What I want to say is that on the ground by Europeans taking on the US struggles like war on Racism the USA is losing its soft power. Because it is losing touch with local population. I think this will be why Biden cannot be the new Clinton or even Carter. For us Kamala Harris is American. Not an oppressed black. There is no equivalent in Europe to slavery or reparations or all that.
So in the end what I want to say is that America First is in practicality what the current political problems in USA are. Immigration from Mexico. Reparations. Defund the racist police. There is little that these issues can inform global issues. Only by momentum and spurious connections like we see now in Israel. So I guess, my question here is this: is it America First for global issues?
Or in other words. In the past, the soft power of USA was the power of Coca-Cola, freedom and original jeans. What is supposed to be the power of the new woke order that attracts and inspires the masses?
Your problem is that America has too much soft power, not too little.
Its jeans and Coca-Cola have not gone anywhere. Its freedom... well I think it's definitely sliding on that metric, but mainly with regards to people like me and, to a lesser degree, you; for a growing proportion of its population thing are going just fine, arguably they find it all too free. There's plenty of freedom that USA has to offer even now. And hard choices.
But now you know more of what those are about. Now Coca-Cola conspicuously supports LGBT. Now the Levi's will make you know their denim is procured ethically (and, I kid you not, they will advertise it with black male-white female picture, somehow I didn't expect to see it). Their still-tasty burgers... Burgers? And they will remind you, again and again with the adorable countenance of a repressed child who's been rewarded a bit too much for «good behavior», that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
Truth is, you know too much about America; probably far more than about any other place on Earth save for your own homeland. Most of us do. If only you had the freedom to buy their junk food and working class garments without paying any mind to their parochial schisms and contrived struggle sessions, without knowing the nuance of their ways. It would have been so easy to love them still. But they're too big, too productive, too loud and messianic in their conceit. The booming voice of North American continent drowns out the voices of other peoples, flattens all their cultures, rends the Earth asunder and strings the white-hot debris into a Twitter feed of a 19yo girl from San Diego(Biracial, posadist, werefox, BPD vixen, #DeathToLandlords. {Three fist emojis} {more emojis} Pansexual. {cashapp}. she/they.). Regrettably you can't unfollow.
It's not real of course, the Earth is still here, the planet outside of our collective imagination (which cannot be said of some sovereign states on it, that America engaged with more directly). It's not real! Just close your eyes, walk away from the screen! Why can't you unfollow? Why can't anyone? Is the taste enhancer "made in USA" more addictive than fentanyl made in China? Or is the problem that Twitter is headquartered in San Francisco?
It's funny that Americans, despite all their riches, are quite stingy (or perhaps that's the reason). They sure love to complain about losing them jobs – to Mexicans, to Japan, to China (in the latter case, just as with regards to Japan before that, they also bellyache about losing muh supremacy, and shake their fists in the general direction of the Pacific).
But it's at best an equivalent exchange. They're oblivious to the fact that in the meantime, every other nation sans a few pariahs has offshored their culture-production to California.
That wasn't a wise decision, and it's harder to reverse.