For a while, I admired the US as a bastion of freedom. I tried to encourage positive dialog with US bloggers. That wasn’t always easy. There were a few enlightened US bloggers but sometimes with other bloggers I felt that old, stereotypical American xenophobia kicking in… “Oh, he’s Canadian… he just doesn’t know how inferior his country is to ours…”
Then as I grew more perceptive I began to pick up all sorts of deep problems within the US. Different crime groups in conflict and corrupting American politics, to be precise. Despite this unproven perception (intuition gives us hypotheses, not verifications) I still felt that America at least possessed the ideal of democracy. That is, America has encoded in its constitution the ideas of equal rights and opportunity. I believed that was something to fall back on and made the country better than stark dictatorships where the people basically had no legal framework upon which to demand unbiased, fair treatment.
In other words, sure the US is corrupt but it’s still better than even more corrupt places like Russia and China. Just look at the standard of living and America’s many great achievements. And look also at Alexei Navalny (who is lingering in prison) and Peng Shuai (who seems to have been coerced into silence and ‘happy’ cooperation with Xi).
Today I’m not so sure America will stay on top as #1 and that is a frightening scenario. Can you imagine Xi calling the shots for all of us? Putin is too small fry to ever be numero uno but if he teamed up with China, that would be double trouble for all of us.
Why do I say America’s liberals are conflicted?
Well, they hated Donald Trump even though Trump wasn’t a warmonger and had the economy booming. Really strange why they disliked this guy so much. Sure he had his excesses. It did seem like he had lost it after recovering from Covid. His theatrics at that time were even too much for me.
But on the whole, Trump’s notion that the US should try to maintain peaceful relations with Russia isn’t so bad, is it?
Back in the early 1960s, President Kennedy did everything he could to avoid a conflict with Russia during the Cuban Missile Crisis because Kennedy was not reckless like the Biden-Harris administration. Kennedy realized that fighting with Russia could quickly escalate, with catastrophic consequences.
Biden-Harris, however, seem to think this is some kind of 80s video game and the well-being and safety of the entire planet is not at stake.
You think Global Warming is bad? Try nuclear fallout…
Earthpages.org 
Edit – Minor style tweak to first paragraph.
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Trump is currently under investigation for numerous crimes including but not limited to inciting an insurrection.
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I know. It will be interesting to see how that pans out. Do you really think the others before and after him have never done anything that could not perhaps one day be interpreted as illegal? With all due respect to your country, its politics look like the pot always calling the kettle black, and vice versa.
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Oh, of course not. 98% of congress breaks the law everyday, but he’s the worst of the worst. I firmly believe that most of our politicians need to be fired and replaced, but he needs to face justice for his crimes. I felt sick when I found out he was elected, and I don’t like Hilary Clinton just so we’re clear. I would say just to look at his tweets, but twitter took him off their platform, so I don’t think any of his tweets are still on there.
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He was contentious and I did not agree with a lot of what he said. He was also bombastic. But I sometimes found that a refreshing change from the usual oily politician who “smooth speaks” a whole bunch of fibs. At least he was an honest jerk! (or at least, came off as one). I felt the American people, those who really disliked him, were transferring or projecting (in the psychological sense) that ‘underbelly’ I have been talking about elsewhere onto him. To me, he was something of a scapegoat for a general malaise that I would argue, runs through my country too.
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Trump did, indeed want peace with Russia. In fact, Trump said that he thought Putin was smart, savvy and courageous. He liked Putin a lot. He thought Putin was doing great things. He was an ardent admirer of Putin. He wanted to get The U.S. out of NATO. His friend, Putin would have loved for him to do that. No, I think the Donald was very much admired by Putin because Trump’s attitudes, often spoken publicly, seemed to be almost a kind of devotion to the ideals of Putin .. and that, of course, did not bode well for America.
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