Yes I too get the impression Vance is worse.
PP was right about the lack of finesse. He doesn’t seem to understand much beyond ‘we are the richest and most powerful country in the world’. Yes, but that is in part due to the soft power and diplomatic relations the US has had with the West (and a lot of the rest of the world). If you remove the soft power and turn everyone into a rival/enemy, and have an isolationist outlook, the States will lose all credibility and influence.
He seems to think it’s high time the States stopped letting other countries ‘take the piss’ but we haven’t - quite simply the States has given more money because it has more money. The UK is a generous donator of foreign aid, for example we donated £25 million to Turkey for the earthquake clean up. Am I going to have a hissy fit that Latvia (for example) didn’t donate as much? Well no, because we are a richer country. This doesn’t mean Latvia is taking the piss out of the UK.
It’s also wildly untrue that ‘nobody backs the States’. The UK followed the States into the Iraq war to basically avenge 9/11, we spent billions over 20 years supporting that ‘project’ plus hundreds of military lives and an increased threat of terror that has killed God knows how many British members of the public since then. It transpired there were no weapons of mass destruction - no risk to us from that angle at all. Britain has marked its card in the Middle East through supporting GWB in his ‘war on terror’.
Sorry to rant, and it’s absolutely not the fault of American citizens, but it’s all so frustrating. Now we are left as a much smaller country having to lead the charge against Putin, who the States hasn’t only stopped opposing but actively seems to be getting into bed with. It’s gutting, to say the least.
Right I had better get to work and take some deep breaths!