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Is the Moody’s Downgrade the End of American Exceptionalism? (jacobin.com)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

22 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Moody’s decision to downgrade the US’s credit rating is a slap on the wrist. In the past, the US might have dismissed it, but investors are signaling they think America is fundamentally untrustworthy — and they may soon put hard limits on Trump's program.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Pretty sure "American Exceptionalism" was never a real thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

Sure it was. All it took was a massive war that destroyed the manufacturing capabilities of most other modern countries and a significantly higher tax rate on the rich.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

No. Trump was/is.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think any perceived American exceptionalism went out the window after we elected the Orange One the first time. The second time has eradicated any lingering shred of this belief worldwide.

[+] [email protected] -16 points 1 day ago (2 children)

People hoped that Trump and exceptionalism was a blip to survive through and it would be gone after 4 years. The way I see it, the real hit to America's reputation was Biden who continued a lot of the exceptionalist policies that Trump started. Now Trump 2.0 is continuing the exceptionalist policies, but added pure fascism on top of that. Even if Trump is gone and fascism doesn't prevail, I don't expect the exceptionalism to go away.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago

def trump 1 or even bush jr

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (3 children)

What do you suppose Biden should have done with the rest of the legislative and judiciary systems stacked against him, blocking almost any change?

Seeing as all room they had to manevuer was through brow beating and bending orders/budgets, they got a lot of good done...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Biden kept quite a few of the tariffs Trump did in his first term. Even increased some of them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago

I mean, tariffs are a long term economic stimulus tool, changing them every week gets the economy, allies, and the private sector very nervous as you might have noticed these last few months.

You might even have heard that companies protest investing in new production capabilites as they don't know what the tariffs will be in 3 years when the production facility is done.

I'll state the same as in the other comment. Not flip-flopping is the expected norm to maintain stability, relationships and long term governance. Poor choices have effects over many years, as drastic changes every 4 years have even more damaging effects.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

95% of what he did was through executive power, which he had full control over.

On many other issues, however, Biden retained the essence of Trump’s approach. Key documents issued during Trump’s first term characterized China and Russia as strategic competitors of the United States, a framing Biden embraced. Biden kept the Trump-era tariffs on China and expanded controls on technology transfers that began under Trump. He executed the Afghanistan withdrawal agreement negotiated between Trump’s team and the Taliban, remained outside the Iran nuclear deal, and, like Trump—but unlike President Barack Obama—provided lethal aid to the government in Ukraine. Biden sought to extend the Abraham Accords, a key Trump-era foreign policy success in the Middle East, and over time, he attempted to make Saudi Arabia a U.S. treaty ally. The two administrations could hardly have been more different in style and rhetoric. In the underlying substance of their policies, however, there was more continuity than the casual observer might have appreciated.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/trump-biden-trump-foreign-policy

[–] [email protected] -1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

So you're upset that the government doesn't flip-flop with each president?

I can report that this is the norm for non-autocratic societies. Maintaining stability, relations, and long term governance.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 22 hours ago

I'm not sure in which bubble you are living in, but US is notorious for flip flopping on their policies with each new presidency. Each new president that comes in and reverses most of the things the last president did. That's literally has been the case since the country's founding exactly because of the separation of power.

That is why Biden keeping many of the previous Trumop policies was noteworthy and scary for the rest of the world.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh please. Biden didn't just live with the Trump aftermath, in many cases he chose to keep pushing it. He was a mixed bag, doing a lot of great things that Trump never would have, but he did a lot of bad without anybody twisting his arm.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Agreed.

But I don't get why the expectation is that Biden would be the hero to save 50 years of progressively worse governance by the republicans. Even if he was altogether the ideal (which I'm not sure any politician could be), he's still human and also has a huge government apparatus with considerable inertia to overcome. And replacing people leads to the same behaviours we see now, entrenched resistance, passive resistance, loss of knowledge, loss of service/communication/trust/reliability, wasted resources, etc.

