Why It Is Just the Beginning of the Problems in the US

The U.S., after calling itself a superpower, challenged the world to evaluate its actions by the criteria of its greatness. If the world can briefly describe U.S. performance during the last 10-15 years then the right assessment will be “constantly growing confusion.”

When Obama was president, it seemed that the indistinctness and inconsistency of the U.S. policy had reached its climax. Trump was building his election campaign on severe criticism of his predecessor and it gave a lot of hope that, if he became president, the policy of the superpower would become clearer. But as a result, Obama’s languid activity turned into real chaos under Trump.

According to the latest data, Trump’s domestic popularity rating has collapsed to 37 percent. This is the lowest point he has reached while being in power. Fifty-eight percent of Americans do not approve of his performance as the head of the country.

The collapse of his domestic image was so rapid that no one even thought of the good old tradition of trying not to jump to conclusions about the performance of the top official as well as not criticizing them during the first hundred days of being in power. Although American mass media in this sense did not even allow Trump to calmly start working after the first couple hours of his inauguration. Trump was lambasted right away despite the fact that he did not even have a chance to do anything yet.

It has to be taken into account that polling services (even well-established ones, like Gallup International, which is the source of polling data being discussed in the article) rushed into war against Trump too. Or at least that is claimed by Trump. He encourages [people] not to believe the results of their polls.

We can respect his opinion, especially if one remembers that the same services confidently projected the victory of Hillary Clinton. However, the approval level of the new president is too low to write it completely off as a machination of the polling data.

As a result, the structure of power in the U.S. turned out to be very shaky. The president is losing popularity; Congress supports him only because it is controlled by Republicans. On top of that the mass media turned against Trump and now they have a real war going on between them.

If you draw parallels with our recent history, this situation most of all reminds us of the period of the Yeltsin presidency. But Russia at the time was going through the biggest transformation in all spheres of life; it was almost a revolution of power, the economy and ideology. We can only guess why the U.S. political foundations, that did not have any revolutions, recently became so shaky.

We can suppose that America was influenced that much by the triumph, as they thought, of the way the Cold War ended. U.S. officials made countless amounts of managerial mistakes while they were riding on the wave of euphoria. The $6 trillion that was wasted on the military invasion of Iraq, Libya and other countries of the Middle East is just one example.

Typically, countries and nations suffer from defeats — in wars or ideological confrontations (the Cold War, as we know, was a combination of both). But the U.S., on the contrary, was harmfully affected by its victory.

It seems that the U.S. simply overestimated its importance in the breakdown of communism, which failed mostly because of domestic issues. This is exactly what caused the separation from reality that cost the U.S. dearly. And even now, judging by Trump’s ratings, the road of difficulties is just beginning.