{"id":13618,"date":"2018-01-04T17:11:23","date_gmt":"2018-01-04T23:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=13618"},"modified":"2018-01-04T17:11:23","modified_gmt":"2018-01-04T23:11:23","slug":"the-creeping-crud-across-the-globe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/01\/04\/the-creeping-crud-across-the-globe\/","title":{"rendered":"The Creeping Crud Across The Globe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Benen\u00a0worries\u00a0<\/a>about the long-term consequences of the Trump Presidency for the American reputation:<\/p>\n

As we\u00a0discussed<\/a>\u00a0last summer, after Trump announced his rejection of the Paris climate accords, this presidency will end, perhaps\u00a0in three years<\/span><\/span>, at which point many Americans and their new president will turn to the world and declare with pride, \u201cDon\u2019t worry, Trump is gone. The fluke is over. You can trust us again. The United States is back and the American president can lead the free world anew.\u201d<\/p>\n

But at that point, many around the world will probably choose not to listen. They\u2019ll realize that the United States is capable of electing someone like Trump to the nation\u2019s highest office, and there\u2019s no guarantee that Americans won\u2019t make a similar decision again in the future. People around the globe will have no way of knowing when the electorate might elect someone else of Trump\u2019s ilk.<\/p>\n

And with that lack of confidence comes consequences.<\/p>\n

When Trump\u2019s successors, for example, try to reach international agreements, and make promises to our partners about the United States honoring its commitments, foreign officials will know that a Trump-like figure might come along, take office, and decide to betray those commitments.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And I think it’s true, but I don’t necessarily agree that this is a real problem\u00a0for the world<\/i>. From that perspective, having a single nation wielding that much influence is not necessarily a good thing, because, of course, it will order things behind the scenes to enhance its prosperity, and that can unduly impact other nations.<\/p>\n

My real concern, as I may have mentioned elsewhere, is the blot the Trump Presidency leaves on the concept and theory of\u00a0liberal democracy<\/i>. For nations of any size greater than a few villages, finding a way to govern everyone in a stable manner without violence is a major challenge, and if the lesson drawn from Trump is that liberal democracies can elect freaking nut-cases that can severely damage a country in terms of domestic and foreign policy, well, that’s not good.<\/p>\n

Will countries choose to return to the “strong man” model of government, as has Russia?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Benen\u00a0worries\u00a0about the long-term consequences of the Trump Presidency for the American reputation: As we\u00a0discussed\u00a0last summer, after Trump announced his rejection of the Paris climate accords, this presidency will end, perhaps\u00a0in three years, at which point many Americans and their new president will turn to the world and declare with \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13619,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13618\/revisions\/13619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}