I think the symptoms analogy is pretty apt, especially as I’ve seen people on the left refer to Trump as a symptom. If you view Trump as the core problem as liberals do, then yea you won’t abandon the status quo since it can be solved by simply removing Trump. That’s what in theory the laws are supposed to do. But Trump still exists despite the laws, because he is not the problem, but a symptom of the problem.

I feel like European leaders are basically the Democratic party. They want to keep up the existing relationship with America to preserve the “norms”, but are ignoring that radical change is needed because of how the material conditions are changing and Trump’s new style of imperialism/isolationism.

Been reading Hudson’s Super Imperialism and I found the British refusing to default on their debt to US after ww1 interesting and maybe a parallel to today how Europe refuses to stop being lap dogs for the US.