Remember that America, like their flagship Boeing 737-MAX, has two engines of growth. Colonization is the first engine, sucking labor (ie, energy) into their stolen continent. Imperialism is the second engine, sucking labor, resources, and energy from across the world. Donald Trump has thrown a bald eagle into the first engine and a vulture into the other, leading to America going down in flames sooner enough. We've discussed the immolation of immigration, and the engine of imperialism is on fire because Trump is ditching the soft power that made it possible to fly the thing at all.

America became a global (rather than continental) empire after World War II. America took over White Empire (and Europe) from the Europe after WWII. They spent that war fighting for spoils more than against Nazis, whom they promptly assimilated. America went into WWII notoriously force light (because the USSR was doing the vast majority of the fighting) and this made it difficult to expand or hold the empire without the Soviets doing the work for them. ‘After’ WWII (it only ended for white people) the American military tried to keep going but either drew (Korea) or lost (Vietnam). America never had the manpower to physically occupy so much land so they occupied it psychologically instead.

The main thing that held American empire together was a story. The story that they won World War II and were the ‘good guys’ and that's why they were still deployed everywhere. America (and its main bitch the UK) deployed relentless post-war propaganda to switch people from knowing that the USSR won the war to believing that America did. Hence you get all these movies about saving privates and cracking codes and assorted bullshit that had little material impact, certainly compared to the USSR. And this advertising campaign largely worked, especially after the USSR's fall. They refilmed history and hid America's naked imperialism in a celluloid cloak.

This is liberalism. They took liberties with the truth to justify continued imperialism, and call it helping out. This was America's soft power—all the marketing about Democracy™ and Human Rights© and Freedom®—and it saved them the hard graft of physical occupation. With their well-marketed values (and manufactured goods) they could get countries to effectively colonize themselves, with a well-timed coup if anyone started thinking too much. They could hold the stick of their military largely in reserve while holding out the carrot of their ‘Rules-Based Order’ which well-meaning people all over the world would defend because the marketing was good. As Big Pussy told Tony Soprano, “I'm mindfucking these donkeys like you wouldn't believe.”

This is what institutions like USAID and the liberal media were doing. They did a bit of good to cover a bunch of bad, they flattered the conscience to deceive. Trump is publicly cutting this stuff to save money, but soft power is actually much cheaper than hard power. Why hold a gun to someone's head if you can get inside of it? Remember that America hasn't been able to really win anything since World War II, has been unable to conscript an army since Vietnam, and hasn't been able to field its debt slave army since leaving Afghanistan. American imperialism is now completely dependent on proxies mindfucked enough to follow them. And Trump is gutting and humiliating those proxies too. To invert Teddy Roosevelt, America today is talking loudly and carrying a small stick.

The funny thing is that America still has people dumb enough to follow its now cancelled programming (like the leadership of Canada and Europe, and its own liberals), but the general populations of those countries are getting impoverished and deindustrialized and catching on slowly but surely. Ideological imperialism was America's calling card, but now they're not picking up the phone. Another liberal President could try to turn the propaganda on again, but once bitten, twice shy.

The reanimated corpse of Joe Biden tried to resurrect the image of ‘good guy’ America, but then he livestreamed a genocide for 15 months, which is definitely bad. This revealed that America was always bullshit, whether branded red or blue. It was always White Empire, doing what such empires do. Corrupting local (or colonial) elites, getting them to sell out their own populations, and funnelling the money, slaves, and resources back home. Trump is merely more transactional about this, but it's the same business model, and now their cover is blown. No American President going forward can cover up the truth. The Empire has no clothes.

Now it's just naked imperialism, with a raging hard-on for filthy lucre. America is now openly extorting 'allies,' exterminating populations, and exclaiming about it proudly. As Hannah Arendt said about Hitler, “it seemed revolutionary to admit cruelty, disregard of human values, and general amorality, because this at least destroyed the duplicity upon which the existing society seemed to rest.” Indeed, it is revolutionary to shatter corrupt institutions and shutter cloying propaganda outlets, these are all bad things Trump is throwing out, albeit for even worse reasons. What Trump doesn't get, however, is that this duplicity was the engine of American power.

Attracting and abusing immigrants (in waves) is what gave their colony power. Pretending to be good while doing bad is what expanded that power worldwide. Trump is throwing a bald eagle in one engine and a vulture in the other (exactly what happened to two 737 MAXes in 2023) and expects the plane to keep flying. He is destroying without creating anything to replace American soft power but sheer bluster and vestigial reputation.

America was going down anyways, but they could have had a controlled landing without the rest of the world even being significantly mad at them. But now they are going down in flames and opprobrium. America's sources of hard labor and soft power are being cut at the same time, and no plane can survive both engines going out, least of all one built like a Boeing.