America has enemies, but America is its own worst enemy. Whatever problems America has—dedollarization, military depreciation, economic degradation, outright rebellion—you can count on America to make it worse. On all counts they're not merely failing, they're flailing furiously, sinking deeper into the historical quicksand. The last incarnation of White Empire could just chill in its old age, as China makes it stuff and South Americans take care of it, but no, they want to go out like Joe Biden. Killing lots of children and dying embarrassingly in public.
The world is quite integrated and America's enemies aren't even trying to take it down, which is costly for them and risks global annihilation. They're just trying to defend themselves but America cannot stop offending, even with its pants falling down and teeth falling out. The American Empire could last for decades out of sheer inertia, but they're losing it this decade out of sheer cussedness. America came in genociding and fighting and, dagnabit, they're going out that way.
This is all unnecessary, but the indispensable nation just can't help themselves. Like a man who's only ever shoplifted, they don't know how to shop normally. It's like that scene in The Departed, where Leo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson are sitting in a bar. Leo, the young hood says, “You’re seventy fucking years old Frank, I’m just saying. One of your guys is going to pop you. As for running drugs, what the fuck are you doing? You don’t need the money or the pain in the ass, and they will catch you.” Jack distractedly lights the place mat on fire and says, “I haven’t ‘needed the money’ since I took Archie’s milk money in the third grade. Tell you the truth, I don’t need pussy anymore either… but I like it.” That's America these days. They're on murder-suicide autopilot, with octogenarians 'in charge', and some unknown octopus of morons actually running them.
America doesn't need to point 'Israel' at everyone's heads, even Iran would sell them the oil happily. America doesn't need to point Ukraine at Russia, Russia would happily integrate. And America doesn't need to point Taiwan at China, China wantsto trade with them. But America just doesn't know any other way to shop besides smashing and grabbing. It's like asking someone who's only robbed banks to use an ATM. They just do not know how to act like normal people, and they're too old to change. So they just die not of old age, but of rage. Rage, rage against the dying of the White (Empire).
Militarily
Everybody actually wants to negotiate but America is like, no, our collapse is non-negotiable. The Axis of Resistance are highly rational actors who just want a stop to the genocide of Gaza, but America chooses violence every time. Russia also wanted to negotiate in 2022 to just get NATO off its ass, but America wanted to fight to the last Ukrainian. And China doesn't want a trade war, but America insists on cutting off its own supply lines (America's military cannot decouple from China). America thinks they own the world but it's just a self-own at this point. Refusing to negotiate doesn't make them stronger. It just exposes their weakness and pulls them apart in all directions.
The American military, not the film version of the American military, is a rusted hulk of the invasionary force it once was, its army lost to Afghanistan, its navy lost to Yemen, and its Air Force is lost in the new rocket paradigm entirely. America is just a luxury terrorist force now, and a farce in historical hindsight. America thinks they're showing off in Ukraine, but this only fools their own people. America is losing to Russia, they are losing to the Axis of Resistance, and they can't even attack China without China's help. America can still kill children very well, but they fold everywhere against men in the field. Hell, the American military can't even show up anymore, they have to hide behind proxies to cover what is, historically, a long retreat.
Far from divide and conquer, America is uniting all its enemies against it all at once. Even Hitler tried to cover his continental ass before attacking Russia but America is like fuck it, let's start three land wars in Asia at the same time. America has thus thrown Russia, China, and Iran together, with even pegged rivals like Saudi looking for the exits now. Hitler knew to keep one enemy in an alliance while fighting another but Americans, living in a celluloid version of history, have learned nothing from it. Just believe in yourself and have a magical belief in technology and everything will work out at the last minute, somehow. But this ain't a movie. America is fighting Russia with one hand, Iran with another, and trying to flick China off with a hand they don't even have. They're losing on all fronts, and the whole world sees that they're fronting and stunting hard.
America thinks this is a show of force but it's a show of farce, they've publicly run out of artillery in Ukraine, run out of artifice in Palestine (wait, it's just genocide? always has been), and can't even start against China. America's like an old drunk trying to punch its reflection at the far end of the bar, but it can't even get there without everyone else whaling on them first.
Economically
America can, of course, keep losing wars and looting its own treasury indefinitely, as long as people keep buying treasuries. But now they're fucking that up as well, in another self-own. The whole point of US Treasuries is that they're a safe bet, but if America just steals your money, who wants that mess? Siphoning Iraq's oil money was casual, seizing Afghanistan's dollars was cruel, but seizing Russia's money was actually suicidal. When they cut Russia off from SWIFT, everyone else got the message. America can just take your money, so take your money elsewhere, ASAP.
The world wasn't even trying to dedollarize very hard (who wants that headache) but America is making them. In Russia, they've finally picked up someone their own (real economy) size and, with China, they're poking someone actually bigger than them. America is trying to teach the world a lesson, but what are we actually learning here? Russia's economy, post sanctions, has grown bigger than Germany and Japan's, which now look like total cuck states. America is fucking their economies in front of them, while they just watch.
Thus today, in a shot across the bow of the petrodollar, China is issuing USD bonds in Saudi Arabia, at the same rate as US treasuries. The ratings agencies haven't caught up, but the inherent riskiness of America is finally being priced in by the global market. Even higher interest rates are meaningless if America can just take all the money. That's why the House of Saud trusts China to issue USD and—if the US keeps fucking around—they'll end up trusting China more. No one did this to America. They did this to themselves.
