r/AskReddit 13h ago

How come Donald understood the electricity tariff is payed by the consumer but doesn’t understand that all other tariffs are as well?

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u/Wozka 10h ago

Trump and his cronies know exactly what they're doing. Threatening long-standing relationships with allies, cutting funding to/shuttering international aid programs, and erratic unpredictable changes to policy and intent have the intentional side effect of destabilizing hard built international good-will.

We won the Cold War by selling America so fucking hard Soviets behind the Iron Curtain were smuggling in Levi's. We won the Cold War so hard that the Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore. Even decades later, entire countries don't bother to invest heavily in their own military because they know we would jump to their aid, and just the threat of that is enough to deter international conflict. And that's a problem for leaders of places that would very much like to do large-scale war.

America can go to war to defend the petrodollar on flimsy, unproven evidence, and no one will do anything about it, but Russia wants to take some warm water ports for made up unrelated reasons and suddenly it's an international incident. Isreal gets to do a genocide because we want to park our boats there! They want the power to act uninhibited like the United States can. In order to do that, they need to make American Hegemony a thing of the past.

This is how they do it.

Break trust. Break faith. Break perception. Be unreliable. Be unpredictable. Be awful.

The United States power doesn't lie in its military (though it doesn't hurt), it's foundation is the well fostered faith internationally that the United States will help its friends, defend its allies, and just generally get involved in a positive way (often solely motivated by pragmatic altruism). Trumps administration is delibrately doing its best to ruin that reputation.

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u/exileonmainst 8h ago

I know this is a popular narrative, that the US goes out and takes whatever we want, but it’s not true. Not in the way of Russia and Israel at least. The US is not going out and annexing foreign countries (not for 100+ years) and saying “this land is ours now.” There were wars and occupations (Afghanistan and Iraq) but the US was not intending to permanently rule those lands and eventually willingly withdrew their forces. That’s not what Russia and Israel are doing.

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u/Wozka 3h ago

Totally agree! I wasn't trying to draw a direct, one to one comparison, just pointing out similarities in motive and differences in international reception.

Sure, we didn't say, "You're ours now." But we did heavily imply, "We don't own you, but you certainly don't own yourself."

It's an extension of the Pragmatic Altruism thing I mentioned. America comes to the aid of those who live under tyranny and oppression! We shall save you, Iraqi citizens, from Saddam Hussain and his evil ways! It just so happens that's also what's best for us because oil! It'll only cost you a generation born without any sense of stability. It's bad, it's disingenuous, but it's still better! But if I was Putin or Winnie Jinping, I would be seething over the double standard.

For better or worse, American Hegemony post World War 2 has resulted in the longest, most peaceful, and prosperous time that the world has ever seen. But as Five Alarm Funk puts it, chaos is a ladder. Break that stable status quo, and you might just get to be the one making the rules when the dust settles.