Due to Trump, how do you think America is perceived?
Loved Madeline Albright's brilliant book, Fascism- A Warning. Excerpts from her chapter on Donald Trump:
"This presidency has often been painful to observe. I find it shocking to cross the Atlantic and hear America described as a threat to democratic institutions and values.
"A month after Trump's inauguration, the head of the European Council listed four dangers to the EU: Russia, terrorism, China, and the United States.
"Since early 2017, surveys show a marked decline in respect for the United States. In Germany, belief that the American president can be counted on to do the right thing shrunk from 86% under his predecessor President Obama to 11% under Trump. In France, the fall was from 84% to 14%. In Japan, 74% to 24%. In South Korea, 84 to 17.
"Too often, Trump has attempted to fulfill campaign promises that he should have never made. The list is a long one and includes: renunciation of the Paris Climate Agreement; putting at risk the benefits of the North America Free Trade Agreement; badmouthing the Iran nuclear pact; squandering resources on the Mexico wall; and proposing to slash our budget for diplomacy, development, and environmental health.
"The potential damage may be of several types. Trump's election alone cast doubt in international circles on the judgment of American people and on the reliability of the democratic systems to produce defensible outcomes.
"The commander in chief's swaggering disregard for how his words are perceived has at times stunned the world, including allies of long standing in Europe and Asia.
"Finally, and even more seriously, I fear a return to the international climate that prevailed in the 1920s and '30s, when the United States withdrew from the global stage and countries everywhere pursued what they perceived to be their own interests without regard to larger and more enduring goals.
"When arguing that every age has its own Fascism, Primo Level added that the critical point can be reached not just through the terror of police intimidation, but by denying and distorting information, by undermining systems of justice, by paralyzing the education system, and by spreading in a myriad subtle ways nostalgia for a world where order reigned.'
"If he is right (and I think he is), we have reason to be concerned by the gathering array of political and social currents buffeting us today- the dark underside of the technological revolution, the corroding effects of power, the American president's disrespect for truth, the widening acceptance of dehumanizing insults, Islamophobia, an anti-Semitism as being within the bounds of normal public debate.
"We are not there yet, but these feel like signposts on the road back to the era when Fascism found nourishment and individual tragedies were multiplied million-fold."
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9 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.There is an element of support for Trump in the UK through his 'now the grown-ups are in charge' approach. America first and authoritarian leadership, common sense, small government, personal freedom contradictions seem to pass over their heads. These are almost universally seem to be the same people who voted to leave the EU.
Most people though see 'Merika' as being very stupid and racist. Trump's love of capitalism at the cost of the poor is perceived as evil. Why don't you have a National Health Service free at the point of need paid for by central taxation?
Trump is also a joke, somewhat like the 'Ot-oh spaghetti-o' Homer Simpson where the Lenny says "shhh, he's about to do something stupid". Well, Trump never fails to disappoint. Then of course, what has happened to all of those 'grown-ups' - Fired!
Out of some forty staff whom I work with, only one supports Trump, and she isn't that bright, like twelve cans short of a six pack dumb.
As a social science student, he is the gift that keeps on giving. Hard to keep up with what ill conceived fuckwittery he'll come up with today and sometimes a matinee thrown in for free!
I'll re-visit this later, when I have more time to comment properly.
Sofabeast
Level 7
June 15, 2020
1
From a foreign viewpoint I take a broader view. In my opinion American international legitimacy and moral authority has been in decline for more than 20 years, specifically from the time of GWBush. Iraq, Afgranistan, erosion of civil liberties, increasing social and economic equality etc. The world briefly raised its hopes when Obama was elected, only to have those hopes dashed when Obama was quickly revealed as yet another corporate conservative Democrat, with no interest in genuine reform. Then Trump came along. You can attribute all those things to him, correctly, but he is a symptom, not a cause, of the underlining weaknesses of the US which has been revealed for all the world to see: a corrupt country with an oligarchic class controlling a binary duopoly political system, based on a corrupt electoral system, a corrupt legal system, a corrupt financial and governance system, through which the schisms of America -- racial, socio-economic, cultural and class -- are now obvious to the world. Trump has merely pressed those pressure points and revealed the US's weaknesses openly. The US is a country in desperate need of reform, but it lacks any structures to make this happen. Worse, the political and legal corruption of the country would militate against any attempt to do so. You asked how America is perceived? I answer as a country in terminal decline. It gives me no pleasure to say so.
David1955
Level 8
June 14, 2020
3
Most people in other countries are unfamiliar with obscure American history, so they don't know how strange things have gotten in the past. Shitler has obviously taken us far beyond the edge, and as dismayed we may be, foreigners probably think we will never be trustworthy again. And they may be correct.
BitFlipper
Level 8
June 14, 2020
4
Be careful here. While trumpie is extreme, the distrust of Amerika is long-standing and well justified. Ask Iranians in 1953, the Vietnamese, Iraqi's, Palestinian's, etc.
Mitch07102
Level 8
June 14, 2020
3
There is always distrust from your enemies. Now you are being distrusted by your allies.
Always as a naive, spoiled and insular child and now an adolescent with behavioural problems but no medications or child psychologist
Geoffrey51
Level 8
June 14, 2020
3
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