The Rise of the American Idiot
Why the Rest of the World Doesn’t Know Whether to Be Baffled, Horrified, or Dumbstruck by America Right Now
Today, Donald Trump said that having one of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreaks was a “badge of honor.” What kind of idiot would think that having the highest death toll in a world pandemic would be a point of pride? Quick, someone give this moron a medal!
The American Idiot is a figure the world has come to know all too well — he’s a world famous celebrity by this point. Brad Pitt has nothing on him. And the world, these days, so far as I can see, is laughing at America, horrified, astonished, bewildered — asking a very simple question. Or at least one that I think is very simple. Only it doesn’t appear to be, because so far as I see, Americans of a certain kind just don’t even seem to get the question. Of course, perhaps you do, and maybe I’m wrong. Still, let me name it.
The chaos, death, and depression we’re seeing in America today are needless.
When I sit down with my European, Asian, Canadian friends — anyone that’s not American — the one thing they can’t seem to understand is why Americans, in turn, don’t seem to grasp this. Now, ‘needless’ means just what it implies. None of this had to happen. Or almost none of it. Does that matter to Americans? Or is everyone, more or less, an American Idiot now?
You see, when my European and Asian friends imagine the figure of the American Idiot, they don’t just mean the Trumpist, the bleach-drinking shouter, the one who attends Trump rallies and rails against Mexicans, while voting against his or her own healthcare. They also mean the other kind of American. The one who goes to Democratic rallies, and votes against his or her own healthcare. That, after all, is what Democrats just did…during the inception of a literal global pandemic…vote against better healthcare…not to mention everything else…rejecting Liz and Bernie for Joe. Who wants less healthcare while a pandemic is raging? What on earth?
What everyone from around the world who’s not America that I talk to really means is this. There are two kinds of American Idiot. The dunce, and the fool. The willful one, and the negligent one. There’s the Trumpist — who…
