First used as the title of a 1948 photograph of an American tourist in Havana, the term “Ugly American” refers to a stereotype depicting a certain type of American citizen as exhibiting loud, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant, and ethnocentric behaviour mainly abroad, but also at home. The phrase entered popular culture as the title of a 1958 book by authors William Lederer and Eugene Burdick. In 1963 it was made into a film starring Marlon Brando.
Following the highly divisive reign of the US administration over the last four years I would like to broaden the original characterization of the “Ugly American” personae beyond the already listed traits of “loud, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant and ethnocentric behaviour” and include some of the especially ugly traits frequently exhibited by its current president who is about to leave office after losing the 2020 presidential election by more than six million votes.
While is true that by expanding the definition we are less likely to refer to a stereotype and more to a unique individual, I feel that it is nevertheless a useful exercise to illustrate how truly ugly and unsavoury an individual can be and especially in a position of power and influence and effecting millions of people that find themselves at the receiving end of it.
The list of deplorable personal qualities that can be attributed to this exacerbated version of the Ugly American persona is too long to get a decent outline here but there is a summary in the Washington Post of November 12 by Michael Gerson that goes a long way in stating what is wrong with the current occupant of the White House. It features some of the more nefarious traits exhibited by Donald J. Trump while demonstrating his complete and unique unsuitability to take on the mantle of the 45th president of the United States back in 2016:
We see a dishonest president, spinning lie after lie about the electoral system. A selfish president, incapable of preferring any duty above his own narrow interests. A reckless president, undermining the transition between administrations and exposing the country to risk. A vain president, unable to responsibly process an electoral loss. A corrupt president, willing to abuse federal power to serve his own ends. A spiteful president, taking revenge against officials who have resisted him. A faithless president, indifferent to constitutional principles and his oath of office.
In short, this catastrophically flawed individual should have never been allowed to take the helm of a country, and especially not an influential and powerful country such as the United States.
Not surprisingly, the fact that it did happen has damaged the country in more ways than one. His demonstrated admiration for totalitarian leaders such as Putin has had a debilitating effect on the country’s democratic institutions by riding roughshod over its civil service and by the appointment of cronies and other assorted lackeys and sycophants. This includes members of his extended family in key position of government, apparently on condition of absolute loyalty to him alone. I would also include the somewhat sinister figure of the vice-president, his faithful apologist and a staunch champion of the white religious right. If you smell a contradiction here, you might be right – it’s either that, or in the interest of political expediency that Christianity has been redefined to allow for pathological liars such as the current president to be absolved from their sins.
We should also not be surprised that there are significant repercussions internationally, when the impact of his fickle reign continues to be felt around the world due to the unpredictably of his actions. A notable decline in America’s prestige abroad since he took office in 2017 has negatively affected the US’ relations with both friends or foes while introducing a great deal of uncertainty regarding the status of various pending international agreements related to trade, defense, climate and health.
And with respect to health, his decision to abandon the World Health Organization during the height of the current COVID-19 pandemic is nothing more than a cynical move to punish the WHO for his own failure to address the seriousness of the pandemic at the outset by not providing the critical national leadership it called for. The result has been that the US incurred 20% of all pandemic related deaths worldwide while representing only about 4% of the total world population. As the pandemic rages on, at the time that I write this Americans are dying at the rate of nearly one every 60seconds , for a total now approaching 280,000 since the disease was first detected in the country.
Furthermore, the most shameful aspect from a national leadership point of view is his total lack of empathy toward those members of society that have suffered greatly as a result of the pandemic and the hundreds and thousands of Americans that have lost one or more family members as a result of it.
It seems this president can find more time to play golf than provide some badly needed national leadership in fighting the virus that is running amok in his country. At the recent G20 summit he skipped the G20 summit’s “Pandemic Preparedness” event on November 21st to visit one of his golf clubs on the same day that a record 195,500 new Covid-19 infections were reported in a 24-hour period in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins.
But if there is one thing in particular that should be held against this president it is his treasonous effort to take advantage of the already deep divisions in his country, and in particular between Democrats and Republicans. And I say “treasonous” because if you are the duly elected leader of a country – you are obliged to represent ALL of your citizens regardless of whether they voted for you or not and do everything in your power to encourage the middle ground between them. Anything else ends up weakening the country even further, to the point of shutting down dialogue between the opposing ideologies, making any kind of cooperation just about impossible and paralyzing its government.
And so he has been playing the “us and them” blame game from the day he was installed in office. This proved to be perfect recipe for various social unrest much of which has already materialized in various cities around the country. Initially peaceful demonstrations for Black Lives Matter following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were seized upon by those elements in society with alternate agendas more focused on looting and the destruction of private and government property.
Today there are the shenanigans around the presidential election process, and his delusional and utterly baseless claim that there was massive voting fraud that will remove him from office as of January 20th. To date not one shred of evidence has been presented regarding the alleged voter fraud, and we’re looking at a situation so absurd that is making the US the laughing stock of the world. The worst of it is that the majority of Republicans voters – including state legislators, senators and the like – continue to support him in this efforts to get the election results overturned due to fraud, and going as far as to urge his supporters to send him money to help fund his fruitless attempts to overturn the election.
America, I Pray for Thee.