Will the USA ever be able to regain its status as the world leader?

According to Gallup, approval of the USA’s leadership is at the lowest point ever in many, many countries, and to make things worse (1) that includes our most trusted allies and (2) those net approval ratings are so low that it may take years or even decades to turn them around, if they can be turned at all.

Germany: minus 83% (6% approve, 89% disapprove)
The UK: minus 60
Canada: minus 65
The Nordic countries: all minus 60 or worse
Other major European powers: between minus 55 and minus 65
Australia and New Zealand: in the high minus 30s.

Among all the free world powers, only Japan continues to hold a slightly positive view of the USA (39% approve, 38% disapprove).

I guess Americans can take some consolation in the fact that our most powerful geopolitical rivals are just as unpopular. The median positive approval for the USA stands at 18%. Russia and China are almost identical at 19% and 17% respectively.

The world now looks to Germany for leadership. (There’s one of the more frightening sentences written in the past two centuries.)

62% of the people of other countries approve of Germany’s leadership. In fact, even Americans have a higher approval of Germany’s leadership than their own! (Germany’s leadership +29, Trump -12, Congress -50.)

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It will not be a simple matter for a post-Trump America to regain its status because Trump set America on a path of disengagement from the world that was often sound even when his rhetoric was undiplomatic, even incendiary. He may have bungled WHO or the climate accords in a fit of pique, but some of his goals were sound: he advocated better control of the borders, an end to military interventionism, greater assumption of financial responsibility from our allies, and greater reciprocity in international agreements.

Biden can mend some of the problems with WHO and the climate accords, but there are things he can’t and shouldn’t change, and those things are important contributors to America’s low leadership ratings. Trump asked the NATO countries to start paying a fair share for their own defense. When they said they were making good progress toward their goals, he first ridiculed their goals, and then pointed out that many countries weren’t even reaching those softball targets. And so they hate him because he is telling them to open their wallets. The problem there is that he was completely correct, and there’s not much Biden can do except to soften the rhetoric.

Similarly, I don’t think that the American public will accept a return to American interventionism except in a unified and global effort that is undeniably in America’s self-interest. And it may have to be in America’s immediate interest rather than as part of a larger, long-term strategy. “Team America: World Police” is likely to become just the name of a film rather than a global reality.

JFK once said, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

That time is gone.

31 thoughts on “Will the USA ever be able to regain its status as the world leader?

  1. About the US becoming a world leader again: Couldn’t we give the job to whatever country Tanner lives in? I gather they are pretty much perfect. Way better than we are, anyway.

    1. Here’s Monday’s top three countries in new corona cases per capita:

      Switzerland 1152
      Netherlands 651
      USA 603

      So, Tanner seems to have found the only two countries screwing up worse than the USA.

  2. “Ultimately, President-elect Joe Biden won the contests that mattered most, besting Trump by 7.1 million votes nationally and scoring pathbreaking wins in Georgia and Arizona. But beneath the surface, despite low approval ratings, high unemployment and a raging pandemic whose handling he had fumbled, Trump’s strength grew among key parts of the electorate.”

    The future of democracy for the US looks none too bright.

  3. If you watch the NFL on one of their more flag-humping days, you will see them thank our troops serving in 175 countries around the world. There are, what, 208 countries total? I don’t think we need to worry that we aren’t intervening enough.

    1. This seems to be one of those rare issues on which you and I and Trey Parker and Trump all agree. We have to stop using Team America as the World Police.

  4. The US Middle East policy forced millions of refugees onto Europe. I don’t see the US paying a penny for that disaster…so criticizing Europe on not contributing to NATO is more American hypocrisy…something the US truly excels at.

    1. You’re missing the points.

      1) Trump was moving toward ending that Middle East policy that you are grieving about. He agrees with you on this issue.

      2) While doing that, Trump merely pointed out to the Europeans that they have a choice to make.

      … If they want Big Brother there, they will have to pay for it. And, mind you, Trump didn’t ask them to pay a premium, which they theoretically should do since NATO helps them more than it helps the USA. He only asked them to do a fair share.

