You have to separate your powers of analysis from your hatred of Trump!
I thought it was an interesting view, and from a respectable source. It’s too early to know, of course, by a couple of decades.
I can’t access the article, I must have gone past the limit for free articles.
Trump isn’t damaging America. He’s reinventing it
The president is generating a new geopolitical reality
Founder and Chairman of Geopolitical Futures
16th June 2026 6:00 am
Both in the 1930s and 1970s, the US seemed to be having a nervous breakdown. It was reinventing itself. The same is happening now in Trump’s America (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty)
Welcome to Trump’s America, The i Paper’s World Insight series presenting the sharpest, deepest thinking on an era-defining shift in history and politics, investigating how Donald Trump and his administration have changed the US and the world – and where we go from here.
• How America’s conspiracy theorists broke the US
• The US is becoming impossible to live in
• I told Trump over dinner he didn’t have my loyalty – it sealed my fate
• This is how the world will look after Trump
• Sin City has lost its shine. It shows how far America has fallen
• The influencer who turned on Maga – claiming it has a dark secret
• Inside America’s most loyal Trump town – where people still think he’s ‘a good man’
From the outside, it looks as though the United States is having a nervous breakdown. Decisions taken by the White House – at home and abroad – have appeared erratic and irrational.
Yet, what we are actually seeing play out is one of the virtues of the United States – its ability to reinvent itself in fundamental ways.
The United States is an invented nation. Its system of government engineered at a meeting in Philadelphia in 1787. Its citizenry is also invented, based on the vast number of nations from which the population migrated, creating a unique and powerful culture.
Invention and reinvention in all things is the foundation of American culture, along with the concept of obsolescence. Over time it evolves and seems to be profoundly different than it was, first by violating norms, then creating new ones. It is a process that seems like a breakdown. What it is, is reinvention.
Consider two examples. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, Americans suffered, raged and isolated themselves to the largest extent possible from the world. President Franklin D Roosevelt came into office, destroyed the existing reality and oversaw the construction of a new one. He issued executive orders that had no basis in the constitution, such as shutting down the banks.
He was accused of being a dictator and his actions were reversed many times, including in the Supreme Court. He responded by trying to pack the court with judges loyal to him. He failed but was not daunted. Many loathed him, many loved him.
He also changed foreign policy, then based on isolation. His sanctions on Japan triggered the attack on Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war on the United States four days later, in part to support its ally, Japan. Roosevelt was allowed then to violate all norms of foreign policy by surging America into war and reinventing the federal government. And yet, America emerged from the Second World War a global superpower.
Consider now the 1970s. The Vietnam War and matters of race tore the country apart. The United States lost the war, and many said the US was a failing country. It suffered economically from inflation, along with freezing wages and prices, something without precedent. Major industries in the US were under severe competition and pressure from imports. Added to this, the Arab oil embargo wreaked economic havoc in the country. Then in 1981, Ronald Reagan came to power, violated all prior norms by decreasing taxes on the wealthy, which although held in contempt by his detractors, made possible the surge of investments in computer technology.
Both in the 1930s and 1970s, the US seemed to be having a nervous breakdown. It was reinventing itself. The same is happening now in Trump’s America.
Ever since 1945, the United States has been seen as the guarantor of security in the free world, a role that was accepted out of necessity, not desire. As a result, the US military has spent decades confronting the Soviet Union, while enriching and defending Europe.
Yet, with Russia’s weak performance in Ukraine (after four years Russia is unable to defeat and occupy a country a fraction of its size with a much smaller military), it has became clear that Russia is no longer the threat to Europe it once was. Additionally, given the EU’s GDP is slightly larger than China’s, Europeans should now defend themselves without relying on the United States.
With the UK outside of the EU, it remains a critical ally to the US, based on its location in the Atlantic and its history of collaboration. It also willingly carries its own load, which is not the case with all European countries.
The US entered one of its periodic eras of destruction of norms and creating new realities with the election of Trump, held in bitter contempt by many Americans, as were Roosevelt and Richard Nixon. Many norms have been violated, along with the idea that the US has an obligation to the world. He is reshaping American foreign policy for the modern era.
