(The Picture Of Dorian Gray is the story of a man who has his portrait drawn and makes a wish that the picture and not he would age. The wish is granted, and Dorian Gray lives for many years appearing as if he has neither aged nor been changed by his sinfulness. When at last the picture is shown to others, it reveals all the sin and corruption he has indulged in.)
I won’t go as far as to say the U.S.A was ever the shining city on the hill some imagine it was, but we did good enough P.R. that many people believed it was. So much so that the illusion existed overseas as well, even in countries we invaded. A lot of my social media fam will say the U.S. has an evil history, but that’s true of most if not all countries.
Regardless of how you personally view the U.S., the Stars and Stripes were an image that symbolized freedom to many in other countries. If you don’t believe me, try to send your memory back to when the 9/11 attacks happened. Just as most Americans felt as though they were New Yorkers on that day, a lot people around the world saw themselves as Americans, felt like the world had been attacked. The genuine outpouring of sympathy and support internationally was undeniable. Whatever the United States was going to do in response, the rest of the world seemed poised to support us.
Of course, most of the goodwill we had garnered on that day has been squandered by an arrogance and aggressive militarism we had never so overtly shown before. Yet somehow there was still a bit of a luster to the Stars and Stripes. Perhaps the illusion that we were caring and just had fallen away, but the world still viewed us as at least powerful and competent.
But then came Trump. He revealed a truth to the rest of the world that none of our other actions ever could. Mai Lai could be rationalized as the actions of a few bad soldiers. Hiroshima could be blamed on the decisions of a few people in government. The American people themselves could still feign innocence or at least ignorance or powerlessness. The violent and greedy actions taken by the United States could be viewed by the charitable or gullible as mistakes that America was willing to fix. They could even be viewed as sins for which we would yet atone.
But Trump…Trump is something people in other nations can’t explain away. When they saw a nation that embraced Donald Trump, they were not witnessing an action done by a few. They were not seeing bad behavior from an otherwise benevolent country. They were not seeing a mistake, or misstep. No, when we elected Donald Trump to be our political—and in many respects, our moral—leader, there was no denying what lay in our collective soul.
It's as if The United States was Dorian Gray, and the world had finally seen the portrait we had kept hidden for so many years. It’s like for years we’ve been exporting sausages to the world and they finally got to see how the sausage was being made. You don’t unsee that. The world now knows that this is our true face, even though there are so many of us who are screaming “This is not who we are!” Sure, you did not vote for the oozing pustule that is our president. But for how many decades did you notice the blemish grow and do nothing about it? You should have known it was just a matter of time before it popped. You should have applied some antiseptic to the area the moment it became noticeable. But you permitted it to fester.
Meanwhile, many Americans perceive Donald Trump as our path back towards greatness. He is the one who will give Old Glory a spit shine so that it will be as bright as new (though oddly enough, they seemed to have replace the flag I knew and loved with a faded or completely black and white one). But you can’t be great when everyone who stares upon you recoils in horror. And there is little reason for anyone outside our borders to look at us in any other way.
There is nothing for the world to see in our president that would prompt any admiration or fondness. They see a man who has killed another country’s general while he was arriving under the white flag of parley. An assassination of a leader revered by a nation we are not even at war with. Nobody does that, not even on Game Of Thrones. It is a signal to the world that we are a nation of complete lawlessness, not greatness.
When the world looks at our country, they see a leader who says openly that we have the right to occupy, for as long as we desire, portions of Syria and take their oil to help pay for our occupation. Again, this is in a nation that has not attacked us. You may appreciate Trump because he states honestly what others obfuscate about, but this proves my point. People can fail to clearly see Dorian Gray’s crimes because he appears pleasant and innocent. But when others finally see him for who he is, they are appalled. Trump has let the world see who we are.
Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld said “Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue.” That means even sinners are capable of realizing that it is in their own best interests to at least pretend that what they are doing has some virtue to it. It means that even the evil find it practical to praise goodness. This idea has eluded Donald Trump. I’m afraid it eludes us as Americans, as well. We are no longer capable of thinking at this level, and this is a pretty basic level. I would guess that most grade schoolers have the potential to grasp this concept. But they have to be taught, and our number one teacher is the media. A media that is funded by consumer advertising has little interest in making people grasp simple concepts.
Trump supporters will defend the president’s behavior by saying (and if I am wrong on this, I expect my MAGA friends to set me straight) that the United States does not have to be appreciated, admired, or respected by other nations but only feared. Our greatness, they will say, relies on our strength, not in our ability to win friends.
This is a mistake that even Adolph Hitler would not have made. Even he made pretext and justifications when he did something evil. Even he tried to hide many of his more horrible crimes. Brutal oppression may work for a time, but it is not a long-term strategy. If your only justification for dominance is brute force, the world will be covertly working to trip you at an opportune moment, and nobody will try to stop the fall. No, if you're going to go full-blown evil, deception's a necessary tool.
Soon, Democrats will regain the presidency and attempt to stretch the threadbare blanket that is Joe Biden over the painting in hopes that the world will forget about it. Not long after that, they will slap a picture of a woman of color on top of it as if there was nothing to see behind the curtain. But what the world has seen, it cannot forget. As in Oscar Wilde’s novel, there will be no cosmetic answer to the problem we face, but perhaps we might, seeing at last what we’ve become, repent and save our soul.
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