Broadly speaking, you probably agree with the large majority of the views commonly attributed to whichever group you identify with - what are the exceptions? Something that if you mention without a caveat immediately makes people jump to conclusions or even attack you?
We Americans used to at least try not to look for “foreign monsters abroad”. I was raised on that sort of old fashioned idea. Do you ever feel like an impossible person from a land that never existed?
I remember growing up in the 90’s and it being fairly common to think that there were no real enemies out in the world, that all the conflicts were over. “The end of history,” gets mocked a lot, but the idea of putting conflict behind us and working together towards a common cause of advancing together is something I really miss.
But if that period of relative peace had continued, then people would’ve started asking questions about why we’re still dumping more money into our military than the next 9 countries combined when the USSR no longer exists (to quote Terminator 2, “They’re our friends now”) and China such a big trading partner that nobody would dream of rocking the boat. And if people started asking those questions, it’d be real bad news for the war profiteers who make bank off that spending. And so it all went out the window, starting with the “war on terror,” and now the government’s trying to make us see everybody as a threat.
And so we can’t have nice things, like healthcare, we all have to tighten our belts so that we can make more tanks. I remember when that was seen as right-wing.
It still is a right wing position, but the trouble is not right or left specifically, it’s that the empire is overextended with its military obligations, the dollar has been badly debased, the US pays more in debt than its GDP, and despite all our spending, the US couldn’t possibly meet all of its military obligations if more than one big thing happened at a time. The dollar is still the world reserve currency, but only because there’s not yet a credible replacement.
The sad fact is that instead of minding our business, America wanted to be an empire - and empires have a pretty standard lifecycle. I don’t think it’s a question of if, but when, it goes the way of Spain and GB.