A superpower by definition cannot really be a rogue state. A “rogue state” is a political label applied by dominant powers to states that defy the international order. For example Iran or North Korea are considered rogue states because they defy the international order. What is “the international order”?
Well, it’s the combination post-WW2 institutions created by none other than the US. The UN, IMF, NATO, etc. They set the norms of “legitimate” behavior. When the US participates in military interventions, economic sanctions, and other aggressive actions it’s framed as upholding “rules-based order” whereas identical actions by weaker states get them condemned with the label as “rogue states”.
To call the US a rogue state is to misunderstand power. Hegemony is the ability to define reality, not just defy it. In this way, the US has always been a rogue state in the sense that it does whatever it wants regardless of the international norms. I mean, just look at the mid 1900s and its actions in Latin America. It was involved in about a dozen states toppling governments and supporting military dictatorships- including sponsoring the genocide of natives in Guatemala.
Yes, that’s true. I’m more concerned with whether US citizens, whose past administrations more or less invented the term, can now recognize for themselves that they are no longer on the side of the “good guys” with this administration at all, but are now the “terrorists” themselves - the very thing that past US administrations denounced (at the time, of course, already completely speciously).
Edit: Trump himself has even brought the term back to a certain extent - and he is not only the personification of evil for the governments of other countries. I just want to make it clear that it’s the same here as with almost everything he does: it’s projection - whatever he accuses others of, he and his corrupt gang are the ones doing it.
Edit 2: Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying this because I believe that Europe, for example, would be much better - I’m saying it because I’m from Germany and we have the history that you all know. It’s not too late to put a stop to Trump and his Nazi colleagues, but it will take civil resistance. If there is no vehement resistance, I fear that history will repeat itself. Nobody in their right mind can want that.
Myself and and a good number of people I know are very aware and horrified. Unfortunately this isn’t necessarily the case outside of my social bubble. Since major media outlets aren’t doing a great job, a lot of people are trying to spread the real news in a grassroots style.
Edit 2: Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying this because I believe that Europe, for example, would be much better - I’m saying it because I’m from Germany and we have the history that you all know. It’s not too late to put a stop to Trump and his Nazi colleagues, but it will take civil resistance. If there is no vehement resistance, I fear that history will repeat itself. Nobody in their right mind can want that.
You say this while both your country and the US are supporting the genocide of palestinians with barely any civil resistance other than some toothless protests.
I own guns now. I never did or even considered it until the election results in November.
Leftists, of course. Liberals will continue to be in denial for the foreseeable future. Conservatives just dgaf.
It’s covered up yeah, most of the republicans are too dumb to realize it.
We’re inundated with propaganda. Our media is state run. All for-profit media is state run.
Our media is state run. All for-profit media is state run
Could you elaborate on that take?
We been a rogue state for 100 years
Those of us who aren’t Team Orange or completely oblivious know, I think. An appalling number of people are completely disconnected from what’s happening, and a disgusting number either don’t care or love it.
I lost the last shred of faith I had in the American people with this election. I delight in the suffering of every shithead that either voted Trump, 3rd party, or not at all. ESPECIALLY the protest voters, conservative minorities, and rural idiots stupid enough to think Trump cared about them or was somehow a better because they didn’t like something the Biden administration did. My schadenfreude levels are hitting new, bitter peaks there.
To some 20%-30% of the country ‘patriot’ means ‘whites only’. Honestly, if your so dedicated to being a patriotic American you can’t stand up to a government doing everything it can to destroy America, you’re just an idiot.
I see the American media as softballing fascism, or they’re just outright complicit.
No one will call shit what it is, and every fucking thing in the news needs to be both-sides-ed.
This doesn’t help with the less educated grasping these basic concepts, nor does the massive stigmatization of intelligence and critical thinking, nor does the attacks on institutional education.
There’s laws constantly being passed in the form of ‘vouchers’ to drain public school funds and funnel American kids into Christian indoctrination, and our public schools are now dramatically underfunded.
So I guess I understand why more than half the population just straight up ignores politics. because reality here is really depressing.
Some of us are aware. We tend to also be the ones who know this only ends in some kind of revolution. No dictator has even chosen to give up power.
No dictator has even chosen to give up power.
Taiwan’s did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Taiwan_(1945–present)
It was actually neat. The “hybrid” between dictatorial state funding and a democratic business environment all but established TSMC.
Ukraine is sort of a dictatorship now, but Zelensky will probably give up power.
But, uh, we don’t talk about them here I guess.
How is Ukraine a dictatorship?
They paused elections, and Zelensky has some extraordinary wartime authority. He could try to consolidate power after the war, but he certainly won’t.
They aren’t really a dictatorship, of course, I’m just trying to illustrate that dictators can and have chosen to give up power… And it’s unfortunate that more don’t.
Their constitution states that elections won’t be held during wartime. He’s not disallowing elections, their foundation of government is disallowing them. Attempts to band ho,as some kind of dictator are just propoganda. He’s the legally elected President and following their laws.
