If Trump were to leave office, either now or at the end of his term, how long will it take for the US to regain the trust and respect of her allies and the rest of the world?

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I see Alex Denethorn’s answer, and it bothered me enough to wade into the political waters. Maybe people will love me for this or maybe they’ll hate me. But I’ve already handed my beer off to an interested bystander and they’re going to watch me destroy myself.

Trump is not an indictment of the US, US politics, the US national mindset, or what the US is trying to do in the world. I loathe the asshole and I hope his dumb ass is tossed out of office next election. But the same forces that elected Trump also fuel Brexit. So this rot, this societal rot, is bigger than one country.

Alex is basically saying that what made Trump is uniquely American.

It’s not. It’s not even limited to the Anglosphere. We just think it is because we’ve managed to not cause the last two world wars. So the Anglosphere is riding on the high horse of being the ones that helped the world in its time of need, capable of doing no wrong in the world, only good.

This isn’t US. This isn’t the UK. This is human nature. If you get a handful of people in a room and make a spirited declaration of some truth, half the people in the room will agree with you. The other half will find some reason to disagree. Not because you’re really wrong about what you said. But because your statement of truth isn’t just a statement of truth.

It’s also a statement of power. I said the truth, so you should follow me. Because I said the truth once, obviously the next three things I say will also be true. So you should just keep following me, because you didn’t have the courage to state the truth you believe in and I did.

Trump, Brexit, aren’t indictments of liberty or of democracy or of republic or federalism. These things, these advancements in the state of the art of the ability of humans to govern themselves, are still as great and useful and important as they ever were.

They’re just not absolute. They don’t produce perfect results in all cases. They can be subverted and broken in the right circumstances. We just need to discover those circumstances and make sure they don’t happen again.

All America has to do to regain thought leadership is to toss Trump out of office and get someone like Obama back in. Someone who cares about the history and mechanics of governance. If that happens then Trump will be remembered as a rotten egg in a really weird grab bag of good, bad, and sometimes rotten eggs.

The only way America loses prominence here is if we keep electing Trumps. I’m not saying that’s going to happen or that couldn’t possibly happen.

I’m just saying that democracy means that people control their own society. And people are fallible. This means any system made out of people will be fallible too. Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever built, as the saying goes.

And Brits coming in here saying that Americans electing a piece of shit like Trump means they’ve lost their relevance is just incredibly rich. I will mourn Queen Elizabeth right along with the rest of Britain when she passes. But there’s a reason she’s a de jure figurehead than the actual ruler. Because not all of Britain’s monarchs were as wonderful as she is.

Faith, faith in the process, faith in progress, faith in the ability of humanity to eventually realize it was wrong. The only reason a shitty American President like Trump even rates a mention is because the last five or six were decent to great. Yes I rate Bush Jr. as decent. Revoke my liberal card if you want. But I think his dumbass facade was just that, an act.