Random thought on American Politics

Reality is that the U.S. -- both its megalithic corporations and its post-WWII foreign policy -- has influenced life in practically every nook and cranny of the planet, and dominated some. The rest of the world tends to acknowledge that, whether they welcome it or lament it. So of course they have an interest in the politics and social forces driving it, since it affects them. What they resent, and tend to criticize, is the U.S. centric attitudes and policies that accept no responsibility for the impact of our world-wide footprint, nor any advice or input from the rest of the world; i.e., think America is the center of the world. The self-centered absorption that eventually led to the destruction of every dominant world-wide influence from the Macedonians/Greeks under Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, the Mongols of Genghis Khan, or the various European colonial empires, the Ottoman Empire, and the Persian Empire.

What has changed, in my experience, is the type of criticism. During the pre-9/11, what I would hear from my travels and international chat friends, was appreciation for what we did but questions about our policies, and our blindness on the impact some had elsewhere in the world. In the post-9/ll era, they would go out of their way to say how much they admired and liked our country but hated our President and his administration's policies. Now, what I hear, is concern and fear about how we could ever have elected someone like Trump; the gridlock, polarization, and open hostility between the extremists consuming both political parties and society in general; the weakening of the U.S. dollar and the instability of the world-wide markets due to it. Essentially fear that we are destroying ourselves, rotting from within, and the impact that will have on them and the rest of the world.