One of the interesting contradictions today is how Western societies have lost their faith in themselves but not their faith in guiding the rest of the world

You see this with Biden: he will readily claim that America is structurally racist, but in his foreign policy he thinks that fact is not relevant in any way. Would be interesting if someone asked him how he solves that contradiction in his thought

The mainstream view today is that American democracy is deeply troubled and flawed, but then the same people who say this - more or less every day - will argue that America should be promoting democracy worldwide

The contradiction reaches a paroxysm with those conservatives and Republicans who broke with Trump - or writers like Anne Applebaum: unrelenting in their denounciation of American democracy, they are equally unrelenting calling for an activist America defending freedom everywhere

Bob Kagan for example continues to call for regime change everywhere, but now he added America to the countries in need of it. It’s just not very clear who will be doing the regime change. Seems to be an aporia here

In brief, the old Kagan used to say that the world was full of rogue states and only America could stop them. The new Kagan says America is now a rogue state and only America can stop it.