And then came Trump.

 For a long time, America basked in the reputation for being the world's greatest democracy.  And then came Donald Trump.  The country's reputation in the world took a steep dive.

Many political savants do not think the country can fully recover.  When a person does something incredibly stupid, people wisely assume he is likely to do it again.  The same goes for nations.  The election of Trump signified that the United States was in the grip of a  seizure of stupidity.  It has demonstrated its capability for stupidity and is likely to do it again.

The election of Trump to the presidency revealed a massive intellectual and moral failure in the American people.  A majority of voters put in office a man who violates every standard of competence and decency that Americans like to say they stand for.  The main thing Trump proved is that American democracy is a phony pretense.  The country does not live up to the benign aspirations that are popularly claimed as its goal,  and a good portion of Americans has no interest in things like honesty, integrity, intelligence, or good will.  They gauge success in life in terms of how many people can be fucked over.  America is being run like a business, and businesses are not run as democracies.  They have CEOs who are enthroned with the powers of kings.  When people say governments should be run like businesses, they are revealing their rejection of democracy and their preference for the rule of authority.  They got it with Donald Trump, and all the stupidity, pettiness, and meanness he musters.

America toppled from being a functioning democracy to being a bumbling autocracy.

Trump's antics get more press than the job being done by our current president.  Perhaps that is for the good if people realize that everything Trump says and does is a demonstration of what happens when a certified fool is in charge of something.   However, the foolery diverts attention away from the ultimate peril it puts democracy in, and that is that fools crave the power to impose their foolery on the world. 

After the election, the new administration announced that America is back, and our allies greeted then news with approval.  But there are reservations: America could always revert to a state of Trump.  That is an uncertainty that we and the rest of the world will need to learn how to live with.