      … If they don’t want to pay, that’s no problem. The USA will be happy to get troops out of there and let Europe solve its own problems. (As just happened in Germany, causing that ultra-low approval rating.) The USA even has plenty of weapons to sell them, at a tidy profit. Or, if they prefer, since they are good at languages, they can brush up their Russian skills.

      1. Trump agrees because he only cares about profit. He gave no shit when doing large arms sales of more proliferation of war for profit. He sees it as a binary – money out or in and what he could have ever took credit for, even if it was a minuscule gesture and just his name on a deal.

        If there was really a concern with spending, we wouldn’t be funding the military industrial complex and making rich shareholders out of Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin executives with blank checks that are never questioned. Spend more than the next several countries below us combined, and it sure as hell isn’t have a force in Germany that’s doing it.

        Trump liked to bitch about other countries not paying in, when we say we do, but it’s the fuckheads at Lockheed just profiteering off of war per usual that we’re providing welfare for. Sure as hell not getting moneys worth for a military that matches the scope of the next nine countries or so we pay more than combined. Gee, wonder the difference there?

        I don’t have a problem pulling troops out, but lets not pretend its just because of the kindness of the US military’s heart why they are there. It’s not to protect the EU, its to protect the US. You need satellite locations all around the world to have a global military force, it can’t just come from aircraft carriers and naval forces alone.

        It’s always been a quid pro quo – protect your country from abroad, when really you’re protecting your own country. The US gets as much, or more, out of having bases in these countries than the those countries themselves get.

        I know one thing, continuing to funnel money as a blank check for pieces of shit at Grumman and Lockheed to get rich off of sure isn’t making anyone, anywhere any safer.

        1. Sure we can use some presence around the world, but not the presence we have now. We have US troops in combat in countries most people have never even heard of.

          Sure our bases and soldiers ultimate benefit America in many ways, but not to the same extent that it benefits the countries on the front line. It works exactly like the bacon and eggs argument. The chickens are involved, but the pigs are committed. The front line countries are the pigs.

          And it makes no difference why Trump opposes interventionism. He only has one thing right. For heavens sake, don’t discourage him. Imagine if he were to come back in 2024 as President with all the same issues – and he also wants to play American Military: World Tough Guy. I have no trouble with him maintaining a great military as long as he’s content to be Peter III. I just don’t want him to think he’s Napoleon. I like him better as Kim Jong Un’s lover than when they were threatening and insulting each other.

          And besides, you’re still ignoring the basic issue. If you want American military presence there, make out that metaphorical check to America. And if you don’t, make out a real check to any of our fine defense contractors, who will be most happy to sell you weapons to defend yourselves, which is what we would like to see in the long run. Either way, don’t expect a free ride.

          1. Trump is gone regardless, and motive does matter, because then he pulls stupid shit like nearly starting a war with Iran. Money and ego were all that mattered, and the money part could easily have changed to a war based on ego if Iran had made an effective strike back and killed solidiers Trump’s idiocy put in danger.

            I have no problems withdrawing troops from there, but you’re acting as if this one some one sided request to be there to begin with. The US absolutely has proposed and promoted to be in every country there to begin with as a part of that ‘deal.’ And I sincerely doubt based on these figures that any damn one of these countries actual citizens wants our bases there either, so the feeling is very likely mutual.

            Also, I really give no credence to whatever binary Trump-esque figure he proposed as a part of paying a certain amount of military spending per NATO country. We’re the ones who are idiots for wasting our budget to give greedy private companies a huge cut of overhead, not them.

            Maybe it’s this country who needs to cut the military spending ratio, not them? Probably why in the alleged COVID relief bill, there’s once again, MORE military pork funding included in it, just for the hell of it. Those Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin shareholders really are carrying their weight for NATO protection right? Maybe they can station their yachts off of Germany for the military industrial welfare they receive and earn some of their keep and put the blame where it lies with who is or isn’t paying in.

