The world is watching America lose its moral compass and its global credibility

FreeinChrist · Mar 27, 2026

This matches what I see happening.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5764825-the-world-is-watching-america-lose-its-moral-compass-and-its-global-credibility/

For decades, America’s true strategic advantage lay in something less tangible but more potent: its capacity to attract. Its ideals, openness and professed commitment to universal values conferred a moral authority that made alliances easier, its influence deeper and its leadership more legitimate. That advantage is now being squandered.

The current focus on the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran should not obscure a larger reality: The damage the second Trump presidency is inflicting on U.S. soft power — on the very credibility that made American leadership possible — is profound and likely to outlast the administration itself.....

The most visible fracture is domestic. President Trump’s rhetoric has normalized a form of racialized politics that previous generations of American leaders, from both parties, publicly rejected. His disparaging comments about Somali immigrants, like his circulation of dehumanizing imagery of the Obamas, revives some of the ugliest tropes in the long history of racial oppression. These are not isolated excesses — they signal to the world that the U.S. is retreating from the very values it once claimed as its moral core.....

No mainstream Western leader has voiced such unvarnished neo-imperial yearning in decades. For European allies who have spent 80 years publicly renouncing colonialism, and for countries across the Global South that fought to escape it, the implications are jarring. When American leaders speak this way, they do more than offend; they delegitimize the very international order the U.S. claims to uphold....

The consequences are already visible. Allies hedge. Partners question U.S. commitments. Countries across the Global South, long lectured by Washington on democracy and human rights, now hear such rhetoric with growing skepticism. Rivals, from Beijing to Moscow, find it easier to portray the U.S. as hypocritical and self-serving.

Lukaris · Mar 27, 2026

Trump was ok during his first administration but has embraced reckless interventionism. That being said, the post World War 2 order had to go since all it did was perpetuate mass migration and endless wars so we have gone full circle in an instant on wars. When the demos get voted back in, broken borders, mass migration will resume & the circle will be complete.

FreeinChrist · Mar 27, 2026

No, the World War order after WWII did not need to go. A strong NATO is good.

The point of the OP is that America, under Trump, is betraying American values and how we and the world saw us. We can't admonish any country about human rights, and abuse.

Hans Blaster · Mar 27, 2026

Lukaris said:
Trump was ok during his first administration but has embraced reckless interventionism. That being said, the post World War 2 order had to go since all it did was perpetuate mass migration and endless wars so we have gone full circle in an instant on wars. When the demos get voted back in, broken borders, mass migration will resume & the circle will be complete.

what are demos? Voters in the 18-49 demo(graphic)?

Lukaris · Mar 27, 2026

Hans Blaster said:
what are demos? Voters in the 18-49 demo(graphic)?

Democrats. When they are reelected in the next landslide. A disaster of another making.

Hans Blaster · Mar 27, 2026

Lukaris said:
Democrats. When they are reelected in the next landslide. A disaster of another making.

I see. Your post was a mass of punctuation and abbreviation disasters and factual errors. It was hard to comprehend.

MarkSB · Mar 27, 2026

Lukaris said:
Trump was ok during his first administration but has embraced reckless interventionism. That being said, the post World War 2 order had to go since all it did was perpetuate mass migration and endless wars so we have gone full circle in an instant on wars.

I don’t see how we’ve gone full circle on wars. “Trump the peacemaker” was just rhetoric, and his peaceful world never existed. He’s done nothing but take things backwards since he stepped into office, with his supporters cheering him on the entire way.

His supporters are living in some kind of fantasy land, acting like there are no consequences for this type of behavior. Ironically many of his supporters are “conservative Christians”, who claim to live according to a book which quite clearly states that behavior like this typically has consequences.

NxNW · Mar 27, 2026

Lukaris said:
When the demos get voted back in, broken borders, mass migration will resume & the circle will be complete.

How can it resume when it never happened? Trump's wall kept them out, and it's still doing so, right?

Akita Suggagaki · Mar 27, 2026

FreeinChrist said:
The current focus on the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran should not obscure a larger reality: The damage the second Trump presidency is inflicting on U.S. soft power — on the very credibility that made American leadership possible — is profound and likely to outlast the administration itself.....

