Josiah Lippincott@jlippincott_
The ability of the American regime to extract sacrifices from the population has declined dramatically over the last 80 years. You can see this in the declining casualty rates in American wars.
Battle deaths by conflict:
WWII: 291,557
Vietnam: 47,434
GWOT: 5,467
Iran War: 13
The American appetite for casualties abroad is decreasing by orders of magnitude over time. This reflects a serious decline in the legitimacy of the American state in the eyes of the citizenry.
It is simply a fact that President Trump cannot command the sacrifices of blood and treasure tolerated by Americans in Iraq just 25 years ago. And George Bush could not have asked of Americans the sacrifices they were willing to make in Vietnam a generation earlier.
President Trump has a lot of political capital but this reality is more fundamental than one man.
The decline in legitimacy is connected to a steadily increasing loss of faith by Americans in the *goodness* of their government. They feel, rightly, that the institutions of power do not care for them, that the working of the state is not in their interest.
This disconnect is not always aggressive. Many of these people are still patriots. They'll fly the flag and support Trump and talk about the Constitution. But they don't believe in the institutions any more. Not really. Propaganda that once worked on them no longer does. At best they'll tolerate it. But they don't really believe it, not in the same way.
Take for example just the last 25 years: the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 2008 financial crisis, COVID lockdowns--the end result of all of these events has been a shattering of belief and a rise in outright hostility (but more frequently apathy) towards the state.
The roots are deeper, too. It doesn't matter what happens in Iran. If Trump declares victory today and the Strait reopens tomorrow, the long term effect on the public will not be an increase in the appetite for Middle Eastern war or flag-waving jingoism. Ordinary Americans see these wars as something to be endured.
They do not see them as existential conflicts or as worthy of meaningful sacrifice.
To be honest, I think this decline is a good thing. The American state is not good for the American people and they know it. It extracts vast sums of money and blood only to work steadily against the interests of the people.
I am not a reformer. I do not think this system can be made "based" or made to serve the good of the American people. It must be dismantled simply.
This is the long term project towards which the American right and American conservatives should be oriented. The New Deal order, the dominant moral and political framework guiding the American state today, must be extirpated, root and branch.