Is The World Laughing At Us? NO - They Pity Us!

What does the rest of the world think about the United States? Right after Trump's election, they were mystified at how we could have elected such a dunce to be our leader. That quickly devolved into mirth, and for the first three years, most of the world laughed at us. The nation that once was looked to for leadership became a worldwide joke.

That has now changed. As the world watched, Trump ignored the spreading pandemic. Because of that, the U.S. now has about one-third of all Coronavirus cases worldwide, and about 25% of all Coronavirus deaths worldwide (even though it has only 4.3% of the world's population).

That has altered the world's perception of this country. Instead of laughing at us, they now pity us!

The following is an excerpt from an op-ed in The Irish Times by Fintan O'Toole:

“Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”

“However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.”

“Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into the coronavirus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemic.”