The term “civilizational erasure” makes my skin crawl.

I took the ‘no tolls’ driving route south to Texas for a tournament last year, and saw dozens of abandoned small towns. I figure every one of these had a factory or a plant at some point that was moved overseas so one rich asshole could have another yacht or something, and the residents were forced to pull up stakes and move, leaving tons of perfectly good real estate and infrastructure behind.

That’s the civilizational erasure you get when you align with the US.