It will take decades to regain credibility if we even still exist as a democracy.

Hentenza · Mar 27, 2026

Akita Suggagaki said:
It will take decades to regain credibility if we even still exist as a democracy.

Probably not. Just send Obama to do another apology tour.

Lukaris · Mar 27, 2026

NxNW said:
How can it resume when it never happened? Trump's wall kept them out, and it's still doing so, right?

Never happened?

Graphic Truth: Illegal Immigration to the US hits record lows

The number of people attempting to cross the Southwest US border illegally has fallen to historic lows, with authorities reporting barely 8,000 “encounters” with undocumented migrants per month.

www.gzeromedia.com

ThatRobGuy · Mar 27, 2026

FreeinChrist said:
For decades, America’s true strategic advantage lay in something less tangible but more potent: its capacity to attract. Its ideals, openness and professed commitment to universal values conferred a moral authority that made alliances easier, its influence deeper and its leadership more legitimate. That advantage is now being squandered.

"Openness" is not, and should not be, unconditional.

It's hard to compare the impact of openness of 50-100 years ago to the impacts of today.

It's easy to be wide open (with good results) when the people wanting to come here want to embrace the culture and values that already exist (and already have a huge overlap in the values department)

It's a little more complicated when people want to come here purely for economic benefit, but have no interest in (and sometimes a blatant aversion to) the culture and values.

From 1900-1950, the bulk of immigration came from Italy, Ireland, England, Scotland, and Germany. 3 of those 5 were already English-speaking, and all 5 had religious & cultural customs that were pretty similar to the people who were already here, so there wasn't a huge "assimilation curve" for lack of a better term. It's easy to be "open" amid that kind of backdrop.

It's a little different once the people coming in are basically saying "yeah, we have no interest in doing things your way, we're just going to try to recreate our old country here in an insular community, just with a better economic backdrop and social safety net"

I'd go as far as saying the people of 1900-1950 would have been less tolerant to that than people are now.

To pretend that our current status represents some sort of major regression is inaccurate.

Does anyone honestly think that "Foreign born person comes here to study, and hits the streets to fly their old country's flag while yelling disparaging things about America" would've been better received in 1922?

For example, if the Italian Immigrants who came over started constantly running down the US and hitting the streets to yell about why they thought Italy was better than the US, and saying "how dare you ask me to learn English, you all need to be more accommodating to make this more like the cultural customs I was used to in Italy!"

That would have caught someone a beat down in the streets if we're being honest.

That's where people need to have a no-sense conversation and acknowledgement that no, not all cultures are equal, and not all cultural aspects are compatible.

There are cultural differences that are "meet in the middle, we can both learn & adopt something from each other and both benefit", and there are cultural differences that are showstoppers.

As an analogy...

If I had an open door policy with my neighbors and said "you're all welcome to pop in any time you'd like"

One neighbor brings a movie from a genre I don't usually watch
The other wants to host dog fighting in my basement

I can find some middle ground with the first neighbor and we can probably learn something from each other and both try something different.
For that other neighbor, they're not bringing that nonsense into my house

When more of the latter than the former start showing up and I say "You know what, I think I'm going to press the pause button on that open door policy"

My aversion to the latter wouldn't warrant a "Gee Rob, your open door policy was your strength, this is a major step backwards"

Lukaris · Mar 27, 2026

Hans Blaster said:
I see. Your post was a mass of punctuation and abbreviation disasters and factual errors. It was hard to comprehend.

During the Biden administration, illegal immigration increased:

Graphic Truth: Illegal Immigration to the US hits record lows

The number of people attempting to cross the Southwest US border illegally has fallen to historic lows, with authorities reporting barely 8,000 “encounters” with undocumented migrants per month.

www.gzeromedia.com

Russian aggression against Ukraine became a total invasion & ongoing war ( which Trump has been unsuccessful in trying to resolve). Do I have to provide links to prove this fact to you?

