What Trump’s Astounding Success Tells the World About the U.S.

Most Americans are afflicted with a peculiar form of blindness. We are seemingly incapable of seeing ourselves the way the rest of the world sees us — and instead, seem willfully mired in our egotistical, insular view of America as ‘the greatest nation on earth.’

But what does our current American reality say about that notion? What do the last nine years of ‘Trumpism’ say about it, or show the world about us?

What does Trump’s astounding string of successes — and his re-ascent to the presidency — reveal to the world?

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Two months ago, I published an article with the headline “Donald Trump is the Luckiest Man in American History — and By Far the Most Dangerous.” That article, like this one, focuses on the multiple dire effects of Trump’s rise and ‘reign’ — but didn’t achieve the depth of analysis I’m aiming for. This article attempts to dig even deeper and correct that.

To that end, I will break down Trump’s effects on American society and politics into several categories: political, moral, and emotional/mental effects. These categories overlap greatly, of course, yet may prove useful in understanding what’s happening in our vaunted ‘land of the free.’

Political Effects

In terms of bare-knuckles politics, Trump has had many astounding successes, some of which are true ‘firsts’ in U.S. history. Unfortunately, these ‘firsts’ have all come at a terrible social cost. Trump is known as a ‘norm-buster’ and ‘disruptor’ (the proverbial ‘bull in a china shop’ would be a better description), and some of the norms he’s disrupted and ‘busted’ include:

· any sense of political or presidential decorum

· any respect for one’s political opponents

· respect for truth and truth-telling

· using politics to serve the greater good, not just oneself

· respecting and honoring our European and Canadian allies

· honoring the results of elections even when they don’t go your way

· commitment to the peaceful transfer of presidential power

· the GOP being the supposed ‘law and order’ party

In place of these vital norms, Trump has created — and keeps creating — an ever-expanding set of new and odious norms. In America’s ‘new normal’ (how I hate that phrase!), ALL of these once-honored norms have been turned inside-out and upside-down and replaced with:

· vicious personal attacks and childish name-calling

· demonizing the other party and any opponents as ‘evil’

· disrespecting, undermining, and/or attacking even close national allies

· constant lying and deception and deep disregard for the truth

· spreading acceptance of grudge-based ‘revenge politics’

· constantly yelling ‘Fraud!’ and attacking valid election results — if you’re losing or may lose

· turning the GOP into the ‘relentless attacks and bullying directed at Democrats and immigrants’ party. Under Trump, the GOP completed its metamorphosis into the ‘lawlessness and disorder party.’

· it’s now A-OK to have a convicted criminal, proven sexual abuser, tax cheat, and lying con man as our president.

Spiraling down into darkness

Since Trump is, first and foremost, a businessman and con man, I’ll use business terminology to describe his ascent: he willfully mounted a multi-year, wildly successful hostile takeover of the Republican party — which has now morphed into an ongoing takeover of the country.

Even after he purposely incited the massive riot/insurrection at our Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a last-ditch effort to overturn valid election results, the GOP quickly rolled over and accepted — and then embraced — this nasty new version of ‘politics.’

For a few weeks after that day of infamy, we saw GOP politicians condemning Trump and his words and actions on that fateful day… but very soon, America and the world witnessed one of the most disgusting displays of political cowardice and (undeserved) fealty in U.S. history. GOP politicians reversed course en masse, excused Trump’s actions — and began the frantic whitewashing of the insurrection that continues unabated today.

It’s hard to overstate the horrible effects Trump has had on U.S. politics. While there’s plenty of blame to go around — looking at you, right-wing media — it’s undeniable that Trump has been the catalyst and accelerant fueling our c-r-a-z-y dumpster-fire politics.

While the GOP revels in Trump’s recent victory and its new power trifecta (plus the right-wing Supreme Court) in Washington, what the rest of the world sees and dreads is an America coming apart at the seams — and about to be controlled by a lying, seditious, vindictive, and super-manipulative madman.

What the rest of the world sees is a once-mighty nation that’s spiraling down into darkness and destruction. The rest of the civilized world is aghast, as it witnesses the demise of the ‘American Dream’ and the 250-year American experiment in real time.

Moral Effects

Where to begin? Perhaps a better question than ‘What moral beliefs or attitudes has Trump undermined or trashed?’ is ‘What moral beliefs or attitudes has Trump NOT undermined or trashed?’

Throughout American society, Trump’s persistent lying, bullying, shameless acting out, election denialism, anti-public-health craziness, and vengeful rage have been widely emulated. His negative, chaos-inducing character traits have been spreading like wildfire and are now commonplace — and are turning into our damnable ‘new normal.’

Even after nine years of watching Trump and MAGA in action, most Americans seem incapable of grasping what is truly going on here. And what’s going on is a terrifying, society-wide capitulation to — and embrace of — a despotic, abusive, and super-narcissistic con man who fancies himself a ‘strong man.’

