America's Image

A very weird thing about this country is how we still (sort of) basically run the world and our elites are obsessed with whether the other kids in school think we are cool. There are also the beliefs that people in the rest of the world are basically idiots who are pelted with our national myths constantly, and therefore as dumb as we are, and who can be conned by our marketing slogans, and that they are as obsessed with "us" as we are. Our elites are all narcissists. Trump is such a mystery.

It is true that people in, say, Portugal know a bit more about our politics than "we" know about theirs (nothing) but most people of Portugal probably get through most days without thinking once about the United States of America. As it should be. Also Joe Scarborough is a fucking idiot.

For those of us still believing that Islamic extremists hate America because of the freedoms we guarantee to all people, the gravest threat Trump poses to our national security is the damage done daily to America’s image. As the New York Times’s Roger Cohen wrote the month after Trump’s election, “America is an idea. Strip freedom, human rights, democracy and the rule of law from what the United States represents to the world and America itself is gutted.”

Sure George Bush's "they hate us for our freedom" is fucking stupid but marvel at how this paragraph is even more stupid than that. I mean, if Islamic Extremists hate us for our freedom, and they're a big threat to national security, doesn't that mean that less freedom lessens the threat to our national security? Joe Scarborough is a child. And not a bright one.