Back to the Future. Is the US a New Empire?

There is only a part of a joke in every joke. The rest is pure truth.
"The most honest man in the world" who has not yet become the president of the US already stated that he wanted to take Panama Canal, buy Greenland and annex Canada. At the same time, Mr. Trump does not rule out the use of military force against Greenland and Panama, but will only use "economic force" (tariffs) against Canada. For now.

All these countries were at first confused, but then very politely replied that the Panama Canal belongs to Panama, Greenland is not for sale, and Canada does not want to join the US. Other so-called democratic countries and US allies pretended to take Mr. Trump's predatory intentions and rude tone as a joke. This is understandable. It is difficult to argue with the strong and impudent guy, but they need to stand up for themselves. Otherwise, impudence and claims will only grow. Look at Mr. Putin.

The Russians were quite pleased with Mr. Trump's brazen demarche and praised it.

The Chinese, as usual, are watching the developments and «should call the bluff on Mr. Trump’s bluster, while remaining clear-sighted about his true intentions and capabilities,» as their leading observers have said.

In my opinion, Mr. Trump's statements are imperialism and rudeness in their purest form, but what to do if the future US president is autocrat and boor? Everyone should have understood that from his first presidency.

«Making America Great Again» by the «right of the mighty».

It seems that Mr. Trump is very keen to be remembered as a great president who did something outstanding - such as gaining new territories in the light of his campaign slogan «Make America Great Again.» However, doing this with the use of military force is an imperialistic attitude that is currently unpopular in the world and should have remained in the previous century.
Is Mr. Trump going to build a new empire (and he apparently sees himself as an emperor) and extend it at the expense of other nations? Is MAGA the «right of the mighty»? The Russians behave this way towards Ukraine and other former Soviet republics. Thus, Mr. Trump's current intentions justify Mr. Putin's attack on Ukraine. Are they like-minded? Then things are bad for Ukraine.

On the other hand, democracy in the world is in decline and everyone can see this. I already wrote that democracy is harmful in times of crises, and since the world is plunging into crisis, democracy falls into decay. People in different countries are increasingly voting for the rights because they see the lefts are not coping with the management of their countries. From this point of view, everything is absolutely democratic. The time for authoritarianism has come and the Americans also elected D. Trump as president with all his shortcomings because the Democrats under Mr. Biden's leadership showed themselves to be even worse over the past 4 years.

Authoritarianism is simply a different way of organizing the life of the state.

The word "authoritarianism" has a negative connotation (while "democracy" has a positive one) simply because authoritarian leaders suppress civil liberties and are more likely to impoverish or collapse their countries (like Nicolás Maduro or Adolf Hitler did), but the democracy in the countries of the collective West has now completely spoiled its citizens with excessive tolerance and an abundance of freedoms, which is why it (democracy), in particular, is degenerating. Everything (even freedom) should be within reasonable limits.

Since there is nothing really "good" or "bad" in life, everything (even Mr. Putin, drought or cockroaches) is needed for something. Authoritarianism is just another way of organizing the life of the state. Consciously or unconsciously, Mr. Trump brings his authoritarian vision (“the right of the mighty”) to the declining democratic Western doctrine of "the might of the right." And he will, of course, develop his vision in the form of the promised war on the “Deep State” in internal politics and aggressive statements and harsh actions in the international arena which have already begun even before he took office.

Lies and hatred are the tools of building/collapsing empires.

Wars are started by politicians, but they are fought by ignorant citizens who listen to the politicians and share their delusions (in other words, lies).

The most lying newspaper in my life was cynically called «The Truth» (“Pravda” in Russian), but I didn’t understand that in my youth. I wasn't interested in these things and just listened to what had been said around. After all, if everyone or almost everyone says it (and that's how it was done in the USSR), then it must be truth. It was just like the Bandar-log reiterated "We all say so, and so it must be true" in the good book about Mowgli.
A slight sense of a lie came in 1979 when war in Afghanistan had started because I did not understand what was the “international duty" the newspaper “Pravda” was speaking about, and did not intend to participate. Then the feeling of the falsity of what was happening around increased in 1986-90, when it became more and more difficult to buy food and other basic stuff for life, but «Pravda» reported that everything was fine. Finally, in 1991, the USSR collapsed and the newspaper Pravda/The Truth was sold by then Russian president Boris Yeltsin to a Greek business family in 1992.
The Truth of the Soviet Union was a lie.

Mr. Trump has chosen lies as one of the main tools to achieve his goals and was constantly making a bunch of false or misleading statements which everyone, unfortunately, takes seriously. For example, in his presidential campaign Mr. Trump said he would stop the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, and now his advisers are already speaking about the months. This was obviously a pre-election lies, but who pays attention to such trifles?

