They should be free to struggle and suffer to their hearts desire
That doesn't really make sense if they live in the same communities. If there's universal healthcare but it's opt-in, there will be people who opt out. Those same people will catch viruses and other diseases, not be able to go to the doctor, then show up on the same subways and airplanes as the people who take care of themselves. This means the uninsured become disease vectors.
For those countries it's not soft power. Seriously man, if I have to point out the difference between soft power and hard power to you like this, this conversation isn't worth continuing.
I'm pretty sure your job title isn't "Mathematician" though. You're a "risk analyst" or "quantitative analyst" or something. You're also not doing pure math, you're using somewhat advanced applied mathematical processes to model financial information. Just like how a rocket engineer isn't a physicist but may have a background in physics.
That’s a little more than soft power
It's soft power until they start using it.
This stopped being the yardstick for influence around WW1
And that was a mistake. Population and resources is key to a nation's power. It's a large reason why the US is so powerful. Per capita a lot of European countries have similar levels of wealth, but the US has nearly 350 million people, which is only slightly less than all the states in the EU combined. If the EU were more centralized it would be a single state with a power to rival the US. But, as a collection of 27 countries which only surrender some of their power to the EU government, it's not able to match the US.
I don’t know that they aspire to bring Hanification to me here in California.
Only on a limited basis. They definitely don't want you to talk about Taiwan and how Taiwan is an independent country. Right now, because the US is strong, you're free to talk about Taiwan all you like. But, as China gets stronger, they may require that their trade partners have local laws enforcing the one-China policy. They've already managed to push that onto the Olympics. And after they get that rule everywhere, what's next? Maybe laws forbidding people from using Winnie the Pooh to mock their leader?
The US deposed democratically elected leaders all over South America
That's not really about free speech. That's about who holds power in various countries.
the US losing standing will immediately lead to total Chinese dominance around the globe
The US didn't have total dominance around the globe either. They just had a lot of soft power, a lot more than any other country.
There was a time we feared Japan in the same way
Sure, but Japan was always relatively small. It was a country with a low population and few natural resources. China is a huge country with nearly 10% of the world's population and is one of the largest countries in the world. There are no guarantees that it will still be a major force in 10 or 20 years, but it's different from Japan which was a relatively small country that had a temporary niche in manufacturing certain kinds of goods.
The biggest issue with China is that they don't believe in the right to free speech and free expression. While the US has been more of an outlier in allowing unfettered free speech until recently, free speech and free expression is pretty central to European identity.
Will it really be a multilateral future though? Or will it be a Chinese future?
A multilateral future would be great, but multilateral alliances aren't very stable. Just look at how Orban is disrupting what the EU wants to do, even though Hungary is a relatively small and weak country in Europe. Or, look how toothless European regulations are when Ireland just refuses to enforce things like the GDPR, so the tech companies just declare themselves as Irish.
Meanwhile China seems very unified and their mixture of a command economy and a market economy has been very effective so far. I don't think the Chinese model is all bad. They've been massively effective at doing things like building high speed rail, developing and deploying solar panels, etc. OTOH, the Great Firewall and CCTV state is not how I would like to live.
Without the US, I don't know how well the rest of the world will be able to resist China. I think Australia might be the canary in the coal mine. I think China considers Australia to be in its sphere of influence and will try to put more and more pressure on it. Australia's outlook on the world is much more similar to Europe, but it's geographically really far away.
Maybe the US won't become fascist. Maybe the democrats will win in a landslide and reform things so that no rogue president can do what Trump did ever again.
But, even in that unlikely scenario, the trust the world had with the US has already been burned, and isn't coming back easily. It's obvious that other countries might try to avoid doing deals with a corrupt, fascist USA. But, what's less obvious is that thanks to Trump, countries also won't want to do deals with an apologetic, democratic, tolerant, liberal, honest USA. That USA can get voted out of office and replaced with a fascist in just one election cycle, and all the deals mean nothing when that happens.
Yeah, trust has been burned and it's not coming back quickly. Maybe reform the systems and trust will eventually be built back. But, by that time the US won't be a major power anymore, so it won't matter as much.
It's more than changing just the electoral system too. It's reforming the way that justices are chosen for the supreme court, and how long they serve. It's reforming the power the president's office has over entities like the department of justice. It's massive reforms over money in politics.
Basically, to have any chance for meaningful change, the US would have to undertake a system of massive constitutional amendments. And there hasn't been an amendment in more than 50 years... and that last one was a fairly benign change to the voting age.
I find it interesting how this is just assumed by many people as an eventuality when we've already seen a failed coup attempt last time an election ousted the Republican regime.
Oh yeah, I think there's a solid chance that the democrats will never get back in power again. That, even if they win the popular vote by a massive margin, Trump will pull the developing country dictator trick and declare the results invalid and refuse to leave office. And that's assuming that people are even allowed to vote. What I was suggesting was the best possible outcome for people who still believe that this whole thing can be rescued. Even under those circumstances, I think you're going to see countries trying to pivot away from the US because the idea that the US can commit to anything that lasts more than maybe 2 years is obviously untrue.
I'm specifically talking about Americans thinking that the rest of the world will get over this. I think that trust has been broken.
Like you talk about broken guard rails. The US has been lecturing the world on how the US system of democracy is the best for decades now. There's always talk about how there's a system of checks and balances, and how US democracy can be messy, but in the end it's a system that works. I don't think anybody believes that anymore. The guard rails were always an illusion, and even if all of Trump's changes were rolled back, the rest of the world would know that the guard rails, and the checks and balances are all just an elaborate delusion.
In the same school? That's not going to achieve much.
Will that work as well as a "smoking section" and a "non-smoking section" in a restaurant? We tried that, it didn't work.