(ThyBlackMan.com) For Americans traveling in Western Europe this summer, it’s a time of real humility, and some humiliation. You have to be quite the American exceptionalist to defend America these days, when what seems truly exceptional about our country is a presidency that is openly, even flagrantly, corrupt. It’s a strident word to use, but it is, as the expression goes, what it is: the president and his immediate family pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars in deposits to Trump family businesses that can politely be called speculative, payoffs and protection money from foreign and domestic fortune-seekers looking for favors or just a pass from our government.
The name “Trump” is carved on government buildings, straight out of North Korea. Trump appointees whose appointments are conditioned on their agreement to debase themselves by refusing to admit that former President Joe Biden, and not President Donald Trump, won the 2020 election. The blatant disregard of federal law requiring the Trump administration to turn over all documents relating to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking enterprise, so as to conceal investigative files that reference Trump. The president stayed up all night publishing social media posts that range from puerile to psychotic.
Then there’s Iran. The president has variously claimed that we are at war, that we were never at war, that the war we were in is over, and that the war that we were never in will be resumed within hours unless Iran “behaves.” By last count, he had announced that the United States had reached a “deal” with Iran 39 times, each time preceding the proclamation within hours if not minutes that if Iran did not agree to the deal, it had supposedly already agreed to it was Going To Be In Big Trouble.
He has already made announcements too numerous to tabulate that he was going to “hit” Iran VERY HARD within hours, followed by the announcement that he had changed his mind, because someone in Pakistan had asked him to, or because the Knicks had won a playoff game, or because the moon was in the Seventh House, or something.
As of this writing, the “deal” that Trump is so desperately seeking so he can flood the airwaves with false claims that we have “won” would leave Iran, which Democratic and Republican presidents alike have consistently labeled a profound threat to our national security and global stability, fully capable of doing everything it was more than capable of doing four months ago: using proxies to launch genocidal attacks, occupying other countries, bludgeoning our Middle Eastern allies with ballistic missiles, controlling the Strait of Hormuz and ultimately acquiring nuclear weapons.
There can hardly be anyone who believes a word the American president says. None of our European allies do; they regard him, quite simply, as a clinically narcissistic, hugely troubled charlatan. America is already paying a dear price for our shattered reputation, and we will continue paying it for a very long time.
For its part, the Democratic Party offers up a growing assortment of demagogues and nonsense-spewers that leave many Democrats themselves dubious that their own party is ready for prime time. Their hopes to take control of the Senate seem to hinge on a serial dissembler in Maine who long sported a Nazi tattoo, lied about it and, according to one of the numerous former girlfriends who have provided credible accounts of his toxic misogyny, described it as a self-reminder of how “evil” America is.
The party features an expanding list of leading candidates for Congress who have either denied Hamas’ genocidal slaughter of Jews in October 2023 or affirmatively celebrated it. Its most popular social media influencer has declared that America “got what it deserved” when al-Qaeda murdered 3000 people on Sept. 11, 2001.
And there’s plenty more where that came from.
It’s not that the European democracies are perfect. Far from it. But with the election of Donald Trump twice, it’s indulgence of a presidency deeply anti-American in so many ways and its output of politicians in both parties happy to promote hateful, unhinged narratives to garner followings, America seems at a genuine low point.
Which is why the most genuine thing Americans traveling abroad have to say these days is “I’m sorry.”
Written by Jeff Robbins
Official website; https://x.com/jeffreysrobbins