We’re aware. People who get all their news from Fox or ignore politics in general probably aren’t but even my conservative family members are embarrassed about the threats to Canada and Greenland. Canadians are generally considered super nice and polite by Americans so pissing them off crossed a line. Even apolitical people probably know the U.S. National Anthem is being booed at sporting events.
There’s elections in several states today that will provide some data to know more. Louisiana had an election on Saturday and rejected 4 constitutional amendments supported by Republicans. None even got 40%. Louisiana is an oddball state so I’m not sure it’s a harbinger of today’s elections but if voters in Wisconsin and elsewhere vote like Louisiana, it’ll be very telling.
For international readers or Americans unfamiliar, Wisconsin has a state Supreme Court vote. It’s probably 50/50 and is the important one. Florida has 2 special elections for vacated House of Representative seats in Congress. The districts both voted heavily for Trump so the Republican candidate should win.
So, in Florida, don’t necessarily expect the Democrats to win. But if it’s even close, Republicans will be filling some diapers. They should be winning these districts by 20 or 30 points. Winning with 53% or whatever would be a really bad result for Republicans.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/us/politics/wisconsin-supreme-court-crawford-schimel.html
Update: Eat can eat 1,001 dicks.
Canadians are generally considered super nice and polite by Americans
That’s actually a common misconception. We aren’t really all that nice. We just do passive aggressive really, really well.
I will accept passive aggression. A lot of people don’t bother with the passive.
I don’t know what our reputation is globally but I live in a tourist city (New Orleans). A lot of people don’t even bother with the passive part. Most “tier 1” conference cities are huge but we’re a relatively small city. We have a population of about 350,000 (compared to over 8 million in New York City) but enough hotel space and a conference center, stadium, whatever able to host a global event. The Super Bowl was just here and Taylor Swift had three shows. Those were known events but there will be weekends where you go downtown and meet 20 exterminators or something before you realize the exterminator convention is in town. (This actually happened to me. There are so many more exterminators than you could ever imagine.)
We host a lot of events and, as a result, even people who can’t afford travel meet people from everywhere. My high school friend is a bartender and he’ll have random hatred of places and professions because they’re obnoxious or don’t tip or whatever. To this day, he loves Hawaii residents because they had a football game here once and everyone was chill and nice.
Anyway, I say all that to say: Canadians are more than welcome to be passive aggressive here. South Louisiana in general is more aggressive than passive.
https://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2007/10/08/edsbs-road-trip-baton-rouge
I’m confused that polling seems to be neck and neck when the liberal candidate won by 11 percentage points last time around, her opponent sucked but an 11-point swing is wild here.
Once it’s all tallied, something like $100 million will be spent on a single state’s judicial election. That is insane. Ten million would have been insane just a decade ago.
I imagine that’s why things are close. A lot of voters are being bombarded with (mis)information. The people who are undecided probably have no idea what’s true or false.
Remember that time Elon Musk spent millions of dollars and lost? It was today and it was really funny. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/us/politics/wisconsin-supreme-court-crawford-schimel.html
There was never a point in US history that it was not a rogue state. If you believe there’s a period it wasn’t, you simply do not know enough history about the time period you’re referring to.
Or more likely, you believe white lives to be more valuable, and you take offense now that the US is directing their usual behavior towards white Europeans.
Yup.
What we are seeing now is a critical inflection point for liberals: do they do honest introspection and start to apply real criticism to the history of the US, or do they cover their ears and claim Trumpism is an aberration for which they have no reasonable explanation.
To put it simply, liberals now have a choice between
“Damn, this is really the outcome of the american political project, huh? How did we get here?”
And
“Trumpist fascism is un-American, and I am clueless as to how it took hold, but I am going to continue to vote blue no matter who!”
If the amount of liberals on .world bizarrely harkening back to the “good old days” of the founders, Reagan, Obama, and even dubya is any indication, I suspect most of them have gone with the second option.
Liberals are just as much reactionaries as conservatives. They simply disagree on which status quo they’d like to return to and who is acceptable to exploit.
That’s why I wrote “…now definitely a rogue state”. Not that there was much of a question before but now it should be obvious even to US-citizens.
We’re successfully distracted by the more immediate personal problems they’ve created for us
The average American voter is hilariously unengaged. Many of them read at an 8th grade level at best. We’re suffering the consequences of an education system that has been tragically underfunded for generations, and our media institutions are thoroughly compromised. Because of this, media literacy may as well be non-existent. The worst actors in our public institutions know this and have chosen to capitalize on it. Foreign interests recognize the obvious weakness in our social fabric, and they have been taking advantage of it to great success.
We are completely lacking the most crucial part of any functional democracy - an informed electorate. We have the least qualified people making the most important decisions.
The United States is effectively a failed state. Many of us recognize this, but our options for addressing the problem are limited. We not only have to dislodge the largest defense structure the world has ever seen, but we have to somehow fix the plague of weaponized stupidity that is conservative culture in order to ensure the worst humans don’t end up in powerful positions.