The US has spent two World Wars and the Cold War entangled with the eastern hemisphere at great cost and risk. It seeks to disengage from the eastern hemisphere and focus on the west. Iran is an exception, because it was developing a nuclear capability as well as giving shelter to the remnants of al-Qaeda, supporting Hezbollah and Hamas with similar terrorist ideologies. This raised in American minds the threat of another 9/11, but this time with nuclear weaponry.
Trump’s concern with Cuba is not new or odd given US need to access Latin America. The 90-mile gap with Cuba is the sea route of almost half of US imports and exports, and a closure of the straits would be devastating. Moreover, Cuba has remained a fundamental security concern, with a profoundly anti-American regime 90 miles from Florida. Dealing with Cuba is fundamental if America’s is to reduce US vulnerability.
Trump is generating a new geopolitical reality. If we are to understand his behavior, he has been engaged in the process of the creative destruction of the old and obsolete order, paving the way to a new world order that allowed the United States to focus on its near abroad, rather than to the onerous necessity of being forced to be a global policeman.
It is ironic that his goal appears to be what the left wing in the United States wanted during the Vietnam war: to stop being the “cop of the world”. What the world will look like post-reinvention is what other nations will choose to make of it. The most dramatic change will be that the Europeans will be the ones to decide for themselves the future of their regions, without looking to the US to bear that burden.
Trump – like all other pivotal presidents – is seen by many as illiterate, vile and a fool. Vile they may be, but never as stupid as many would like to think.
Nice piece of flattery there.
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Trump’s American flag blue reflecting pool is covered in green algae again, the whole reason he didn’t like the previous pool base. 
His spokesmen are blaming residual algae in the pipes, I don’t know if that’s a thing. There’s also a debate over whether the leak problem that has dogged the pool is fixed or whether he’s just done a paint over without fixing underlying issues.
Nice to see Nature is beating Trump. Of course, Nature will beat him, and us, over Climate Change/Heating sooner than later, and the ongoing reduction of biodiversity.
Seems to be the Great Unspoken, we are all walking the plank. To all intents and purposes, the rise in ocean temperature is irreversible, although it could still be slowed down.
But Trump seems to have a vendetta with Nature, and anyone trying to protect it. He is currently removing protections on National Parks in the USA, to allow rednecks in their version of Taliban trucks to drive over them offroading wherever they like, to exercise their “freedoms”.
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https://x.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/2066977498773000419
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
That is his style, after all.
Is it just me that sees a certain irony in Trump signing his surrender agreement in Versailles?
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. Was it in the Hall of Mirrors ? That would be doubly ironic.
I think he is driven by 2 things: a desire to support the wealthy oil, gas and coal producers. You can’t support them by accepting that climate change is man-made.
And a desire to undo anything either Obama or Biden did.
And of course allowing ‘rednecks’ to drive all over pristine land is a way of pandering to those who vote for him.
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From Robert Reich on Bluesky.
‘Elon Musk’s DOGE cut the federal government’s screwworm monitoring program, which cost $15 million. Now, the Trump administration is preparing to spend $1 billion to combat the screwworm outbreak. Never forget how destructive and downright stupid DOGE was.’
You might say something similar about their vaccination strategy.
Mark Hamill on Bluesky this time, on Trump’s 250 Freedom concert on the national mall. MH thinks the line up is currently.
Kid Rock
Vanilla Ice
Lee Greenwood
The Village People
plus Trump talking for hours.
The concert for the opening of the Obama Center.
It seems that the blue paint in the reflecting pool in Washington DC is peeling off and floating to the surface. You couldn’t make it up.
Blue paint on bottom of Reflecting Pool appears to be peeling away - WTOP News
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All those millions that it cost and it seems as if he’s done another cheap tart-up.
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Not cheap in money terms, just cheap in what was done. The original cost was touted as $1.8 million but ended up costing more than $13 million - supposedly done by a friend of Trump. Who would have guessed 
Edit: I’m expecting the ballroom to be condemned as unsafe in a year or two . After initially saying it wouldn’t use taxpayers money, and being refused $1 billion by congress for it, he’s apparently illegaly raided an unrelated budget of $340 million for it.
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Should have got in @Corona
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Absolutely. The guy that did it probably used a cheap blue pool liner and buggered it up.
The paints never work for long! You tell people, they don’t listen and the following year it starts peeling.
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