I’m an American emigrant, living in Germany, and it’s weird: there are so many layers of problems, that I can’t accurately express what it feels like to watch your home country burn itself and anyone it can take with it to the ground from afar. The closest I can come is “shameful,” when people ask, but I worry that comes off as though I just find trump embarrassing.

I absolutely do, but it’s more that I feel deep shame for ever having believed the propaganda I was raised with; every new, horrible thing this president does is a fucking disgrace; and the mask-off nature of the administration reveals other shameful aspects of American culture and history*, which were previously less known to Europeans.

Just cutting off USAID, NOAA, and American participation in the WHO have or will all contribute to preventable deaths of innocent people around the world (there are too many things to consider them all here). We were at one point well-organized, dedicated, and well-connected enough to have a net positive effect on the world (had we chosen to do so, which we continually did not). We had a robust social safety net for some of the population at one point which could have been expanded to cover everyone in the country. By not doing that, we’ve almost certainly forced people who could have been highly skilled doctors, gifted artists, or creative inventors into wage labor, prison, or an early grave.

Because of what?

Racism?

That weird little fantasy about how the details of a person’s phenotype affect their personality or ability? It’s just a malignant, bizarro-world version of astrology! Race isn’t based in genetic science, and even if they try to suggest that there are differences based on race that are transmitted through culture, it quickly leads to the realization that perhaps treating some people as an underclass is not a good thing for society, actually, so they’re clearly not going about it that way.

It’s repeated a lot, but the cruelty really seems to be the point.

That’s a terrible shame.

*it also revealed a level of solidarity shown by people protesting ICE that I was really happily surprised by, to be clear. It’s not all bad, but there are many ways that could have been revealed which would have been infinitely better.