          2. “Maybe it’s this country who needs to cut the military spending ratio.” Yes. Could not agree more. That’s the whole point. That should result from getting Europe to shoulder their share. Right now, we are spending that 3.4%, compared to something like 1.3% for Germany. Our goal should be to get Germany and Japan and the other prosperous democracies up to 2.5 in the hope that we can get down to 2.5. Trump is right about this issue. The prosperous free world is taking advantage of us when they can do far more.

            Or, as I said, if they want us gone, no problem. Let them subsidize Lockheed instead of us. I think they will end up spending far less in the long run than if they just build up to the necessary levels and keep the USA happy in NATO. But it is their choice. They are powerful countries and two of them have nuclear weapons, so they should easily be able to defend Europe without America’s help. The combined economy of the EU is more than 18 trillion dollars, while Russia’s is a measly 1.5 trillion – less than Texas. The Europeans don’t really need any American help to build defenses.

            And as for your point about greedy defense contractors, you’ve identified a problem. They are greedy bastards. What’s the solution?

          3. For starters, a company that profits from war should not exist. You have Lockheed sponsoring a college football bowl game, which is absolutely ridiculous.

            If there’s a military investment, give them the infrastructure to coordinate and make the project themselves. Either in house by the armed forces, or in combination with special entities with non-profits or public-benefit declared organizations that are NOT on the stock exchange. Or coordinate with allies (if we have them anymore) on development and production.

            It’s pointless try to get any inertia in this area though, because like everything else, you mention any sort of defense or protection change in budget or resource you have people running scared because they can’t handle any nuance.

            Build up, and allocate infrastructure to take over design and production in house over time, and give less and less to defense contractors. With lobbyists and the slush fund I’m sure Congress gets in both parties, this would be about the last thing I would ever expect to occur.

          4. I meant in the real world.

            If defense contractors didn’t sell to the USA, they would sell to other countries, and all of their innovations would go to anybody but us, mostly to the evil guys who are willing to write the biggest checks. The USA, lacking the improvements created by competition, would be limited to only what it could develop on its own. That might or (more likely) might not be as good as the best in the world. In Europe alone there are about two dozen major companies competing in that arms market.

          5. I disagree there, obviously no arms sales would happen to other countries without government approval. And I do not believe the false sense of oligopoly ‘competition’ results in any innovation at all. A black budget where no one looks at anything except the small handful of Grumman, Lockheed, and Raytheon bids doesn’t result in anything except overhead and bloated cost, with little improvements.

            Again, we hear every year about how we could be falling behind China – yet our military budget every single year is multi-fold over theirs – not to mention historically where we’ve likely spent hundreds of trillions in today’s dollars over them to date. Where is the gap here? How do you fall behind a country you’ve spent exponentially more than, unless it’s going into the wrong hands to begin with?

            DARPA created the TCP/IP protocol you’re using this very second to access the internet. It’s not fighting two other corporate conglomerates for bids that is creating innovation, it’s stifling it. Within the branches of the DoD, they could do everything with more innovation and progress than any private company, just like they led the research to many of the modern technological advances we have today. When a ‘fiduciary duty’ is based on profit and returns, it’s the antithesis of innovation.

          6. That’s not the way international trade works. You are saying that the USA would not longer buy from them. In that case, they would of course incorporate elsewhere and business would go on as usual. They would sell to Russia, China, Israel, the Saudis and others. The USA would have no control over what they sell or whom they sell it to. The Saudis would be especially happy to be able to buy all they want from Grumman and Lockheed, freed from the need to filter those purchasesy through US permissions.

            Furthermore, while they would temporarily lose the US business if it was so dictated by law, they’d get it back whenever they had the best ideas, because that’s the way the market works. If somebody develops the ultimate fighter plane, and the internal group has nothing comparable, the USA will be knocking on their door. They would have no choice.

            Again, this is the way the real world works.

          7. I don’t even know what points you’re arguing. Defense contractors can exist without US Government business and would just go elsewhere and incorporate?