Constructive politics needs to create a stable environment, that can't be done by drastic changes, and especially not in every facet every 4 years. Isn't that why there's now so much chaos, uncertainty and loss of trust both nationally and overseas?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I don't think anybody expected Biden to be that good and, no, that's not the point of the criticisms at all. The point is that the establishment is guaranteed to wheel out another Biden in 3 years and it's critical that we shut that down.

You are far from the only person operating on that theory of gradual change, but it's dead wrong and exactly what brought us to where we are today. In fact, it's exactly what leads to fascism every single time it ascends. Weak neoliberals fail to take care of people, and the people turn against them.

Look at how much gradual change the fascists are able to tear down in the span of a few months. What are they afraid to tear down? Social Security and Medicare. It's the big changes that rapidly gain the popularity needed to survive right wing onslaught. Everything else dies.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I think that positive change takes time, patience and planning. Destruction and plundering next to none.

Even if a messiah would force through single payer universal healthcare working through all the hurdles, teething problems and upheaval to get something in place. It doesn't take more than a Musk-Trump to tear it down in a month.

The Republicans have been tearing stuff down for a long while and for decades not building anything worthwhile. But apparently that's the way the country wants it

[–] [email protected] 0 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

The general principle that building takes more time than destroying is pretty solid - in general. However, applying it to politics is absolutely insane.

You ever hear that war is politics by other means? That's a good principle too, and the reverse is what applies here. Politics is war by other means. Republicans know that. They are fighting a war and Democrats are dutifully putting up villages they can't defend. The clever villagers are defecting before the tanks roll in.

As I already pointed out, what you "think" stands in absolute contrast with everything that's happened in politics in this country and globally for at least the last 100 years. If you and people like you don't wake up, we are all fucked. (Assuming we aren't already).

Reasserting what you think, instead of addressing my arguments, puts you at the same level of rationality as MAGA. The country didn't get the way it is by magic. Democrats hollowed out voters skulls, then Republicans filled them. Remember that when you complain about what the country wants.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

Your argument was that fascists can destroy a lot of incremental change in a short while. I'm agreeing with you.

Although your assertion that it doesn't apply to politics is tenuous. I would say there's plenty of evidence against it from the dawn of civilisation: Ur, the Aztecs, Babylon, Ancient Greece, Persia, the Nordic countries, China, Enlightenment France, the Roman Empire, the Empire of Japan, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. All rode to ages of political dominance on the backs of stability, even the ones who resorted to genocide or purging opposition.

Cuba, Poland, Iraq, the EU and Australia have all also had immense growth and development in the last century in tandem with stability. In contrast to Afghanistan, ISIS, Palestine or the African warlord regions who haven't had as much.

So my point still stands, in the US, at least one party has spent decades tearing down, and from the looks of it one of them never tried to build anything up.

Yet, the population continues to vote this way. It's hard not to see it as voluntary; In that much time, accessing as much free information and thought as the US has, you can't really claim to be ignorant of differing information, other than willfully.

If both ruling parties are that obviously corrupt, why is there no action? It's been done in the country before, as well as in many other places, including in the last decade (Arab spring, South Korean president, BLM).

The argument points toward willfull acceptance if not outright choice.

If you disagree, give me evidence, not just your feelings.

If you don't, but don't accept the consequence - get out there and do something about it.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

American exceptionalism is only in Americans' heads, the patriotic suckers out there.

In reality this is about rich assholes trying to figure out where to stash their dough, and they're hedging their bets. Good for the world, to some degree.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 23 hours ago

It's a real thing in financial markets. Or it was. America has had a privileged position with borrowing. It's both the cause of the 2008 financial crash, and the country that weathered it best. By 2011, people were looking at the austerity measures in the EU and decided the US was a better place to put their money.

You're not wrong to say it's rich assholes deciding where to put their money, but the fact is that they drive the market.

It's the patriotic suckers out there who don't understand how this privileged position functions and are now dismantling it like monkeys taking apart a typewriter.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Trump was the end of it in 2016

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

Dubya

We should not remember that cunt fondly just because some time has passed