del.capslock wrote:
While I agree with the general tenor of your comment, I take issue with the two highlighted sentences.
After WWII, Germany was pretty much reviled throughout the West, yet these notorious pro-Nazi companies have managed to do pretty well:
Krupp
Deutsche Bank
Bosch
Mercedes Benz
VW
Bayer
IG Farben
BMW
Siemens
Why do you think that is?
True. We'll have to hope that the rest of the world will be as generous with us as they were with Germany... and, o' course, that our crimes won't get anywhere near as bad as Germany's did.
But, what I'm really meaning is, despite some setbacks, America has enjoyed a good reputation in the world. We're imperfect, of course -- every country is -- but compared to a lot of other places, we've been seen as (mostly) the good guys, a reliable, reasonable friend in the world. But after Trump, America's going to have little claim of being that "shining city on the hill," or be deserving of that Statue of Liberty, or anything that's somehow
better -- more open, more welcoming, a smart, strong, home-of-the-brave who deserves a leadership role on the globe.
Trump has revealed that a large segment of our population -- at least the 19% fucking stupid enough to vote for him -- are gullible enough to be conned by an obvious charlatan, cowardly enough to turn their backs on everything America's greatness was built on because they're scared of even the slightest risk, bigoted enough to be motivated by appeals to their xenophobia, un-serious enough about the truth to fall for brainwashing... and, just flat-out shitty people in general.
Now, they were always here... Trump didn't build them, he just emboldened them and brought them out into the light. But it's embarrassing to the point of tragedy to have the rest of the world witness that we have so goddamned
many of them. We're actually a dumb, nasty enough country to have elected a hateful joke.
And I'm not sure there's any coming back from that. We're preserving some of the world's good will by resisting him and showing that, hey, most of us aren't down with this asshole, this guy ain't
us.The world will still do business with us, because they kind of have to... we're a commerce and industry hub. But one of our greatest exports has always been our
culture. We're Hollywood, we're rock & roll, we're funny and smart and we give the world some of the best toys. People want that. And, although we stumble quite a bit (as in Iraq), mostly we could always be counted on to be good, or at least well-intended. But the world has now seen that we're not as reliable as they thought -- our most-idiotic mean-spirited elements have at
least as much power as the better-angels-of-our-nature -- and they're no longer going to have the same kind of trust in us, or view us the same way. And, perception being at least a good percentage of reality, we'll have lost one of our most valuable assets, which we may not be able to get back.
And that'll be on Trump. And, even moreso, the people who support him. They're America's rancid underbelly, lying on its back and kicking its legs, and it's a shame that the rest of the world got a look at it. I'm just hoping we can do something to make them un-see it.
For starters, we need to kick the shit out of them in the 2018 election, and then again in 2020.
Then maybe we can convince the rest of the globe that this ugliness was a hiccup rather than the-new-way-things-are. Because if this
is the new-way-things-are, then America's done as being anything greater than just-another-country.