If a person is a willful sociopath, that person is a sociopath.

No, to detect obviously sociopathic behavior is a trait normal people have. Because our morals are partially either inherited or learned because we are social beings. So we instinctively have a sense of importance in protecting each other, especially wife children and the society we are part of.
This is NOT tied to high IQ, but normal social intelligence, if you are NOT a sociopath or something similar, and that trait also exist among apes.
So to not detect an obvious sociopath exhibiting sociopathic behavior routinely, a person literally has to be a sociopath or worse, because it requires to not have empathy, and to not have any moral standards, or general regard for the community or society we live in.

In USA however, people are strongly indoctrinated to disregard moral standards, so maybe I should have written you either need to be a sociopath or American.
Because in USA freedom is indoctrinated to be the highest value of all, and sociopathy is an expression of ultimate freedom. Sociopaths don’t care about norms or rules or to hurt other people. In fact they are sadistic, because sadism give them a feeling of power. But because it’s an expression of freedom, sociopathy is seen as a virtue among many Americans. Lack of moral standards and limitations, also enable a person to make money at great cost to other people, for instance workers earning a non livable wage. And money is seen as the highest achievement possible in USA, and since a lot of rich people are sociopaths or worse, that is seen as positive trait, that will allow you to achieve the most important goal in USA, which is to be rich.
Failing to see that in Trump, can only happen because a person doesn’t comprehend the problems of his behavior emotionally despite maybe understanding them intellectually.
If you are a stupid sociopath, you will of course not comprehend the problems intellectually either.

So I meant my post quite literally, but with the possibility that it may be that Americans are brainwashed, to ignore the problem of antisocial behavior caused by what is technically called Dyssocial personality disorder, which I call sociopathy here, because it’s close enough, and people know what it means.
Psychopath, Sociopath, or worst of all malignant narcissist which Trump is are all forms of dyssocial personality disorder.

Trump is an evil evil man, anybody who can’t see that is a sociopath or worse.

And with the Russian economy collapsing, Putin is desperate for that money!
Desperate enough to sacrifice an ally (Iran).
I wouldn’t be surprised that the reason USA attacked Iran, was to help Putin.

Absolutely, Putin hates USA, and will do everything he can to undermine USA.
Trump’s friendliness towards Russia and Putin is 100% one way only.

I’m not saying it will happen, but that it can happen. And if you don’t realize that’s how far relations between USA and allies have fallen, that that is a risk. Then you haven’t been paying attention.

Our Western systems already gave adapted, and all of Europe are working with Ukraine now, be because Ukraine is the global leader on drones.
You sound like someone who believes American superiority is a given. Even when USA is winning every battle in Iran, but losing the war.
You clearly don’t understand what asymmetric war means.

They don’t have to turn them off, they only need to not “delay” armory and spare parts, because of “supply issues.”

Why would I read outdated stupid bullcrap? F-35 is in no way proven to last for a long term conflict.
You can’t have air superiority with planes that can’t fly because of lack of maintenance or suitable airfields.
Did you even read what I wrote?
Furthermore the skies belong to drones now. If a $5000 drone can shoot down a 300 million F-35. It’s such a huge assymetry that the F-35 will look like something as useless as if it was from ww2.
It’s delusional to invest in F-35 at this point in time. Despite it’s technologically sophisticated it is just as outdated as it is expensive.
It’s the same assymetry we are seeing in Iran, where Americans use 1 million dollar missiles to shoot down $50k drones, and some times they even use more missiles for 1 drone. Resulting in the Iran war costing $6 billion for USA in just the first 3 days!

Instead of just reading old worthless shit, you should also apply some critical thinking.

Nah I don’t believe you, Ukraine has been able to close the skies over Ukraine against Russia, so Russian planes can’t enter Ukrainian airspace.
Although the Russian planes are not as good as the American, I think that whatever Ukraine is doing could be done against F-35 too.
Saab Vigen with AWAC support will probably do well enough, even against F-35. Especially if they were designed for it.
But that’s irrelevant for now, because they are definitely good enough against Russian equipment, which is what the traditional enemy is using.

If we came at war against other F-35, who would we be fighting against? If it’s USA, we wouldn’t be able to use F-35 for anything leaving us utterly defenseless.
If it’s against Russia, and Trump decides to help Russia, we wouldn’t be able to use F-35 either.

F-35 is useless, because USA has become an unreliable ally even acting like an enemy. It doesn’t matter if it’s technologically superior if it’s rendered useless by USA.

I also seriously doubt F-35 is very good in a prolonged war, because it requires insane amounts of maintenance, a plane standing on the ground because it requires fixing isn’t worth anything. And that’s a clear danger with F-35, because it requires about 5 times as much maintenance as Vigen AFAIK. F-35 is also extremely demanding in other way, like the quality of airbases. So a bombed airbase can easily ground F-35 too. Where with the Vigen you can take off and land on a decent road.

F-35 is only superior when you disregard all the downsides. Pressure the enemy to have their F-35 constantly in the air, and the F-35 air defense will quickly collapse.

Have these indicators been trending downward for 20 years,

They have trended down at least since Bush. Obama restored a lot, more than I thought possible. But 2 times electing Trump has resulted in people not trusting USA anymore, even if there’s a better administration next time.
So I think that for sure these numbers have generally trended down for about 25 years now. But the 2nd time with Trump is clearly the worst. This is not “trending down” anymore, this is the numbers falling off a cliff. Again because the distrust is in the USA population too. We can’t trust a new administration either, because the next could be another Trump. Trump is a symptom not the cause.

