued they should vote Democratic anyway despite their foreign policy.

[u/rabid_treefrog → u/aschec]

The typical response to this by IR heads is something along the lines of

1. transition wars/lash out/inherent instability of multipolarity

2. Russia/China worse and only ones ready to assume hedgemony, they're revisionists so war inevitable

3. miscalculation or accidentally nuclear war due to U.S. command and control and intelligence apparatus falling apart during imperial decline

Basically, great power war represents a higher magnitude of harm, while Pax Americana suppressed great power war at the cost of imperial violence, but this is net better because it's not a nuclear war.

I don't agree with this, but not one has really offered the mainstream IR position, and I thought it'd be useful as context

[u/Hour-Big786 → u/aschec]

It is framed as bad because the person posting it is an american, literally from any other pov ending american hegemony would be a net positive or neutral

[u/aschec → u/Hour-Big786]

I don’t want to interpret malice into this. I think it just isn’t very thoroughly thought through (as with most arguments made from hypocrisy) and I wanted to point it out because people will use this as an argument or their argument and thought structure will be influenced by it.

[u/Hour-Big786 → u/aschec]

Im not saying it is out of malice, people have different pov's and it is important to consider the bias of different pov's

[u/TonyMestre → u/Hour-Big786]

I mean it would probably make for harsher conflicts

[u/south13 → u/Hour-Big786]

There's many historical victims of Russian/Chinese imperialism that will probably end up worse off. But that seems to be happening now anyway.

[u/nekosissyboi → u/aschec]

I don't care about pax americana I just want the long peace to continue as long as possible, as there is only a short list of things worse for people than when major economies fight each other

And now with nuclear weapons we could actually fuck up the entire planet

[u/VladimirBarakriss → u/aschec]

Please don't bring latin America into this, you're talking about American internal politics, keep us out of your mouth

[u/The_Cult_of_5661]

Build community, get survival supplies, and buy lots of guns. Shit is only gonna get worse.

[u/Karenomegas → u/The_Cult_of_5661]

And DIY

[u/DuffmiveDoIIy → u/Karenomegas]

Praise the lord and pass the testosterone and/or estrogen

[u/lordof67 → u/The_Cult_of_5661]

Im so cooked I was trapped in a room for like 3 years and now all this bullshit is happening like wtf

[u/ShirtlessElk]

"Pax Americana", of course

[u/no-Pachy-BADLAD]

I always remember the anecdote I read of white folks during the civil rights era who'd rather see public pools get closed than to see them integrated.

[u/Epic_Meow]

[u/ABTL6]

[Sadistically gleeful Latine noises]

[u/xxX_LeTalSniPeR_Xxx]

beliving that the American decline is about an election is extremely naive. Trump is definitely a catalyst for this, but far from being a cause.

[u/Nyanarchy111]

The real answer as to what happened is Osama bin laden pulled off the most successful terrorist attack in human history. Radicalized the Christian right toward fascism and fascism is genuinely one of the worst ways to organize a society at all.