A friend asked this question (“here” is Amsterdam), and here are a few thoughts:
- I’ve lived outside the US for 15 years now, so I’ve lost track of “the vibes” that everyday people might feel. I cancelled my subscriptions to the NY Times and Economist eight months ago (global bad news was bumming me out), so I don’t even have a decent journalistic perspective. I talk with American friends who live in NL and US quite often, so I get their personal perspectives, but it’s a country of 330 million across a massive geography, so “things” are going to vary by a lot.
- That said, most of what I “see” relates to US foreign policy (e.g., NATO/Ukraine, wars in Afghanistan/Iraq/Israel/Iran, tariffs on allies). It’s clear to me that Trump doesn’t have a clue about American soft power. Biden was competent here (like Obama), but it seems like the US is doing its own version of Brexit, which is counterproductive to American interests, as well as a world that gained from America’s post-WWII support of global institutions. Thus, we will all be poorer and global issues (trade, climate chaos, migration, public health, human rights) are all going backwards… maybe to the fascism (Soviet and Nazi) of the 1930s.
- What’s crazy but increasingly likely is that China replaces the US not just as a leading trade partner but also as the definition of a country that functions for its people. I have a very hard time seeing how the CPC can do a better job than a democratic, rich country, but every day gives me more evidence to see that shift. Watch to see if the EU pivots (economically) to China, in exchange for China allowing Russia to lose in Ukraine.
- America, the brand, is worth a lot less, mostly due to Trump/MAGA, but also as the crazed left has lost track of the working classes and embraced splinter rights (trans/post-modern/anti-colonial) that are popular in university debates but irrelevant to quality of life for 99% of people (including the so-called “victims” who the left is supposedly helping). Help the majority, and they will feel safe enough to help minorities. Here’s what I said about Trump’s “inevitability” after his first election. All of my predictions came true.
- Everyday that passes makes me glad that I gave up my US citizenship. I decided to do that before Trump was re-elected because I was more worried about the people who think Trump is a solution (or less bad than the left) than the Cheeto himself. Those same people voted for Bush in 2004. I have lost my right to live/work/retire in the US, but that’s not worth much to me, compared with my social/economic/legal status in NL. (I’m applying for Dutch citizenship.)
- I still really love the spontaneous, inclusive, go-for-it culture of the Americans and the migrants who live there. That’s still my culture, but I see too much downside — poverty, corruption, traffic jams, inequality, violence, broken safety nets — in America’s “it’s all on you” cowboy culture. I am and always will be a free-market capitalist, but that doesn’t mean I don’t support a functioning safety net (NL is good; CH and DK are better). Canada has a better balance than that US; Mexico still has the family safety net, which is very useful.
- Long ago, I said that the easiest way to explain how the Dutch see the US is to draw a parallel to how the US sees Mexico. Culture matters.
Bottom line: America is no longer the land of the free, home of the brave, a land of opportunity, or a shining beacon on the hill for its own citizens. It’s more like a decaying Roman dictatorship that is collapsing faster than its enemies can destroy it.
You should do a review of Robert Harris’s Cicero trilogy. Very much where the US stands right now.
Do I think that’s how America looks from the Netherlands? Maybe.
To whom? I think many Dutch people would agree with this perspective (as an American who lives there too… like yourself).
I don’t, not entirely.
Taking your last point: I’m not sure how the U.S. isn’t a land of opportunity, especially with policies resembling those from 1790–1945 while deregulating.
Wasn’t the Gilded Age a time of opportunity? Antebellum America? The roaring 20’s?
Immigration levels—even under Trump’s plans—are higher than they were from 1925–1970. Current U.S. Foreign born resembles its peak in the early 20th century.
What evidence of dictatorship, much less a decaying one, exists when viewed in historical context? So far, I see none. This is all precedented. John Adams, Jackson, Lincoln, FDR… all more dictatorial.
Aggression? Obama was far more aggressive in war and deporting immigrants.
Obama’s soft power—partly gifted by others and not entirely earned (he admitted he didn’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize just for being elected and likable to Europeans)—was superior to Trump’s, definitely. Obviously a fair point.
Trump’s soft power is so poor it likely cost him Greenland and Canada’s western provinces, which were attainable if he weren’t such a boorish, bullying figure.Yet, in terms of hard power, Obama (and every president since Reagan, if not FDR) was more aggressive than Trump. Moreover, the low soft-power approah has accomplished a major foreign policy goal sought by every U.S. administration since the mid-1960’s… a re-militarizing burden-sharing Europe.
Generally, Europe’s perspective on American ills annoys me now, just as it did in 2008.