            Lets look at the options, which would never occur, but lets look at all these pro-capitalist sweetheart deals they supposedly have options for in the “real world”:

            – China, where they would have to coordinate with a nationalized company to ever offer any product there, and even if they did China has a very long history of stealing the intellectual property and making it their own?

            – Russia, which is essentially China-lite with the same philosophy?

            – The European Union, where they would face the brunt of much more consumer and citizen friendly laws and heavier taxes?

            So in the real world, as it turns out, it’s only the US and the strength of the US citizen and consumer base along with infrastructure developed by years of knowledge and research heavily funded by the public that keeps them afloat.

            I’ll take that game of chicken and damn day of the week. Feel free to incorporate elsewhere and take your products there if the ultra-wealthy want to take their own ball and find somewhere else to go. Russia and China will steal the information and make it themselves, and they’ll also feel 10 times the brunt of checks and balance in the EU.

            That’s the real world. They can all take their shit elsewhere if they want to bitch about not hoarding all of the money and resources, and see how other countries treat them if they’re so confident about it. The US is by far the most corporate welfare friendly country around, and by all means, test the global market if they wish to do so.

            Then they all can go bitch about relief when they don’t get their comfy corporate protection laws and giant corporacracy welfare checks they get here. I won’t be shaking in my boots anytime soon of the consequences of not giving the wealthy corporations, military contractors, or ultra-rich anything they want – if there were ever a progressive majority able to vote the laws in to enforce it.

          8. They would presumably relocate in Saudi Arabia. I can’t say whether they would work exclusively for them. That would be a matter for negotiation. They would probably be able to sell to others as long as the Saudis got right of first refusal and a percentage of the sales.

            Israel is another possibility. If it could not rely on arms sales from the USA, then they would develop their own arms. Plus they would welcome the companies with a sweet deal – just to keep them out of Saudi hands.

            Israel would be a less attractive deal for the arms builders, since Israel would insist on controlling who they sell to, while the Saudis are likely to be more flexible and allow sales to the USA, China, Pakistan and Russia (basically anyone but Iran and Yemen), as long as they got a nice chunk of the action, because that’s how they roll. That would possibly give the arms manufacturers a more profitable deal than they have now.

          9. A lot of getting into the weeds for a subject matter that very likely will never change. It’s a moot point regardless, none of these actions will ever be implemented. There’s absolutely no ‘secret sauce’ in privatization that is providing anything that can’t be done within investing in people directly in the DoD – like has been done before. Or utilizing public universities or non-profit research institutions.

            This isn’t really a new area, Eisenhower warned against exactly this as he left office. And not that I would give a crap what they would do if much of the job creation and engineering was taken in house by the DoD, I’m not convinced of any bark from CEO’s as these defense contractors if they had to abide by more reasonable compensation standards and restrictions.

            Grumman’s CEO makes $25 million a year. In the end, the gap of corporate welfare and wealth inequity is so friendly to the rich in the US, and this society is such an absolute outlier with total acceptable and brainwashing to give corporations whatever they want, that even the most progressive policies here would not even hit the norm of risk of what these companies would have to deal with outside of the country.

            It’s hilarious using the threat of incorporating elsewhere to provide products, because other countries either have authoritarian governments who would stab corporations in the back – or their standards on corporations and taxation are what we call ‘radical liberals’ here in this country! By all means, deal with the ‘radical liberals’ in the European Union or Scandinavian countries – or trust the theocracies or authoritarians – and be humbled a bit.

          10. By the way, the CEO salary is the wrong place to complain. For the most part, CEO’s literally get paid on commission. They are generally paid in the million dollar range, but are issued stock options enabling them to purchase stock at the current price. Thus, if they get the stock up and reward the shareholders, they also get rewarded. No board would approve a CEO unless they felt he would earn his keep many times over. The average top-350 CEO made only about a million in salaries in recent years, and maybe 300,000 in bonuses. The rest (some 16 million) was basically derived from stock prices.

            (CEOs made about half as much in the bust year of 2009 as in the boom years of 2006 and 2007. Of course they still made a shitload of money.)