Now let's discuss sanctions. One third of nations on earth are sanctioned and 60% of poor countries. America has sanctioned most of the land mass of Asia and is now threatening India (via Canada and Ambani) for good measure. Meanwhile China is a free trade champion, offering tariff-free access to all Least Developed Countries, India is merrily reselling Russian oil to Europeans, and Vietnam and Mexico are reselling Chinese products to Americans. America has sanctioned itself into a corner and Americans—who could at least afford iPhones while living in tents—are going to see prices go up for no strategic reason. Just sheer inertia and cussedness. All these leaky sanctions regimes are doing is spreading development around the Global South, which China has already methodically made into its largest market. It's almost like America has a strategy for ruining themselves. As I said, they're their own worst enemy.
The last manufacturing that America didn't outsource was manufacturing consent, but even that's falling apart. America's Empire depended not so much on military force (they've been losing wars for decades) or economic might (they've been deindustrializing since the 80s) but on projecting power through its media and cultural organs. America's privatized propaganda machine was the only machine that still worked, but even this is failing and flailing now. You can only lie so much when people have been seeing dead babies for over a year now. Now the entire history they wrote as victors is coming apart. They're literally losing the plot.
America's rewriting of World War II had them winning it, and fighting for moral reasons (to stop a genocide). None of this was true—the USSR eliminated most of the German army and America pushed boats full of refugees back—but it made for great movies, and they made hundreds of them. In this celluloid history genocide was bad, very bad, and entire generations were raised to hate (and very selectively apply) the concept, and to think of themselves as the good guys.
For the past 23 years, however, America has been waging a long genocide against primarily Muslim people which is now finally being called by its name. The 'Israeli' genocide of Palestine is just an extension of the long American genocide, and that's not a good look for an Empire built on appearances. People have been watching a livestreamed genocide for over a year now, and seen their media lying about it more and more obviously. America is losing soft power hard, and it takes decades to build such edifices of illusion. America's whole schtick is we're the good guys and aw shucks, just here to help, nevermind our military bases. This enabled them to get away with murder and daylight robbery for decades, without having to actually fight much. This propaganda coup tied its opponents up in knots trying to explain lived reality to people raised on movies. But now any idiot on Twitter can say you're committing genocide and the conversation is rightly over. The hard genocide is still happening, but America's soft power has already disintegrated.
America's soft power was real power, it was as real as money in the bank or artillery in the tank. Now they've blown it all in one year, incinerating innocent men, women, and children in sacred Palestine. The privatized propaganda machine doesn't work anymore, and that was the last bit of working machinery the military-industrial multiplex had.
Why?
Besides that congenital defect, America has been run by defective morons for decades. You can read stinkers like Jefferson or Kissinger from the past and they are evil, but certainly not stupid. But today America has no thinkers to speak of and their political process seems to select for the dumbest people possible. Embarrassing yourself on TV is a surer route to power than running a state or actually doing anything. As Donald Trump said, they're not sending their best. If you told me from last century that Donald Trump would be President, I'd laugh. The guy from Home Alone 2? Indeed, before he ran for President in 2015, Donald Trump had been cast as the US President in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No. Then he bowed out to run for the real thing, and won, twice now. We truly are in the dumbest timeline.
And Trump is just a bobble-head doll in a self-driving car driven by sheer selfishness. It doesn't matter who's President, America doesn't even have a working President now, and hasn't for months. What used to be the most senior position in their government is now a senior citizens home with nukes. There's one band of rogues behind Biden and a different brand behind Trump. No one really knows who they are and they don't really know what they're doing and it doesn't really matter. As Vladimir Putin said, “They've spent centuries filling their bellies with human flesh and their pockets with money. But they must realise that the vampire ball is ending.”
This confederacy of dunces, this network of nattering nabobs, this mass of morons operates regardless of who's President. The President can be brainless or braindead, it's irrelevant and they're not even pretending anymore. You can put someone who's never held political office (like Trump) or someone who's visibly dying in there (Biden) and it doesn't matter. The Deep State operates irregardless, and it's not that deep. The funny thing is that if America just did the exact opposite of what its paid advisers said, they would do better than now (like buying a Jim Cramer ETF). America has an entire class of people that are professionally wrong, and they've only failed upwards.
As they said in the Ronald Reagan years, personnel is policy, and the same Reagan era reprobates are still here. Two Bushes, two Clintons, even the Cheneys keep coming back again, like last night's burrito after too many tequilas. America has had no original ideas since Reagan, just a long series of Reagan impersonators, and the same lackeys serving them. In America, unlike in normal countries, government officials (and journalists) only fail upwards, getting rewarded handsomely the more messes they make. The only thing you get punished for is trying to do the right thing, because that ruins the party for all the wrongdoers. To be an actual American thinker is like being the man wearing pants at an orgy. The place is busy fucking itself, don't interrupt, please.
Thus the best American thinkers are doing rando podcasts while the dumbest people in the room never leave it. Everybody behind every fuck up from Iran Contra to Afghanistan to Iraq has only failed upwards leading to a heritable aristocracy of idiots. The Democrats even trotted out Dick Cheney's loser daughter as their big campaign trophy. What are these people thinking? Not much, obviously.
So America goes into the biggest challenges of its day with the biggest morons of yesterday. America faces all of its structural problems with a bureaucratic structure made of pure, distilled stupidity. The ship of state is too big to turn around and, even if it was, the captains are senile and surly, the officers are busy stealing bread rolls, and the passenger are preoccupied with their genitals. All that's left in late-stage American democracy is arguing about what a man or woman is, what a baby is, and other private questions that have occupied the entire polis (quite cynically). Meanwhile nobody debates why are we losing every war, why are we rich on paper and living like shit, and why does everyone in the world hate us? That stuff is just happening and America does not avert its fate, but only accelerates it. They are caught in historical quicksand and ignoring the first rule of holes in general. Stop digging.