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What’s happened is the aesthetic of the Empire became less about some non-partisan celebration of Captain America’s thunderbutt and more about evangelising radical social issues of the Democrat party like Pride Parades and trans kids.
The Republicans, thanks to their total lack of representation in organisations of any influence, decided it was simpler to dismantle the Empire entirely rather than try to steer it away from gay pride back to Captain Thunderbutt.
Basically, the Empire-maintaining parts of the government became partisan, and now are being cut off since the other party is in power.
Eh, you can become overly focused on the culture war and recent events. I think this is missing the huge impact of Iraq in discrediting the very notion of that empire on the Republican side.
The republicans were in power, recently, and they entangled Americans in a costly boondoggle based on lies they justified on the same sorts of lines people are now hearing about Ukraine; a bunch of moralistic appeals and (what appear to them to be) phantom threats about how the whole spider-web will collapse and America will be imperiled if people don't fork over their money and sons.
All of the necons and atlanticists fled to the Democratic party when they were defeated by Trump. The sorting is in part a result of the broken consensus which is a result of Republican failures.
That started happening much earlier, when Obama defeated McCain. Note that the Ukrainian War kicked off under a Democrat administration (and an absentee President, though his son was very involved in starting it).
Indeed, the polarity has swapped- the Dems/Blue find themselves the conservatives in contrast with the Reps/Red, who are the reformers/"liberals" now.
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