            When I was in the oil business, I came to realize that (1) Dick Cheney knew nothing about the oil business, (2) Dick Cheney knew nothing about business in general, but (3) he earned his $9 million a year many times over just on the value of the people who would take his calls. That’s what CEOs do. And that’s also why I could never have been one.

            The place to complain about executive salaries is all the rest of those top people who essentially get a free ride on a top CEO and have no accountability on their immense salaries and options.

        2. “issued stock options enabling them to purchase stock at the current price. Thus, if they get the stock up and reward the shareholders, they also get rewarded.”

          Or if the corporation is issued 15% in corporate tax rate cuts, the money is used for stock buybacks which reduce the supply of stock, thus raises stock price and the executives then cash the money out at a higher price for their own compensation.

          This is exactly the point, and exactly where the 2017 Trump tax cuts did. It’s been studied, surveyed, and proven it did not go to jobs or wages. It went to stock buybacks, or mergers and acquisitions. If it goes to M&A, then another company is purchased, ‘redundancies’ are reduced – which is the corporate correct term for jobs are cut.

          With less competition through merging or acquiring competition comes more market dominance, and raised prices for consumers. Also, executives almost always increase their compensation in this scenario based on the new position.

          That’s trickle down economics in a nutshell. They don’t get rewarded for merit in work function, skill, talent, or work ethic. They get rewarded through system manipulation when their direct compensation is raised based on how much they can manipulate the system. There’s no objective system they have to prove themselves to, only how well they can manipulate the system to their advantage – and among other executives with the same incentives. And honestly, they don’t care, because they get paid and if they sink the company and jobs, the end result will never result in lack of employment for these people. They nearly always get an equally high position with the ruins in their wake.

          All else being equal, I rather they DID get paid cash only, and there were no alleged ‘fiduciary duty’ to shareholders or vested interest in making the stock price go up – because they clearly have personal incentive to do that for their own compensation over creating jobs or funneling money back into the company for new solutions.

          1. But they work for the shareholders. In fact, it could be argued that if they valued their employees, or even if they valued profit, over the shareholders’ returns, they would be guilty of criminal liability.

            Now the shareholders are me, and maybe you, in the form of our IRAs. If I have my life savings in their hands, I WANT them to value shareholder worth over all else.

            And the basic fact is still that they work on commission, just like a vacuum cleaner salesman. That is the free market at work. If they fail, they don’t get a big payday, and they get sacked.

            We looked at this many years ago from a strategic standpoint, and we found that the CEO was one of the very few employees in the world that actually earns his salary. If, for example, there is a poor schmuck on the assembly line for ten bucks an hour, you can always fire him and replace him with another poor schmuck who will do a better job for nine dollars an hour, because he really needs the job. Therefore, the guy getting ten dollars an hour is losing money for you. If you have a teacher making $60,000, you can fire him or her and replace him with another one fresh out of college who will do just as good a job for $36,000. So the taxpayers are actually keeping on that experienced teacher at a loss. If you look at it with hard logic, paying the older worker for their experience is really charity unless they are somehow demonstrably better.

            But CEOs – if you pay a top CEO $25 million, he can bring in hundreds of millions, possibly billions. Many of them are irreplaceable.

            There are exceptions, of course. A big star of some kind can be worth more more than the CEO. Some ad agencies pay copywriters more than the their CEOs because they are literally worth more to the agency. But even then, it is the CEO who makes that call!

            Unfortunately, this is one case where reality is completely on the side of the conservatives. If you pay somebody in dollars, then you set dollars as your standard of measurement for their worth as an employee, and when you really get down to it, only CEOs and the self-employed really make what they are worth. (With a few exceptions) If a self-employed golfer, for example, gets old and can no longer break par, his earnings plummet to zero. But when teachers get old and dotty are are no longer up to par, they actually get paid MORE! And I pay their salaries.

            On the other hand, there is no doubt that corporations and the rich do not pay a fair share of taxes. They have been mollycoddled again and again, and that does not really drive the economic engine. As you guys often note, trickle-down economics is mostly bullshit, and those much-ballyhooed tax cuts never seem to stimulate the economy enough to maintain or increase total revenues. Mostly they just seem to increase the deficits.

