A supporter of US President-elect Donald Trump waits outside Capital One Arena in Washington, for a MAGA victory rally on Jan. 19.ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty Images
The ugly American is back.
And there is no one who embodies the term more than U.S. President Donald Trump, whose gauche, arrogant, I’m-better-than-you attitude reflects everything that is wrong with his country at the moment. His lie-filled speech to Congress on Tuesday night conjured that obnoxious, jingoist chant so detested around the world: “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”
At its conclusion, a reasonable person was left to wonder: what happens now that this craven, unrestrained group of nihilists is in charge? These performative Christians who are walking, talking embodiments of the seven deadly sins.
The term “the ugly American” has its roots in a 1958 novel of the same name. It chronicled the woeful efforts by U.S. foreign development officials operating overseas to engage with locals. Instead, they lived pretentiously, were often loud and boorish, made no attempts to learn foreign languages and mostly associated with other Americans. (The term “ugly American” would eventually find a place in the lexicon of popular culture as a descriptor for those from the U.S. exhibiting the kind of unappealing traits described in the book.)
The book’s hero is an American engineer named Homer Atkins. Unlike his colleagues, Homer and his wife don’t approach local villagers with reticence and disdain but instead initiate projects to help make people’s lives easier. They try and integrate into the community to get a better understanding of local language, culture and customs.
The book is said to have made such an impression on John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator, that he ordered copies for all his colleagues. It’s also believed to have been the inspiration for the Peace Corps, which Mr. Kennedy started in 1961, with a mission to promote world peace through friendship, community-based development and intercultural understanding.
Through the Peace Corps, and later organizations like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), America has helped tens of millions of poor and suffering people around the world. In the process, it built a much-deserved reputation for being on the side of good – and on the side of the poor and disadvantaged.
Which is why the scene in the U.S. Congress Tuesday night was all the more distressing. There was Mr. Trump, bragging about the alleged fraud and waste that his unelected lieutenant Elon Musk had uncovered amid his unrestrained assault on the U.S. bureaucracy. Many of his examples were connected to foreign aid, such as US$10-million set aside “for male circumcision in Mozambique.”
Republican politicians in the crowd laughed and cheered like the trained seals they are – ignorant and small-minded people who couldn’t care less about the fate of millions who rely on the U.S. for medication to address diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis. Fraudsters who couldn’t care less that an internationally lauded program started by George W. Bush to fight AIDS in Africa has been halted by Mr. Musk’s cost-cutting efforts.
The ugly American doesn’t care about such things.
Mr. Trump isolates his country from the rest of the globe more each day. His bullying of Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky scandalized the world. Mr. Trump dared to upbraid a war hero for not being sufficiently respectful in his company, yet doesn’t hesitate to insult and degrade the leader of Canada, a sovereign country, by referring to him as the “governor” of his “51st state.” He makes demands of Ukraine that are akin to a mafioso shakedown, but issues no ultimatums to the murderous dictator in Moscow who actually started the war. Mr. Trump is throwing his lot in with Vladimir Putin and throwing away the U.S.’s reputation in the process.
I wouldn’t want to be an American travelling almost anywhere in the world right now.
Europe has had it with Mr. Trump and his heedless acolytes, JD Vance and Mr. Musk. They’ve had enough of Trump emissaries going to Europe to plead the cause of extreme, right-wing parties in the hope they replace the democratic liberal governments currently holding power. You can only imagine the reaction in the U.S. if a European leader, or his/her proxy, came to America and made overtly political statements amid a presidential election like Mr. Vance did in Munich last month. Fox News would lose its mind.
Mr. Trump is trying to squeeze and humiliate countries around the world, including Canada, into economic submission, for the sake of small gains around the margins of the U.S. economy. Why? Because he’s a bully who can. He has destroyed the goodwill built by American administrations over decades, and for what?
Now, everything has changed. America can no longer be trusted. Their handshake is worthless.
The ugly American is back. And while the United States may ultimately win the tariff wars they have initiated, they will lose so much more. They already have.