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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/03/trump-and-vance-shattered-europes-illusions-about-america/681925/>
"A book festival in Vilnius, meetings with friends in Warsaw, a dinner in
Berlin: I happened to be at gatherings in three European cities over the past
several days, and everywhere I went, everyone wanted to talk about the Oval
Office performance last Friday. Europeans needed some time to process this
event, not just because of what it told them about the war in Ukraine, but
because of what it told them about America, a country they thought they knew
well.
In just a few minutes, the behavior of Donald Trump and J. D. Vance created a
brand-new stereotype for America: not the quiet American, not the ugly
American, but the brutal American. Whatever illusions Europeans ever had about
Americans—whatever images lingered from old American movies, the ones where the
good guys win, the bad guys lose, and honor defeats treachery—those are
shattered. Whatever fond memories remain of the smiling GIs who marched into
European cities in 1945, of the speeches that John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan
made at the Berlin Wall, or of the crowds that once welcomed Barack Obama,
those are also fading fast.
Quite apart from their politics, Trump and Vance are rude. They are cruel. They
berated and mistreated a guest on camera, and then boasted about it afterward,
as if their ugly behavior achieved some kind of macho “win.” They announced
that they would halt transfers of military equipment to Ukraine, and hinted at
ending sanctions on Russia, the aggressor state. In his speech to Congress last
night, Trump once again declared that America would “get” Greenland, which is a
part of Denmark—a sign that he intends to run roughshod over other allies too.
These are the actions not of the good guys in old Hollywood movies, but of the
bad guys. If Reagan was a white-hatted cowboy, Trump and Vance are Mafia dons.
The chorus of Republican political leaders defending them seems both sinister
and surprising to Europeans too. “I never thought Americans would kowtow like
that,” one friend told me, marveling.
The Oval Office meeting, the subsequent announcements, and the speech to
Congress also clarified something else: Trump, Vance, and many of the people
around them now fully inhabit an alternative reality, one composed entirely of
things they see and hear in the ether. Part of the Oval Office altercation was
provoked by Zelensky’s insistence on telling the truth, as the full video
clearly shows. His mistake was to point out that Russia and Ukraine have
reached many cease-fires and made many agreements since 2014, and that Vladimir
Putin has broken most of them, including during Trump’s first term.
It’s precisely because they remember these broken truces that the Ukrainians
keep asking what happens after a cease-fire, what kind of security guarantees
will be put in place, how Trump plans to prevent Putin from breaking them once
more and, above all, what price the Russians are willing to pay for peace in
Ukraine. Will they even give up their claims to territory they don’t control?
Will they agree that Ukraine can be a sovereign democracy?"
Via Kenny Chaffin.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
