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Do Americans understand how far they have fallen in world's eyes?

RARist

RARist

Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2017
Messages
83
Serious question. With the follow-up being: Do Americans care?
The disastrous response and attitude toward COVID-19 from its elected leaders - and a huge portion of the population's acceptance of it - has most of the rest of the world bewildered.
I'm not saying every other country has been perfect, but you have to admit the shirt show that is the U.S. handling of the pandemic is exceptional.
I'm just genuinely curious if international reputation matters?
 
I don't think anyone cares. The U.S., both as a geographic entity, and by its collective nature, is a thing unto itself -- very separatist, insular, and insolent, in a lot of ways.

And, despite our problems with the pandemic, and the general shutdown of regular life during it, we actually have things so good -- assuming that you're one of the ones who doesn't die from or isn't impacted with COVID-19 by someone close to you -- that people don't even realize just how good. And/so, they don't care.

It's a case of "I got mine," in a way, and the rest of the world doesn't matter.

Here, you can still move about, and travel, at least by car, almost anywhere you care to go. That is not the case in some countries, where people cannot even leave the confines of the city in which they live, the restrictions are so much tougher.
 
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Two remembrances:

-- A well-heeled acquaintance told us of cruising on a luxury yacht around the Greek isles. They were unaware of 9/11 as they pulled into a dock at one island. The guy helping on the dock asked if they heard what happened. "We bombed you."
They took all the flags off the yacht and stuck close to the shore. I don't remember all the details, but it took our acquaintances a few days to contact relatives in the U.S. and more than two weeks to work their way through Europe and finally get to, I think, Germany, where they got a flight home.

-- My wife is English. Some of her relatives now live in France. One of them was having a 70th birthday party on the farm that one of the cousins owns near Bordeaux. He invited everyone to attend. The invitation said, "But if any of my American family voted for Trump, don't bother coming."
 
When I went to London last summer, the first question I'd get from the locals without fail was "what the fork is up with you guys and Trump?" Once I'd refute with quelque chose quelque chose Boris Johnson, the next question was about our love affair with guns and mass shootings. Inevitably, I'd just try to steer the convo toward football or cricket and move on...
 
Cosmo said:
When I went to London last summer, the first question I'd get from the locals without fail was "what the fork is up with you guys and Trump?" Once I'd refute with quelque chose quelque chose Boris Johnson, the next question was about our love affair with guns and mass shootings. Inevitably, I'd just try to steer the convo toward football or cricket and move on...
Click to expand...

I was in London summer of 2018 and it happened to be when Trump visited. At one point I was eating fish and chips at a place literally two blocks from a march with 500,000 anti-Trump protesters. Someone else eating there and heard our accents. He came to our table and told us he hoped we still felt welcome there -- they hated Trump but he didn't want us to think we were unwelcome. It was a sweet gesture.

There was also a pro-Trump rally a block from our hotel. I didn't realize Nazi flags were readily available in the UK.
 
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