For Washington’s friends around the world, America is becoming unrecognizable. Their reaction to the „Trump steamroller” followed the evolution of the situation.
There were clear indications that Trump’s second term in the White House would come with extreme challenges, but the speed and force with which he is changing America and the world have surprised, even shocked, the allies of the United States.
Donald Trump is turning beautiful America into a terrible America, writes Timothy Garton Ash, a British historian, writer, and commentator, in an article taken from Kyiv Post where he analyzes the four stages of grief that a lifelong lover of America goes through.
Distrust
"Yes, we knew it would be bad. We had been warned. But I still find it hard to believe how weak the control and balance, both constitutional and ordinary, of what was once the greatest democracy in the world have proven to be so far," writes Timothy Ash, pointing out that the control filters in the Republican Party and Congress are no longer working.
"So is Washington already Budapest on the Potomac?" he wonders, noting that the U.S. is already halfway to what political scientists call "competitive authoritarianism," as seen in Hungary.
"I wouldn't have believed it was possible. And if I'm honest, I still hope (…) to wake up tomorrow and find that the United States finally has 'a government of laws, not of men.' And this began before we got to the betrayal of Ukraine and the breaking of a 76-year pact with Europe," he points out.
Disgust
The greatest enigma of American politics in recent years has not been why decent Americans can vote for the populist policies supported by Trump - that happens everywhere and can be understood - but how they, especially women, could vote for and continue to support such a human being, deceitful, misogynistic, and narcissistic, the author writes.
However, in recent weeks, Trump's behavior has been so disgusting that a plane full of anti-nausea bags would not be enough to cope with this revulsion, he emphasizes.
Anger
You can casually tell the British what you think of them. They will respond, as they always do, with typical English humor. The EU and Canada can also handle it.
But for everything the President of the United States does, the only just response is anger, Ash shows, listing the main "charges" against Trump:
- attacking a people fighting for their independence, freedom, for their existence;
- calling Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator and saying that Ukraine started the war;
- interrupting military support, information, and satellite data flows to Ukraine, thereby certainly causing the deaths of several brave Ukrainians on the front line;
- then, when Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to intensify nighttime airstrikes on men, women, and children in Ukrainian cities and towns, he said that the Russian president was doing only "what anyone else would do."
"I feel that that anger is spreading into what we used to call the free world. From Canada to Europe to Japan to Australia – from one shining sea to another (…) It's enough to pretend, or joke, that behind Trump's chaotic, ridiculously self-congratulatory stupidity embracing Putin, there is a brilliant Kissingerian superplan for bringing peace to Ukraine and the Middle East. What you see is what you get. Trump first. America, second," Timothy Ash emphasizes.
Resolution
The fourth phase is the transition to action. The greater the crisis, the greater the opportunity, the author believes, mentioning that we, Europeans, should have been doing much more to protect ourselves for a long time.
"Now it's up to us. Starting with Ukraine, we Europeans must defend our own democracies and freedoms. I hope and pray that you, my dear American friends, will defend yours.
How much I would love to join again singing 'America the Beautiful,' with those great verses that capture the essence of true liberalism. (…) But for now, all we see is a terrifying America," the author concludes.
T.D.