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…