When talking with a new friend from Ireland, I was dismayed to discover just how far America’s reputation has fallen. After this week’s news, it all makes sense.
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Ispent a happy Saint’s Day on Tuesday having a few jars at my local with a new friend named Dennis O’Connor, a good Kerryman who’s lived over here for some time. We talked awhile about international sport, especially about how Ireland had been hosed out of the Six Nations rugby championship by England, dammit, who folded like a cheap suit and handed the win to France on a late penalty kick. We suspected the fine hand of Edward Carson, or Lord Trevelyan, or Cromwell, working the refs from the bowels of hell.
The only time I saw Dennis get angry was when, somehow, the government of the United States came up in casual conversation. This included the World Baseball Classic, in which Venezuela was playing a U.S. team chock-full of MAGA-curious dumbasses who seemed to think they were playing ball on Omaha Beach. The intensity of my new friend’s contempt for this government surprised even me. If we’ve incurred the dislike of Irish émigrés on St. Patrick’s Day, we’ve passed a point of unpopularity that I thought we’d never come near.
Venezuela beat the insufferable cult members of the USA for the world baseball title. On Monday, when Venezuela beat Italy, this is what the president of the United States posted on his money pit of a social-media platform:
Wow! Venezuela defeated Italy tonight, 4-2, in the WBC (Baseball!) Semifinal. They are looking really great. Good things are happening to Venezuela lately! I wonder what this magic is all about? STATEHOOD, #51, ANYONE? President DONALD J. TRUMP
I have watched as the entire world has responded to his appeals to help him bail himself out in his very excellent Iranian excursion by telling him that, no, can’t make it, gotta grout the tub. I have seen that the United States has been downgraded in the democracy index, a respected international survey, based partly on the administration’s continuing assault on free expression and the First Amendment generally. I have heard the president trying the blackmail Denmark into surrendering Greenland; and his towering foolishness regarding Canada, including referring to the country’s prime minister as “Governor Carney”; and how he should be “involved” in picking the next leader of Iran; and, most recently, how he could “do anything I want with Cuba.” The Emperor of Adderall, he brings to mind the passage from Exodus:
Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.
And there arose up a new president over the United States, who did not give a flying…
All of this I followed as part of my professional obligation, but watching my new friend Dennis on Tuesday and seeing the contempt on his face and in his voice drove the new reality home like nothing had before.
We are hated as a nation now.
One man has done this.