The Biden administration fumbled the Abrams Accords away over the Khashoggi murder affair. It was horrible but distancing Saudi Arabia, neglecting Iran, & Hamas has helped create the current crisis.

Despite Khashoggi's Murder, America Must Still Choose: Saudis or Iran?

Simply put, the United States has a binary choice in the Persian Gulf.

www.newsweek.com

Trump has actually made progress on fentanyl smuggling:

How Trump's Border Crackdown Has Choked Cartels' Fentanyl Flow Into the US

Cartels have severely pumped the brakes on trafficking fentanyl into the United States, and experts say that's thanks to the Trump administration's aggressive crackdown.

freebeacon.com

Drug overdose deaths are declining:

US Sees Roughly 21% Decline In Drug Overdose Deaths, CDC Data Reveal - KFF Health News

All but five states — Arizona, New Mexico, Hawaii, Kansas, and North Dakota — reported fewer fatal outcomes tied to drug overdoses from August 2024 to August 2025, data indicate. Other lifestyle and wellness news looks at social media use among children, text-to-therapy tech, recalls, and more.

kffhealthnews.org

Punctuation aside, at least I’m not a one sided propagandists.

chevyontheriver · Mar 27, 2026

Akita Suggagaki said:
It will take decades to regain credibility if we even still exist as a democracy.

The American moral compass has spun quite a bit in it's 250 year history, occasionally pointing True North. It has often pointed elsewhere. It pointed elsewhere in the firebombing of Dresden and the annihilation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Those aren't the only deviations by a long shot. It's worth complaining about current problems, but we shouldn't pretend this is anything new. At all.

MarkSB · Mar 27, 2026

ThatRobGuy said:
Does anyone honestly think that "Foreign born person comes here to study, and hits the streets to fly their old country's flag while yelling disparaging things about America" would've been better received in 1922?

Whew. There is a lot to digest in your post, but I'll focus on the comment above first. Do you not see how this comment perfectly illustrates the attitudes that were being touched upon in the OP? So let's calm down here, and ask ourself a couple of rational questions:

First off, you're making an anecdotal statement. So have you seen these foreign persons who "come here to study, and hit the streets to fly their old country's flag while yelling disparaging things about America?" Or is this just something that you've seen on the news? What makes you think that it is ok to generalize, and apply that behavior to all "foreigners"?
Who mentioned 1922 as being the point of comparison?

It's a little more complicated when people want to come here purely for economic benefit, but have no interest in (and sometimes a blatant aversion to) the culture and values.

2. What "economic benefits" are you referring to? The fact that many of them come here and work very hard in manual labor, and for low salaries? Or the ones that come here on student visas and get advanced degrees? Yes, the economic conditions here are better than in the countries which many immigrants come from. But what is being implied here when you say "economic benefit"? Are you implying that the majority of them have not earned what they are getting?

It's a little different once the people coming in are basically saying "yeah, we have no interest in doing things your way, we're just going to try to recreate our old country here in an insular community, just with a better economic backdrop and social safety net"

3. What qualifies as "doing things your way"? What specifically is the "your way" in this statement which the majority of immigrants aren't adhering to?

4. The social safety net comment implies that immigrants come here to take advantage of social welfare programs. Is that the implication that you are making here? If so, what evidence do you have that shows this is the majority case?

ThatRobGuy said:
For example, if the Italian Immigrants who came over started constantly running down the US and hitting the streets to yell about why they thought Italy was better than the US, and saying "how dare you ask me to learn English, you all need to be more accommodating to make this more like the cultural customs I was used to in Italy!"

That would have caught someone a beat down in the streets if we're being honest.

5. Where are these immigrants who are "hitting the streets" and saying "how dare you ask me to learn English?" Can you provide evidence for widespread protests or attitudes like this? According to AI:

There is no widespread evidence of U.S. immigrants being opposed to learning English. Research suggests the opposite: high demand for English classes, which often results in long waiting lists. Most immigrants, including over 87% of undocumented ones, support requiring English as part of legal integration, with over 83% of refugees learning English within a year of arrival.

6. That "beat down in the streets" would be illegal, would it not? You state it here like it is some good and wholesome thing.