Europeans see America as suffering from “American-ness” (and there’s some truth to that, but mostly its just convenient), but most of our issues stem from “Western-ness.” Europe is part of that and often experiences American crises on a delay, pointing fingers at how ridiculous, depraved, or “cowboy” Americans are.
I recall a research group lunch in Antwerp where “cowboy capitalism” was blamed for the finical crisis. The next week, Iceland’s economy collapsed, and Fortis went into crisis before failing. Europe’s recovery never really started and it marked the beginning of decade long economic stagnation. The U.S. has recovered and grown.
In 2012, a Dutch academic colleague of ours, aghast at American PC culture – particularly in Universities, “knew” it would never take hold in the Netherlands, Dutch universities, or Europe. That didn’t age well.
Executive overreach is universal. The Rutte Cabinets are a case-in-point.
The judicialization of politics is universal. The Housing crisis is a case-in-point.
The decline of representative institutions (parliaments and Congresses) is shared.
The tyranny of tech is universal.
The decline of social solidarity needed to support the welfare state is universal (driven, in large part, by high levels of immigration—which is partly why Denmark is possibly the lone exception).
Personbally, I – as yet – see few signs of 1930s fascism. I do see echoes of 1930s communism, alongside 19th-century and Latin American tinpot dictatorship tendencies. Totalitarianism versus strongman populism.
I share your concerns about China, but what you worry about could be its undoing. China is one miscalculation away from catastrophe in part because they centrally employ all their calculations. No adaptive decentralized protections.
But, the totalitarian left adores it in practice, if not in spirit. This is why I’m one of those Americans you worry about who thought Trump was better than Harris, especially after the DNC adopted a campaign style reminiscent of the CCP, led by two people with deep connections to that party—a VP candidate who openly praised and advocated for it as a teacher… And a party that largely ignored CCP infiltration, that works hand in glove with establishment media and employs democratic centralisim in the selection of its candidates, and then just employs the media apparatus to shape reality.
I keep hearing that Trump will end democracy and destroy facts to seize power, but the DNC effectively did that from October 2023, when Biden held his last cabinet meeting, until November 4, 2024. The fact that this is largely not really described as what it was is itself the best sign of American political dissolution. The illness of polarization – not the ‘playbook’ of Trump.
Trump has succeeded in exposing the unsustainability of the post-war and Cold War orders and, so far, has pursued a more effective foreign policy on many fronts than any president since Truman. The last NATO summit was a major sign of that.
He’s disastrous on many fronts, but George W. Bush got similar hyperverntilating ‘this-is-the-end-of-The-American-Republic’ talk, and now people think he wasn’t so bad. It’s like its all constructed discourse or something that’s forgotten when it isn’t instrumentally convenient for the polarization wars (again)
So your take likely reflects how things look from the Netherlands, but I think it’s skewed.
Europe is no less self-deluded than America and is increasingly fractured, polarized, threatened by totalitarian and tinpot impulses, and atomized.
In many ways, America feels more integrated on the ground outside urban centers than Europe’s do (It’s that decentralizations, baby)
The U.S. also appears more dynamic and technologically advanced—a reversal of the 1990s and 2000s when the opposite seemed true. European economic decline is becoming visible. Even my depressed home region in way northern New York has more new restaurants and businesses now than at any point in my memory, except, maybe, a brief period in the late 1990s. None of these are chains.
I see opportunity.
I see free people (indeed, that’s why things can get messy).
Freedom doesn’t look like a Rutte cabinet or whatever is happening in the UK or Germany. Bravery isn’t running to China. Freedom isn’t ‘well managed’ and ‘tidy’ and a giant state project concluded without any mediated controversy.
Today, the U.S. stacks up well on those classic metrics but fails —as it has since 1945 relative to its European peers—on equality, social solidarity, and compassion.
I worry greatly about that, as well as the loss of soft power and its logic, both internationally and domestically. The polarization, rife in America and growing in Europe is the real story, and the rest – as far as I am concerned – is a smokescreen ususually deployed by people wanting to blind themselves to the problems of their ‘own side’.
The 4th of July feels off in a country where people hate each other. That’s new and truly different (outside of the Civil War period), but it never enters European analyses because they never fully humanize us and found our civic patriotism boorish and silly. Moreover, they want to avoid seeing their own polarization… preferring to see the rise of the far right as a conspiracy.
Well. we aren’t childish flag wavers anymore. They don’t seem to prefer this version of us.
But they ought to look out, because—like our colleague and his ‘it’ll never happen here’ notions—that fragmentation appears to be coming to Europe at warp speed.
Long comment with lots of points, many of which make sense. I guess that there’s a “bottom line” as to how you or I or anyone will draw a conclusion, in terms of (a) Would I live there? (b) Would I visit there? (c) Is the US good for where I live (NL)? and (d) Is Europe next in line?
