US is the Jeffrey Epstein of the world

It is not surprising how far flexing a little military or economic muscle gets favourable outcomes.

The early days of the US continued the displacement and decimation of indigenous tribes, along with increases in slavery to fuel its economic growth for the rich landed gentry. Even Lincoln was not so worried about the implications of the wording of the constitution regarding the lack of freedom for slaves, except for that the Southern states wanted to secede, and so needed to rally slaves to help the North. Despite the North's win, the power of the Southern landowners remained and kept any further progress towards liberating the ex-slaves delayed until a hundred years after the Civil War.

The end of the 19^th century was to see the start of US serving the interests of its elites in brow-beating other nations into submission. The first target nation of the US was Spain and its near-US colonies, where the US really set up the modus operandi of its template: support dissenting groups in those colonies with arms and promises of eventual independence, only to renege on the promises so they could maintain control without commitment. Their control mechanism is to install a ruthless leader to suppress the local population so that the US exploitation of local resources could continue.

This template was used for over 50 more successful coups in Central and South America over the next 100 years. The template proved less successful for Asia, where resistance groups were a lot more adept at defending their own land, leading to prolonged wars that the US eventually lost, or at least did not get their intended outcome, but at great cost. But even failed wars are a boon to those who profit from wars. as the US military-industrial complex well knows.

With many countries releasing themselves from exploitation, the US moved to a new template of using the huge economic power of the US dollar. Using the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), along with free-trade agreements that favoured US companies, the US forced their style of exploitative economic policies upon even their allies, often leading to worse domestic economic climates in them. A variant is to rope countries into military deals like the F-35 that result in escalating capitol and operational costs for decades. Pure economic exploitation without violence.

Unfortunately for the citizens of the US, but not its elites, the strength of the US dollar and the loss of local US manufacturing due to the corporate outsourcing of almost all manufacturing to cheaper countries, has left the US with huge debts that even immediate local production could not remedy. The huge tax reductions for the rich and corporations, along with massive tariffs, has led to the largest transfer of wealth from the mass of US society to the most elite. This is resulting in the US being asset-stripped of its value as it would be too expensive to fix.

Together with the gutting of many US departments by leaders who want to destroy them, the US is becoming a feckless banana republic for its elites to run amok without government or citizen interference.

In the same way as the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, the US promises to be a friend and helper, but really it is just satisfying its own selfish interests and creating long-term problems for those countries they supposedly helped. And Israel as its manipulative ally is like its Ghilane Maxwell.

The US does not like being rejected as an exploiter, so will go to great lengths to punish those countries that defied it.

For countries, like Cuba and Iran, into which the US installed dictators to allow exploitation by US companies, that then eventually overthrew them to regain sovereignty, the US has imposed very strict sanctions lasting decades, seemingly hoping that their citizens will overthrow their independent governments. Unfortunately, the US does not understand those who resist to keep control of their land, and so attempted invasions or bombings have not been effective. China was fine while it could be exploited for US manufacturing, but is now an enemy because it took control of its own destiny.

US politicians and media all work from the default view of these countries as inherently bad, and take pains to point out the failings of their governments, even after decades of debilitating investment and resource embargos. This is behaviour expected of a selfish child that always wants their own way, but unworthy of any nation that feigns promoting democracy. But the US only uses the idea of democracy in relation to other nations when it wants to paint a country as bad when soliciting help from other countries to continue punishing them.

The US could have easily helped those countries by pushing for transitions from their US dictatorships to democracy, but their failure to let go of being rejected keeps getting in the way. In a way, Trump exactly personifies the core nature of the US as a grifter only interested in themselves. It is really only very specific sets of circumstances with Lincoln and FD Roostevelt that enabled the US to seen as something noble.

The irony is that the US is going downhill fast with the distraction of Trump, while its citizens are waiting for its supposedly superior systems to make everything right again. They are so impotent that they cannot do anything about the decline. There is no real sense of country as a grounding to the land that the citizens other countries like Cuba and Iran have. They only have the delusion of country as an idea, and while they have dreams of their militias defending themselves, the reality is that they are lining up to be exploited while thinking they are doing the defending.

There has been a lot of propaganda used by the elites to get their way.

The North American continent received several waves of settlers from Europe from the early 17^th century on, all looking to escape the religious intolerance in their homelands and find their own place in the New World. From this outlook of optimism, later waves saw great opportunities out West of the Eastern States and somehow saw that their colonisation was divinely ordained, becoming known as Manifest destiny. With this self-righteousness they massacred or drove native tribes from their lands. It is easy to think about superiority with advanced weapons to wield.

The related delusion is that of American exceptionalism, where somehow the US was naturally superior due to its history and that they had thrown off their colonial shackles, becoming a country by their own hand, and set up their own rules. In that, they conveniently forget that up until them, countries were not really a thing until city-states conquered enough land and developed a sense of national identity at around the same time, and so were also setting up their own new sets of rules. But the mindset settled in with elites and was easy enough to sell to those they wanted to exploit.

Armed with these twin delusional concepts, the US elites sold the idea to its citizens and other countries that they were entitled to have a say in how the world was run. This accelerated after having gained huge wealth from exploiting countries that had exhausted a lot of their armaments at the start of WWII, and using that to build extensive manufacturing facilities that enabled them to walk into the war with a significant advantage. The story they sold themselves was that it was just their natural superiority rather than their ruthless exploitation of the weakened.

Unfortunately, it is the same delusion that is blinding the masses and wannabee elites from seeing how it is being sabotaged, while they somehow think that their society is naturally resistant to such exploitation. That means that they are not rapidly putting into place the resources that will actually stop it. This is because those resources, like unions, were stripped by Reagan's policies from the early 1980s. All means of mobilising opposition had been weakened to the point of being vague possibilities in a palette of half-baked ideas that would need decades to re-establish as a defense.

US propaganda pushed the notion that rugged individualism, rather than collective action, is what will enable people to improve their own lives. It also justified elite privilege because it carried the implication that successful people were entitled to it, regardless of how ruthless and exploitative they were to get it, and discounted the contribution of the many who helped them get there.

While delusions can inspire activity, they can also hobble actions that prevent nefarious activities. That means that until the delusions are delt with, the US has a future that will not serve the mass of its citizens by lumping them with massive debts while its elites are given free reign to exploit them and the world. The collapse of the US as a nation serving anything but elites is deliberate, and any action by Trump or politicians as they run amok shows the elites just how much the population and institutions will tolerate. If this is not what you want, actively resist, not just protest.

As a driving force, such myths are rather shallow compared to the deeper connections and coherence gained by people who have been actual civilisations like China and Iran that have been conquered and been conquerors for thousands of years. The latter provides a depth of endurance and resistance that enables their people to have the capacity and internal resolve to endure those who do not have that deep sense of long-lived cultural identity that endures despite the propaganda and delusional myths of whomever currently rules them. The US can bully them, but not rule them.