The little superpower that couldn’t

I've being paying no attention to what might be about to happen in Ukraine, but today I read an article in The Age written by Peter Hartcher. He talks about the US retreat from Afghanistan and that Russia and China, or anyone who was paying attention (not me), would have seen that as a defining moment, like the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the September 11 attacks. Hence some flexing about Ukraine to draw a line under the end of an era. The end of US imperialism? The end of US domination? Boy oh boy!

In 2020 I sat there glued to multiple screens, following the Black Lives Matter protests and watching as cops shot people in the face. The brutality was staggering. Then I watched as the hopeful era of Bernie Sanders came to a bitter end and a senility case became the next President of the United States. And it was then that I stopped paying attention to the United States. I got bored.

The United States has so many fingers in so many pies, it can be hard to keep track of what they're doing, then you remember it's all about power. I hope that US domination of countries across the world, Cuba for instance, comes to an end and that Russia and China simply muscle out the United States. I don’t care if they’re not nice. I hope the US domination of South American countries comes to an end. Imagine South American countries in a position to tell the United States to go fuck themselves. Imagine these countries being able to finally do away with the horrors of the drug trade, without United States involvement in both the war on drugs and the war for drugs.

In the Age today Peter Hartcher talks about the possible collapse of the United States as the global superpower as a green light for exactly the kind of extremely heavy handed leadership that the United States has been putting into power around the world for every bush pig moment of the American Dream. Sure, dude.

The United States has engaged in one illegal war after another in the name of freedom and has done more than any other nation to undermine people power. What a possibility, a future where the United States has a vastly reduced ability to throw its weight around. Even its ability to pump propaganda into the atmosphere could be under threat- and here I am overstating wildly, but it excites me- South Korea just makes better quality cinema and TV and most of it's not propaganda. Of course they make some propaganda, every country does, it’s just that American storytelling is like a child's finger painting compared to what's coming out of a country that the United States helped tear apart after World War Two.

All over the world there are cultures that are not American. And it will be nice to think that appalling American patriots will be left grasping at straws, desperately attempting to make the case that several decades of American propaganda that has been carpet bombed onto countries everywhere amounts to some sort of gift that the United States has given the world. “We invented jazz, blues, rock and rap.” No you didn't bro, your slaves did.

Without the story that they are a shining light guiding the world towards the promised land it's going to be harder and harder for New York Times reading Americans to hang on to their bullshit that they offer something special.

The thought of the USA being downgraded to a nation of randos and the accompanying spectacle of flailing Australians desperately trying to drum up a story of some sort of global Chinese threat, where there just isn't one? Delicious.

Also, something about Ukraine? Anyway.