            While what I wrote above about the value of labor is essentially true for employers, society has considerations that differ from those of the employers. If you take a billion dollars from the rich and just give it to everyday workers, it drives the economy like a perpetual motion machine. Money in the hands of guys like Mitt Romney doesn’t all get poured back into the economy. Much of it is invested overseas. Much of it goes to certain favored businesses, thus supporting more rich dudes who raise dancing horses and build yachts. In contrast, money in the hands of everyday workers goes right back into the economy immediately – into places like grocery stores, which in turn employ more everyday workers whose paychecks also go right back into the economy immediately.

            So. I’m all in favor of getting money out of the hands of those who have more than they can ever need and into the hands of people who need it and will spend it.

            If you want to raise corporate taxes, fine with me. If you want to force corporations to pay their lowest-level employees more than they are really worth, also fine with me. That may not be completely fair to the employer, but it is good for society, and that is a greater good.

          2. I generally agree with Scoopy, his argument is based on the theory that employees, including CEOs, are paid more or less, on their return to their corporation.

            This is why many economists argue that athletes, especially the very best athletes – Sidney Crosby, Connor McDavid in hockey for instance, are underpaid, both from an economics perspective, and ultimately then, from a moral perspective.

            In terms of sports, professional athletes work under a monopsony, meaning one buyer (employer) and many sellers (the athletes.) So, especially the very best of the best athletes lose out monetarily because they can only enter free agency late in their career.

            Where I do agree with Indy is that corporations are as prone to herd mentality as anybody else (these seems to be especially the case in business.) There is especially the one disastrous CEO, Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap, who made hundreds of millions personally through engaging in mergers and buyouts that more or less destroyed every company he was the CEO of, during the time that corporate culture was obsessed with the supposed magic of mergers and buyouts.

            It wouldn’t surprise me of Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap is specifically who Indy was thinking of.

          3. I have a 401K, but you know what I don’t do? I don’t put it in the stock market. I guess this is the fundamental design of the system. In the end people want to put their money into ‘investments.’ AKA, I want to ‘earn’ something by dropping it into this magical hole that will somehow produce money for me, thinking there is no cause and effect there. Give me a return on my investment’ which means you reduce jobs and put people on the street if earnings aren’t high enough. Same with housing, let me buy ‘investment properties.’ Well who the hell is on the other side of that? Probably some family who is trying to find a place to live at a reasonable cost, who now has to either pay a higher bill on their mortgage, or continue to rent, because some asshole thought it was more important to find someone to squeeze for ‘investment income.’

            Since the discussion is winding from area to area here, obviously every tentacle here has been added for a purpose for income inequity. And the purpose of putting 401K’s to the stock market, has always been to be for the ultra wealthy to say – unless you give us ALL the control – we’ll wipe out your savings. Everyone ‘gotcha’ moment here has an equal opposing force that could be made if society chose it to be, with strong research and implementation of how to do it, with the purpose of improving society. Let the 1% take the hit here, let the regular people freeze their 401K market value at it’s highest point over a set of timeframe and put it in a pension fund, and wipe them the hell out. There’s a lot of options here a little better than do nothing and be happy about it.

            And ‘value’ is subjective. CEO compensation during the 50s through 70s was much, much lower compared to average wage compared to now. The Rand Corporation study recently showed the average worker making 50K compared to the value of income equitable to a CEO’s increase should be making 90K now. Through manipulation of laws and the ability to leverage power over labor, that clearly didn’t happen though.

            It’s very clear much more major innovations were made decades ago through the MOSFET transistor which is likely the biggest human invention in history that powers all of our electronics, the C programming language, the TCP/IP protocol, among others during an era where laws were not so corporate friendly. Take a look at the tax rates, CEO pay, average worker pay, average cost of higher education in this era, and the amount of the deficit and get back to me on that one.