If you have any suggestions on how to start fixing that, I’m all ears.
For starters, understanding that American fascism is not the result of voters simply not being informed enough. The idea that, if all Trump supporters simply had access to better information, if they all had better education, if they were exposed to the right argument… then they’d see the light and turn into democrats - is a supremely liberal idea. We need to understand that no amount of epic slams, no amount of late night talk show roasts, no amount of facts and logic will steer us out of fascism.
As we devolve deeper and deeper into fascism, it has been frustrating watching liberals flail to try and understand how the devolution is happening: is it because people are uneducated? Is it because of Joe Rogan’s podcasts? Is it because of Russian spies? Is it because Trump has started a cult? Is it because Fox News? Is it because lead was used in gasoline 50 years ago? Is it because we use lead water pipes? Is it because of Ronald Reagan? All of this waffling to avoid the hard questions. I.e, “is it possible that fascism is the only logical conclusion a nation which was founded solely by white landowners to do wholesale on genocide on native Americans?”
If you fail to start thinking about this devolution into fascism in terms of history, class, and material conditions, you’re always going to be hopelessly confused about the structures and frameworks that allow fascism to fester.
The idea that, if all Trump supporters simply had access to better information, if they all had better education, if they were exposed to the right argument… then they’d see the light and turn into democrats - is a supremely liberal idea. We need to understand that no amount of epic slams, no amount of late night talk show roasts, no amount of facts and logic will steer us out of fascism.
Well said. And honestly, it’s even counterproductive, because that assumption is a core reason why people view the establishment Left as patronizing and elitist.
It also reminds me of one of my favorite Onion videos: https://youtu.be/lpzVc7s-_e8 (I like Judith Butler, and I’ve even read some of Gender Trouble, but the premise and execution just gets me in stitches every time.)
is it possible that fascism is the only logical conclusion a nation which was founded solely by white landowners to do wholesale on genocide on native Americans?
No, but it is the only logical conclusion of a nation that continues to venerate those genocidal landowners as heroes.
Well, I don’t think you’re wrong about an informed/educated populace not being sufficient to overcome fascism, but I have a hard time seeing us overcoming it without some level of education. Though obviously, the type of education matters (e.g., how kids are taught about Columbus is probably the most egregious example of a failure by the public school system to educate)
If you’re really going to sit here and pretend that none of the things I mentioned play a clear and obvious role in our current situation, I don’t even know where to start with you.
Strawman. Never did I say that the things you mentioned dont play a role in facilitating fascism.
Poor education, MIC, captured media, sure… all of these things facilitate fascism.
My point is that your analysis does not get at the heart of how fascism arises or why america is going full throated fascist in recent years. Why do we have poor education? Why do we have a bloated MIC? Why has our mainstream media been captured? Why is conservatism increasingly in fashion?
You’re not going to get to the heart of these questions by ignoring class. You’ll especially fail to answer these questions if you just blame some nebulous concept of “conservatism” wholesale. Youve correctly identified the symptoms, but you still need to take the next step w/ class-based, material analysis.
Foreign interests recognize the obvious weakness in our social fabric, and they have been taking advantage of it to great success.
First step is to learn to stop blaming other countries for America’s failure.
Just ignored the entire first part of that, didn’t you champ?
Parents set the stage for valuing education. If there is no value on it at home it will be reflected in the kids and it will then be passed through the generations. Generation after generation of barely getting by and failure.
While I disagree with the “failed state” label (go look at Haiti) it certainly isn’t setting itself up for future greatness.
Half are aware, the other half is happy about how things are going. Apparently we have hundreds of millions of racist dumbfucks here.
There are plenty of racists who aren’t fascist. There are plenty or countries with racism problems that aren’t fascist. There are plenty of dumbfucks who aren’t fascist. There are plenty of illiterate countries that aren’t fascist. “Stupidity” (im being careful here - i dont think illiteracy = stupid) and racism predates fascism.
Youve reached the limit of the liberal ideological framework and have resorted to explaining fascism as some sort of cultural pathology. This is what happens when your idealist politics prioritizes individual psychology and moralistic explanations over historical and economic analysis.
It’s frustrating seeing liberals watch the fascist devolution in real-time, and just throw up their hands saying “well i guess americans are just stupid! QED!”. It conveniently absolves them for their complicity in facilitating fascism, and it spits in the face of victims of US policy, both foreign and abroad.
Well I voted against the Orange fascist. Should I go hold an anti Tesla sign at a dealership? What do you expect the response should be with the next presidential election four years away?
Honestly dog, this is exactly the right question. I get it. Shoutout to you for asking it. Truly.
From the liberal perspective, this is exactly how it goes. “I voted against fascism, yet fascism still festers. What gives?”
The liberal framework pushes the idea that electoralism is the be all end all form of political participation, but leftists refute this. Leftists say that you have a plethora of other tools at your disposal to express yourself politically: buy a gun, do mutual aid, join an organization, read theory, participate in local politics, etc…
If your question is earnest, I’d encourage you to read some Lenin.