ThatRobGuy said:
That's where people need to have a no-sense conversation and acknowledgement that no, not all cultures are equal, and not all cultural aspects are compatible.

There are cultural differences that are "meet in the middle, we can both learn & adopt something from each other and both benefit", and there are cultural differences that are showstoppers.

As an analogy...

If I had an open door policy with my neighbors and said "you're all welcome to pop in any time you'd like"

One neighbor brings a movie from a genre I don't usually watch
The other wants to host dog fighting in my basement

I can find some middle ground with the first neighbor and we can probably learn something from each other and both try something different.
For that other neighbor, they're not bringing that nonsense into my house

Good grief. So correct me if I'm wrong here, but in your analogy, the neighbor who you can find some "middle ground" with comes from one of the following countries: "Italy, Ireland, England, Scotland, and Germany"? That's what was stated in the first part of your post as being more preferred cultures for immigration. Is that correct?

So if that is the case, what exactly makes those countries more preferred than Latino countries, which didn't make your 'favorable culture' list? I understand that a language barrier creates practical concerns, but two of the countries on your preferred country list (Italy and Germany) don't have English as their dominant language. So what makes Mexican / Central American / South American / Asian immigrants so different then? Or immigrants from any countries other than the ones that you have listed?

Tom Aumen · Mar 27, 2026

chevyontheriver said:
The American moral compass has spun quite a bit in it's 250 year history, occasionally pointing True North. It has often pointed elsewhere. It pointed elsewhere in the firebombing of Dresden and the annihilation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Those aren't the only deviations by a long shot. It's worth complaining about current problems, but we shouldn't pretend this is anything new. At all.

Well said.
And also the American betrayal of Taiwan and helping communist China grow strong.

Hans Blaster · Mar 27, 2026

ThatRobGuy said:
"Openness" is not, and should not be, unconditional.

It's hard to compare the impact of openness of 50-100 years ago to the impacts of today.

It's easy to be wide open (with good results) when the people wanting to come here want to embrace the culture and values that already exist (and already have a huge overlap in the values department)

It's a little more complicated when people want to come here purely for economic benefit, but have no interest in (and sometimes a blatant aversion to) the culture and values.

It probably isn't a coincidence that when I saw the first signs of the new "alt" right it was on slashdot with rhetoric like this mixed with complaints about H1-B programmers from India.

ThatRobGuy said:
From 1900-1950, the bulk of immigration came from Italy, Ireland, England, Scotland, and Germany. 3 of those 5 were already English-speaking, and all 5 had religious & cultural customs that were pretty similar to the people who were already here, so there wasn't a huge "assimilation curve" for lack of a better term. It's easy to be "open" amid that kind of backdrop.

1900-1950 is a weird periodization of American immigration history to anyone who knows anything. The biggest event in US immigration history occurs smack dab in the middle with the 1925 (klan-backed) immigration act. No change in immigration levels was ever higher before and for 100 years later. It also makes no sense relative to some reference to the current time. With the drop that occurs in 1925, the 1900-1925 immigrants dominate the 1900-1950 totals and only 2 of your source countries would be near the top: Italy and to lesser extent, Germany. (German immigration peaked around 1870.)

The dominant flows of immigrants in the first quarter of the 20th century were from southern and eastern Europe with few english speaking immigrants. Things get a little fuzzy as arriving immigrants were categorized by nation of origin, not ethnicity (though native language was usually recorded) and large, multi-ethnic empires like the Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman Empires existed for the first portion of this period).

That you think the dominant immigrant stream was relatively conflict free with the culture, language, and religion of the dominant culture of the US (anglo-protestant) betrays great ignorance.

ThatRobGuy said:
It's a little different once the people coming in are basically saying "yeah, we have no interest in doing things your way, we're just going to try to recreate our old country here in an insular community, just with a better economic backdrop and social safety net"

You don't think that was going on in 1900-1950? (or more realistically during the peak immigration period 1870-1925) Where do you think all of those ethnic towns and neighborhoods came from?

ThatRobGuy said:
I'd go as far as saying the people of 1900-1950 would have been less tolerant to that than people are now.