Trump has done more to destroy USA in a year than Bush did in 8, and Trump himself did in his first 4 year term.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that China will have clearly surpassed USA as the global leader in 10 years.
USA has abandoned all its allies, and USA alone is no match for China. Obviously EU alone isn’t either. Only USA together with allies had a chance, but US leadership sucked anyway, for instance in failing completely on environmental issues.

So here we are, we can only hope China will be a better world leader than USA. Or at least not too much worse.

EU citizen here:
One major issue where USA has failed completely since the 70’s, is sustainable green energy.
Europe has worked on that consistently since the 70’s, and we now use about half per capita of USA for similar productivity!

China takes this issue seriously, and does way more than USA, despite USA is the worlds biggest economy, they are among the countries that have done the least.

This is even more important than democracy, where USA is absolutely failing too, and not even supporting Ukraine against Russia. An innocent democracy attacked by an authoritarian aggressor that has decided to be the enemy of the west that wants to rebuild a former empire, when there was a strong opportunity for cooperation and economic growth.

USA is also threatening allies militarily, and is waging a trade war against partners and allies.

There is nothing left to cooperate with USA on. USA has placed itself morally below China on all major global issues. And has shown complete disrespect for national sovereignty and international law in every way possible. Something China respects, and has promised to keep respecting.

But Republicans have dramatically increased in their American arrogance and disrespect of other nations and even their own democracy since Bush, So USA isn’t even an allied country in the western goal to protect democracy anymore.
On the contrary they are working to undermine Ukraine, something USA also did under Biden at the same time as Biden helped Ukraine economically and with military equipment, Biden tied Ukraine’s hands on their back, forbidding any kind of attack into Russia! And for 4 years USA has given Russia unhindered access to Starlink, and recent data shows that Russia had 3 times as much traffic using Starlink as Ukraine had!

USA is not a friend to anyone anymore not even their own population or their own rule of law or their own democracy. USA is looking a lot like Russia did in the early 90’s. So no surprise that people are beginning to see China as a lesser evil than USA.
At least China respects sovereignty and international law, and isn’t warmongering like USA.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgr589k5yleo

That article is only 5 month old, if that deal is so new, I cannot fathom why anybody would make a deal with USA at that point?

What does Australia get out of it?

That should have been: HOW does Australia get out of it?

Even though the deal we made on F35 was under Obama, it was such a bad deal, and 100% based on corruption and to help Obama against criticism in congress.
The numbers were unrealistically tweaked to make it look good, as if we could maintain the planes for a third what Norway were supposed to, and then have them fly twice as much!!
Imagine the fleet we could have, even including AWACs from Sweden and it would still be cheaper both to buy and maintain, and the planes from Sweden are more versatile in many ways. I wouldn’t be surprised if F-35 is part of the problem USA has in Iran. All the planes we hear of are older planes, why aren’t we hearing about how amazing their new super plane F-35 is? Seems it’s completely useless for the conflict?

Go for it UK! 👍
Meanwhile Denmark continues to buy F-35. I’ve been screaming and shouting about how bad that deal was from the start. And that was before USA threatened the Kingdom of Denmark. It is so stupid that the deal hasn’t been cancelled yet. Now we need to get rid of the F-35 planes we already bought!

What is this? Book advertisement?

America First. Remember?
So maybe all those allies weren’t so bad to have anyway?
But I sincerely hope nobody will come to the aid of USA in this. They made the mess together with Israel without consulting allies, and they need to clean it up themselves.

If they had consulted allies, I am pretty sure they would have been told unanimously to NOT attack Iran. They even had a clear deal on the nuclear thing, that Iran would stop completely to produce enriched uranium, not just for nuclear bombs, but stop COMPLETELY! Then Israel and USA attacked!!

Imagine the number of attacks the world could “morally” do on USA, if preemptive strikes were considered self defense.
How many countries even allies has Trump threatened? Panama, Cuba, Denmark/Greenland, Canada. Are some that I remember for sure. Besides actually attacking Venezuela and now Iran.
All these countries could legally perform strikes against USA by the logic of the current American Government. And then they wonder why so many people hate USA.

The Arab countries Iran is attacking are all part of the Israel/US effort to oppress Iran. And USA has bases there and is attacking from those countries.
USA also has intelligence offices in those countries, that Iran have hit, and was acused of hitting a civilian target because it was a hotel. When in reality US intelligence was hiding behind civilians.
The Arab countries are also a key part of the Petrodollar, that is a HUGE factor in why USA is waging war against Iran in an attempt to control the area.

Actually this war could change the political picture in the world as we know it, if Iran succeeds with their strategy, and the petrodollar collapses. So Iran was in fact at war with all those countries by proxy when USA attacked.

Yes it does, because an attack with a bomber plane dropping a bunker buster bomb, is not defense, when USA and Israel started it. What Iran is doing on the other hand, is defense, because they were the ones that were attacked.

You can’t hit someone in the face, and then if they hit back you hit again. And then call it defending yourself.
It’s abuse of terminology to mislead and manipulate.
The attacker does not suddenly became the defending party when they keep attacking.

Next you will claim that if USA drop a tactical nuke, that that is defense too?

I’m sorry I had to downvote you, because although what you write may be the official take, it is outrageous.