For (a), I say no (decline of social solidarity, people hate each other). For (b), maybe… when it comes to visiting with the actual people and their diverse lives and cultures. I still love the optimism. OTOH, I dislike the broad decay of hard and soft infrastructure. On (c), I think not. Trump as dictator (taking money for himself) is not the same as Lincoln (“save the Union”) or FDR (New Deal). Trump’s playbook undermines the post WW 2 American order in a way that’s not helpful for the US (except superficially) or the world. Yes, there’s more EU support for NATO, but that’s b/c America has gone from ally to antagonist. On (d), I agree that the trend is US first, then UK, then EU, but those forces are not inevitable nor of the same quality/quantity, since the US — from a political perspective — is monolithic (due to over centralization) and fragile (inequality; precarity).
Institutions matter, and America’s are now weaker, which is bad for its future.
(a) clearly I say ‘no’ too. We’re neighbors afterall! 🙂 But if the answer’s motive was ‘i want to live in a high solidarity welfare state’ it’s been ‘no’ since 1950. Hardly a new development. Social trust is declining everywhere, including the NL where that polarized animosity is now visible and political violence on the rise, as it is across Europe.
(b) It depends where you go, but (a) I *know* you enjoy travelling in places with far worse hard and soft infrastructure. So… ? And, I don’t find this as apparent as I did 10 years ago. I mentioned this in my post. New York and new Jersey both seem much improved on this score at least.
(C) Rent seeking is an odd definition of dictatorship. Certainly can travel with it but is neither necessary or sufficient for it to exist. You seem to suggest that the goal determines whether it’s dictatorship or not. I think that’s silly if so. Like john Adams imprisoned newspaper editors. One died awaiting trial. He literally wanted to be king. Said as much. But… For a good principled cause so…nah?
It’s a judgement call. We disagree about the post wars orders (WWII and CW – bc these are two different regimes) beneficence in the long run(which we are entering) for the US. In my view, disruption was necessary and inevitable and sooner would better than later. Trump’s legacy here, I suspect, could be quite positive if reasonable responses follow…. That’s a big if, but for the future.
(D) As I said the inequality is getting to peak levels historically and that’s no good, though the polarization is worse. If the point is just….’wow, the us is really farther along this glide path’…yeah. def. And yeah. It could be worse for Europe when it comes like the financial crisis was. So, this last point makes me question the exercise at all.
America, to me, has an advanced case of western decline. Historically it recovers from down periods and problems far faster than Europe because if it’s fragile due to inequality it is less centralized than Europe (odd that you suggest otherwise… ‘overcentalized’ compared to it’s past, sure. Relatively still less than Europe.) and experimentation is easier and more common. It remains a dynamic innovative place….far far more than Europe (and this is not unknown to European policy experts who worry about it daily)
We obviously need to move this to a pair of bar stools, but here are a few things that I miss in your reply:
(1 — related to a & b): The loss of social cohesion is a big problem. I don’t think there will be a civil war but there’s definitely a “civility” war in the US. Bad vibes means I don’t want to visit, to hear slander about “those guys”. Also bad for dating 😉
(2/c): Rent seeking is a BIG deal. Lee Kwan Yew was an “honest dictator” and results were better. (Adams isn’t relevant to 21st century politics.) Trump is making US inequality even worse, via transparently unfair methods. That could break faith in the (already untrue) “American Dream” of doing better than your parents. Then you get a death spiral of all against all, fighting over “the pie” (which, if you remember, I am claiming will be shrinking for the first time in 200 years due to CC)
(3/d): European countries ARE more centralized than the US, but the EU is LESS so, which is why the “release valve” of living/working in 27 other countries is really useful. That’s not available to Americans — as I see daily on reddit (r/AmerExit). You and I are lucky enough to have choices.
Oh, and I’m listening to a discussion with Michael Lewis about his new book on federal employees. The interviewer asks “what are Trump et al. doing this for?”
ML answers that Trump wants loyalty to him, not the constitution. Russell Vought (libertarian, Project 2025 co-author, head of OMB) wants to end the federal gov’t. Musk wants attention AND to help his companies. I agree with these but add (as I’ve said elsewhere): Trump wants to avoid jail and wants to undermine trust because he himself is not trustworthy. Musk, e.g., closed USAID for investigating him and cut the NASA butdget to help SpaceX. On Vought, I think that the 10th Amendment warriors will be overwhelmed.
All the BS about DEI and abortion is a distraction from Trump’s real goals… and good luck putting the federal gov’t back together again. It’s not Twitter.