Mr. Trump now has a social media platform called similar to the old Soviet newspaper, “Truth Social”, with nearly 8.5 million subscribers. I have already written before that all people can be divided into 2 large categories - fools and scoundrels. It is amazing how liars/scoundrels manipulate fools and the word "truth" itself. And it is very surprising how blind the fools are that they swallow tons of lie. I symbolically call them "fools" because only blind and ignorant people can be manipulated.

Mr. Trump is a good manipulator and the amount of lies in the US will increase in his second term. It will be followed by additional hatred of Americans towards their political opponents (i.e. towards each other), which will eventually tear the country apart, and God willing, without a civil war given the number of firearms in the hands of the people. Americans consider all this impossible because “the US is too big to collapse,” but you may remember it seemed impossible for Mr. Trump to become the president in 2016, too.
In the US foreign policy, I have great hopes for the "Deep State" which can prevent Mr. Trump’s possible military adventures to send the US troops to Venezuela in 2018).

America is clearly stagnating and degrading, and under Mr. Trump's leadership it will degrade faster and I am sure that the US will fall apart into groups of states somewhere during his term or right after that, which will bring some relief to the Americans. From this point of view, electing Mr. Trump as president was the right thing to do, because the Democrats would have been destroying the country longer. The fact is that the US elites (both major parties of the country) do not want and cannot solve the problems of the Americans. Republicans and Democrats are moving away from the people and from each other, the nation is divided into parts and the country will inevitably fall apart. There is no union anymore.

A fish rots from the head.

While living in Ukraine, I noticed that the president has strong influence on his people with his personal qualities, and the people literally begin to match the image and habits of their president, just like a dog often looks like its owner.
Donald Trump is a boor, scoundrel, liar and cheater. This means that there will be a lot more boors, scoundrels, liars and cheaters in the US over the next 4 years, and many people will not like that. Americans, from my observations, are quite polite to each other in everyday life and, for the most part, do not give the impression of being liars or boors. Now, unfortunately, it will keep changing and worsening faster than during Mr. Trump's first term. And it is a pity that people all over the world will now consider all Americans as boors, liars, etc., including me, even though I did not vote for Mr. Trump.
……….

Only blind and ignorant people elect liars and cheaters to power.

Any nation can go mad at some point, following some obsessive or even criminal leader, and has every right to do so. Usually it ends badly for the nation. A. Hitler was completely legally elected the chancellor of Germany in 1933. V. Putin was legally (or almost legally) re-elected president of the Russian Federation several times by the majority of the population, who are now paying with their lives for his adventure in Ukraine while he is sitting in his bunker.

Perhaps now it is the time for America to go mad. The Americans under the leadership of the absolutely legally elected President D. Trump, their main liar and boor, will lie and throw mud at other Americans and the rest of the world for 4 years. There's nothing anyone can do about that since 77 million Americans elected Mr. Trump as leader and “face” of the nation, and democracy requires to respect the “choice” of the people.

It is interesting to watch how the legitimacy of Mr. Trump's election conflicts with common sense and US traditions - after all, he is also the first president which is convicted felon. The abrupt collapse of America's moral principles is quite obvious here. Even 20-30 years ago, this simply could not have happened.

Dividing the world into a “spheres of influence” is a long-standing dream of Russians.

Mr. Trump is not asking for, but demanding the Panama Canal and Greenland (both demands, by the way, seem to be related to counteraction to China). Mr Putin’s approach is very close to this one. The negotiations on a ceasefire in Ukraine could end with an informal (or even formal, kind of a treaty) division of the world into spheres of influence, like Great Britain, USA and USSR did at Yalta Conference in 1945.

After the collapse of the USSR, the first President of the Russian Federation B. Yeltsin spoke about Russia's "sphere of influence" in 1994. Mr. Putin followed in his footsteps, and with the election of Mr. Trump as the US President, the dream of the Russian elites has come very close to its realization. I think that the issue of ending the war in Ukraine will be attached to the future division of the world between the "strongest", and Ukraine, of course, will fall into the zone of exclusive competence of Russia.

However, to formalize the relationships the signature of China will be needed which has its own interests at least in Taiwan and South China Sea.
Will the signatures of Great Britain, France and Germany (?) be needed, too? More likely no, than yes. The EU will probably be invited to the discussion, and the rest of the countries are simply not asked.

The «right of the mighty» is clearly replacing the «might of the right» in the world, and this is especially evident in the transformation of the most powerful democratic country, the US, into an empire with its emperor.