Trump’s bullying and ceaseless targeting of his many ‘enemies’ have cowed and intimidated many in the GOP, the government, the news media, and social media. His veiled (or overt!) threats and aggressive retaliation have had their desired effect — namely, to get people to knuckle under and submit to his aggressive bullying and wild narcissistic plans.

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In combination with right-wing media, right-wing ‘influencers,’ and a groveling, supine GOP, Trump has utterly transformed the American social and moral landscape. Our descent into dark amorality and immorality has now trapped us in the following bizarre and awful trends:

· Frequent public lying and partisan deception are now OK.

· Rabid election denialism is now widespread and acceptable.

· Climate change denial (based on intentional lies and distrust of science) is now widespread and acceptable.

· Distrust of public health agencies (like the CDC) is rampant, as is vaccine denialism.

· Our social divides and angry divisiveness keep intensifying.

· Social acceptance or even embrace of political violence is growing fast.

· Corruption is OK if it’s ‘our side’ that is involved.

· Criminal acts are OK if ‘our side’ engages in them.

It’s OK for men to harass, abuse, and control women.

· Persecution and oppression of minorities, immigrants, and pregnant women are OK and even desirable.

· Allowing a corrupt, criminal, abusive con man to be our president is perfectly OK.

· White folks deserve all the benefits of American society, while other races don’t.

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What the rest of the world sees is a huge, powerful nation and people that have completely lost their way, and lost their scruples and morality in the process.

The rest of the world sees a nation embroiled in a severe moral crisis, which increasingly looks like it won’t end well for the U.S. (or the world). The world sees us on the brink of civil war — which is more a result of our ongoing, manufactured ‘culture wars’ and stark moral differences than traditional politics, frankly.

When one ‘side’ — the right — is willing to do, say, or incite anything to get its way and win, our society and morality are in a world of hurt. And recovery from this steep moral decline will take generations — if it happens at all.

Emotional/Mental Effects

As Trump’s ‘reign’ has expanded and intensified, we’ve seen many millions of Americans sink into a quasi-demonic frenzy of hate, paranoia, racism, and misogyny. His indirect, winking approval and total lack of public disapproval of far-right racists, hate groups, and seditious ‘patriots’ has resulted in an explosion of right-wing terrorism, hate, bullying, and intentional severe disruption of our society.

These folks truly want to ‘burn it all down,’ destroy liberal democracy, and create a White male Christian fiefdom that will ‘make America great again.’ Translation: this radicalized, far-right minority wants to reinstate racism and misogyny and make the U.S. an authoritarian theocracy. It’s a terrifying prospect — and many Americans are now deeply scared and near panic.

Worse, with Trump’s looming promise to deport over ten million illegal immigrants hanging over us, we’ve got many millions of people — legal and illegal — descending into sheer terror about what is ahead for them or their family members. The intense ‘fear factor’ in America today is palpable and accelerating.

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When we combine these trends with the larger trend for Americans’ mental and emotional health to be in the toilet (to use the technical term), we can see a vicious and terrifying scenario unfolding.

Consider all the non-MAGA, non-’Trumpified’ Americans. Many millions — over a hundred million — of us are now living in a constant state of apprehension, distrust, and justified paranoia about the dark direction of our society.

Millions of us are SO anxious and upset, day to day, that the basic elements of daily life seem overwhelming and out of reach as emotional comfort and safety become rare commodities. ‘Normal’ life is falling by the wayside, to be replaced by the friggin’ ‘new normal’ of fear, hatred, paranoia, oppression, and building rage.

Welcome to the freakish world of American Collapse

The sad, indeed horrifying, truth is that Trump, MAGA, and ‘Trumpism’ are like a pernicious and highly infectious disease that has infected America and is still spreading out of control. This disease infects peoples’ minds and hearts, radicalizes them, turns them away from rationality and social caring… and then turns them into raging, paranoid, and/or racist haters.

It’s a grim and frightening picture — and that is exactly what the rest of the world sees happening in America, and is exactly what they are most worried about. They see us far better than we see ourselves, and are much more ‘on top of’ what’s happening under our noses than we are!

The danger signals, clanging warning bells, and wailing sirens (metaphorically speaking, and also increasingly non-metaphorically) are going off constantly all around us. The rest of the world sees our turmoil, chaos, and imminent collapse, and is worried sick — because the U.S. is SO powerful and influential that, usually, ‘as goes America, so goes the world.’

The rest of the world is constantly hearing about the deep anger, distrust, racism, misogyny, and tyranny spreading through our nation — and about the despicable rise of the haters, bullies, misogynists, and homegrown right-wing terrorists.

The rest of the world — the functioning democracies, at least — can deeply ‘get’ what’s happening here, since most of them have lived through periods of fascism and authoritarianism. Many have had to actively fight and defeat fascism or Nazism on their own soil.

Now they see it all happening again, in the very center of the supposed ‘free world’: the venerable, crumbling United States of America.

They pity us, and they fear for us — and for our effect on the world.

When will WE wake up and see what they see?

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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