re: #11 HappyWarrior
I think it would have been a positive net against Xi’s soft power moves in the Pacific Rim. Imo the people who led the opposition against it- Sanders and Trump are ignorant of how soft power is important.
Why should someone who is faced with economic dislocation because of globalism give a shit whether US oligarchs or Chinese oligarchs end up ruling the roost?
That’s an example of the underlying issue that is not being addressed by business as usual, and which gives opportunities to demagogues like Trump and Sanders.
IMO US politics being the distorted malignant circus that it now is comes from a substantial fraction of the people seeing (correctly) that the status quo offers little or nothing. It’s not just a ‘loss of God’ problem. It’s a loss of faith (both religious and secular) that the system is worth supporting because it works well enough for enough people.