Some people claim that there's a woman - Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris - to blame.
A lot of people insist that once Trump is gone, a new President, particularly a new Democratic President, can reset the nation's agenda and get us Americans back in the world's good graces - assuming we ever were in the world's good graces to begin with (but that's a topic for later). But it's not going to be that easy. More likely, it will be impossible.
See, when Trump was returned to the office he's currently desecrating, the rest of the world squarely blamed the American electorate and the American so-called justice system for letting it happen. After the January 6, 2021 insurrection, Trump should have been prevented from being in a position to stand for office ever again. But Mitch McConnell did not bother to get enough Senate Republicans on board for a conviction in the wake of Trump's second impeachment trial, and Attorney General Merrick Garland avoided prosecuting Trump to avoid looking political - and prosecuted Hunter Biden for the same reason. Jack Smith hit the ground running in his investigations of Trump's two federal indictments for planning an insurrection and stealing boat loads of classified documents, but he eventually just plain hit the ground, because he got a late start, Garland did not have his back, and a certain judge in Florida, where the documents case was set for trial, blocked and checkmated Smith's every move. Smith testified before a House committee last week that he had more than enough evidence to convict Trump in both cases and would have if a trial for either had ever gotten off the ground.
And then there are the voters, who knew that Trump was a crook and, as a result of the fraud case in New York City, a convicted felon. But they voted for him and gave him a plurality over Kamala Harris in 2024 anyway. Pundits poured nothing but scorn and derision on the Democrats for running a presidential campaign as compelling as milquetoast, and those criticisms were valid - or they would have been, if not for the alternative to Harris and the Democrats. The commentariat should not have focused so much on the Harris campaign's lackluster policy proposals and focused more on the lack of intelligence and integrity on the part of the voters. After all, Trump was telling us precisely what he would do as President in a second term and Harris was warning voters to heed the threat of a second Trump administration, but all the voters cared about was . . . the price of eggs? But then, blaming the voters is no way to keep those same voters tuning into cable news.
The voters' choice of Trump would have made more sense if they felt that President Biden and Vice President Harris had failed their expectations to create a better and more equitable economy for all. In fact, they did feel so. That, however, should not have been their motivation. Other Western countries, like Great Britain, had thrown out their incumbent leaders in favor of the opposition for economic reasons as well, based on a sluggish post-COVID economy that had affected the world. But the British had a right to reject the Tories for Keir Starmer and Labour, because Prime Minister Starmer, last I checked, is not a convicted felon who tried to overthrow the king. We had no right to reject the incumbent party. Our alternative to Harris was Trump. Voting third-party was not an option like it had been in 2016, when everyone assumed incorrectly, based on polling, that Hillary Clinton was going to win, as opposed to the dead heat the polls remained in for 2024 to the bitter end. The criticism of the Democrats for how they approached the general election campaign was not valid.
Then again, maybe it was. Harris may have had problems beyond her control, but she made a lot of unforced errors that made her defeat more likely with each passing day. Too many Democrats acted like they knew it all, and many of them seemed more interested in rewriting the rules for American English ("Latinx?" pronoun choices?) than offering positive proposals as solutions for the economy. And once Trump was sworn in, what happened next? Democrats did nothing to fight Trump - or made strongly worded statements about Trump's actions, which was worse than nothing. This, coupled with the capitulation to Trump from the legal, business, and higher-education sectors, only convinced foreigners that Americans were just fine with a wannabe dictator who is now quickly becoming one. People in other countries know that, without Trump being held accountable for his crimes, another Republican President could try to bully and extort other countries in the future.
The recent efforts to stop ICE funding in the wake of Alex Pretti's murder and an impending government shutdown may convince Canadians and Europeans that Americans may have backbones (but not necessarily brains) after all. But there is no turning back; people who voted for Trump threw away the United States' credibility and integrity, and they made America a place no one should visit and Americans a people no one can trust.
And that, my friends, is yet another reason why we need to break up the United States into separate countries. An intellectual New England, a laid-back California, and a common-sense federation of the states of the American Midwest could join NATO and enter the United Nations, and achieve trust and credibility with little effort, even if a revived Confederacy or a restored Republic of Texas could not. Different regions of the U.S. would likely function better as separate countries, given the cultural and political differences between them. But as one nation indivisible . . . no. Those days are gone forever, over not so long a time ago.
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
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