            Saying conservative philosophy wins here is like saying the house is a better blackjack layer than you will ever be in a casino. The game is rigged from the start, and the paradigms that have been slowly integrated through laws and lobbying have made this a standard that people accept in a rigged game – even though there is proof even in this country’s not so distant history that it was not this way in perpetuity.

            Every single tentacle of this system can be countered with a greater opposing force through a variety of methods to counteract income inequity to produce a higher standard of living for everyone, reduce recidivism, and give everyone a chance to have employment that actually allows them to live a fruitful life if that’s the true goal here. And it doesn’t take trying to shoehorn and generalize every system of government into capitalism, socialism, communism, liberalism, conservatives, or whatever else – a hybrid of methodologies, or standards from the past, would depending on the industry and who gets the brunt of those decisions.

      2. Sorry…that ultra low US approval rating has almost nothing to do with Americans leaving Germany. Americans broke the Middle East and instead of cleaning up the shit pile they created are leaving the problems for others to clean up. See abandonment of the Kurds….etc. The behavior of three yr olds. That’s helping cause their ultralow approval rating along with Trump pulling out of the Paris Treaty. Note that in Switzerland the US approval is not much higher than in Germany…and the last time I checked my neighborhood there were no American troops to remove.

        1. According to the article, Germany was already pretty low because of those other same factors that affect every European country, but it was Europe low, not Iran low. It seems to have plunged to Iran low when the USA pledged to remove the troops. As of the publication of that survey, approval of US leadership in Germany was actually lower (net minus 83) than it was in Iran (net minus 78), so it has to be some deep, deep, personal issue. And after all, Trump did justify the decision by calling the Germans a bunch of freeloaders, thus employing that gift for diplomacy that is his alone.

          (Or as he would say, he is the least offensive politician in the history of diplomacy.)

          The other large European countries are in the minus 60 range: France -57, Spain -62, Italy -59, UK -60, and that’s where Germany had been (-51 in the previous survey). So the plunge to sub-Europe levels indicates additional new factors that affect Germany besides Europe’s normal grievances. Gallup suggested the troop announcement, but that’s not something that can be proved by the limited data.

          I can’t explain Austria. In their case it is not a recent development. They have been that low before. Maybe they blame Trumpism for Sebastian Kurz, the Alpine Trump. Or maybe not, because a lot of them voted for that asshole. Maybe Trump made fun of Mozart.

          1. Switzerland has a 10% approval and Germany has a 6% approval of the US. Margins of error are 3.7 and 3.6 percent, respectively. That data is from Summer 2019.

  5. Throw some of this shit that’s coming up in the relief bill as added on as to more reason why this place is a shithole – can’t even provide relief to people without adding on some insane shit to a bill.

    In this bill? That piece of shit Thom Tillis for this one. Three years in federal prison for streaming copyrighted content. I don’t know if one of your sites would be affected, but may want to take a look at this shitty add on to the COVID relief bill. Hard time being dealt out in the corporate world order:

    PROHIBITED ACT.—It shall be unlawful for a person to willfully, and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, offer or provide to the public a digital transmission service that—
    (1) is primarily designed or provided for the purpose of publicly performing works protected under title 17 by means of a digital transmission without the authority of the copyright owner or the law;
    (2) has no commercially significant purpose or use other than to publicly perform works protected under title 17 by means of a digital transmission without the authority of the copyright owner or the law; or
    (3) is intentionally marketed by or at the direction of that person to promote its use in publicly performing works protected under title 17 by means of a digital transmission without the authority of the copyright owner or the law.

    (c) PENALTIES.—Any person who violates subsection (b) shall be, in addition to any penalties provided for under title 17 or any other law—
    (1) fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 3 years, or both;
    (2) fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both, if—
    (A) the offense was committed in connection with 1 or more works being prepared for commercial public performance; and
    (B) the person knew or should have known that the work was being prepared for commercial public performance; and
    (3) fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both, if the offense is a second or subsequent offense under this section or section 2319(a).

      1. Gee, I wonder why congress has a net approval rating of minus 50.

        I wonder if Mitt Romney got a tax break for his dancing horse.

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