Are you sure? How do you make this assessment?

ThatRobGuy said:
To pretend that our current status represents some sort of major regression is inaccurate.

Like in 1925, today we have a major rising of anti-immigrant demonstrations and violence.

ThatRobGuy said:
Does anyone honestly think that "Foreign born person comes here to study, and hits the streets to fly their old country's flag while yelling disparaging things about America" would've been better received in 1922?

Have you not seen the festival flashback scenes in Godfather, Part 2 with the Italian flags everywhere in Little Italy?

ThatRobGuy said:
For example, if the Italian Immigrants who came over started constantly running down the US and hitting the streets to yell about why they thought Italy was better than the US, and saying "how dare you ask me to learn English, you all need to be more accommodating to make this more like the cultural customs I was used to in Italy!"

That would have caught someone a beat down in the streets if we're being honest.

That's where people need to have a no-sense conversation and acknowledgement that no, not all cultures are equal, and not all cultural aspects are compatible.

There are cultural differences that are "meet in the middle, we can both learn & adopt something from each other and both benefit", and there are cultural differences that are showstoppers.

"meet in the middle"? Lousy english food-boilers have been trying to crush our cultures for centuries.

ThatRobGuy said:
As an analogy...

Oh, no, a Rob-nalogy. I'll pass. If only your historical knowledge was up to snuff.

ThatRobGuy said:
If I had an open door policy with my neighbors and said "you're all welcome to pop in any time you'd like"

One neighbor brings a movie from a genre I don't usually watch
The other wants to host dog fighting in my basement

I can find some middle ground with the first neighbor and we can probably learn something from each other and both try something different.
For that other neighbor, they're not bringing that nonsense into my house

When more of the latter than the former start showing up and I say "You know what, I think I'm going to press the pause button on that open door policy"

My aversion to the latter wouldn't warrant a "Gee Rob, your open door policy was your strength, this is a major step backwards"

chevyontheriver · Mar 27, 2026

Tom Aumen said:
Well said.
And also the American betrayal of Taiwan and helping communist China grow strong.

Nixon's playing of the China card.

Bradskii · Mar 28, 2026

ThatRobGuy said:
The other wants to host dog fighting in my basement...

Don't forget they'll be eating your pets as well.

Pommer · Mar 28, 2026

FreeinChrist said:
This matches what I see happening.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5764825-the-world-is-watching-america-lose-its-moral-compass-and-its-global-credibility/

For decades, America’s true strategic advantage lay in something less tangible but more potent: its capacity to attract. Its ideals, openness and professed commitment to universal values conferred a moral authority that made alliances easier, its influence deeper and its leadership more legitimate. That advantage is now being squandered.

The current focus on the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran should not obscure a larger reality: The damage the second Trump presidency is inflicting on U.S. soft power — on the very credibility that made American leadership possible — is profound and likely to outlast the administration itself.....

The most visible fracture is domestic. President Trump’s rhetoric has normalized a form of racialized politics that previous generations of American leaders, from both parties, publicly rejected. His disparaging comments about Somali immigrants, like his circulation of dehumanizing imagery of the Obamas, revives some of the ugliest tropes in the long history of racial oppression. These are not isolated excesses — they signal to the world that the U.S. is retreating from the very values it once claimed as its moral core.....

No mainstream Western leader has voiced such unvarnished neo-imperial yearning in decades. For European allies who have spent 80 years publicly renouncing colonialism, and for countries across the Global South that fought to escape it, the implications are jarring. When American leaders speak this way, they do more than offend; they delegitimize the very international order the U.S. claims to uphold....

The consequences are already visible. Allies hedge. Partners question U.S. commitments. Countries across the Global South, long lectured by Washington on democracy and human rights, now hear such rhetoric with growing skepticism. Rivals, from Beijing to Moscow, find it easier to portray the U.S. as hypocritical and self-serving.

Every nation has its ups & downs. Which we are in now remains to be seen for the most part, but it ain’t lookin’ good, of late.

The world is watching America lose its moral compass and its global credibility

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