A few weeks ago I commented on how world-wide pity might help rid the United States of destructive attitudes in a way that condemnation – shame – would not. Now former Republican Max Boot has written a piece in WaPo that reinforces the point:
Trump’s inability to fight a pandemic that has killed more people in the United States than in any other country revealed that our government is dysfunctional and incompetent. In the past, the United States would send disaster assistance to other countries; now other countries were sending disaster assistance here. “Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger,” columnist Fintan O’Toole wrote in the Irish Times. “But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”
To have the rest of the world pity the United States — that’s a humiliation I never thought I would see. But pity doesn’t seem so bad compared with how the world feels about us now.
We have become an international pariah because of the way that our police forces mistreat people of color with the encouragement of our racist president. Trump is, as journalist Windsor Mann notes, “a weak man posing as a strongman.” The bone-spur commando cowered from protesters in the White House bunker on Friday night while unleashing salvo after salvo of blood-curdling threats to shoot looters and to unleash “the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons.”
Our government’s leaders are pathetic. It’s no longer up for debate, at least for those who are watching.
For those readers who remember – and perhaps even shared – the old baseless – sure, ridiculous – paranoia concerning the invasion of the ‘blue helmets,’ aka United Nations troops taking over the United States, it actually makes one wonder if that could happen now. The extreme incompetence displayed by the Trump Administration may leave us in such a mess that we’ll need a lot of help digging our way out, between coronavirus, racial tensions and racists who haven’t figured out that evolving morality has left them behind, and armed fringe groups on either side who our Supreme Court, through the foolishness of certain Republican-nominated members, thought the Second Amendment should be an absolute right rather than a limited right.
The warfare between the fringes won’t be performed using illegal, difficult-to-obtain military weapons. It’ll be be performed using military weapons purchased at Dick’s Sporting Goods, with the blessing of the NRA, SCOTUS, and the Republican Party.
And for those readers who can’t believe Trump doesn’t inspire confidence, here’s a Pew Research Center chart:
A plunge into a morass of pity.
We can expect a slump in the 2020 version of this chart, based on President Trump’s performance during the protests and riots – I differentiate the two as I expect we’ll find only a little crossover between the former and the latter, who, from initial, tentative reports appear to be opportunists of unknown political positions. President Trump use of bullying and strong-man tactics, coupled with remarks that play to his base and no one else, marks him as profoundly incompetent. He clings to his blowhard, barroom opinions, and that will be all he’s remembered for.
That, and 100,000 dead Americans from the coronavirus. And counting.
