America. Always the disappointment to Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, the Media and now the Australians? The American voters have left at least one Aussie, Lisa Prior disheartened by elected Donald Trump. She was so despondent, she penned an op-ed for the New York Times to tell us how crestfallen she is, they titled it, Dear America, Why Did You Let Us Down?
The author explains that as an Australian, they follow American culture and politics as closely as their own. She then begins to describe her reaction to our Presidential election:
Since the election I have cried many times, in the shower, in the car, as the conventions that define liberal Western democracy are stripped away by Donald J. Trump, with every distressful appointment, each impulsive outburst. I have embarrassment of grief for a government that is not mine and for a country that does not belong to me. It feels as if we’re mourning the death of an idea called America.
I’d be embarrassed for her, but she doesn’t appear to feel shame. “Death of an idea called America”? What a drama queen. I may not like Donald Trump but his election was done so fairly and by the American voters. We didn’t hold a coup. There wasn’t any blood shed. Thus making our elections instantly better than most of the world.
She goes on to explain why Trump signals the end of the American Century….Warning: It sounds a great deal like Democrat talking points.
The election of Mr. Trump feels like a sudden plunge after a gradual decline. Already he is goading China, befriending President Vladimir V. Putin, disregarding climate change and refusing daily intelligence briefings because he’s “a smart person.” None of this, we fear, will end well for any of us.
And here we Australians are on the edge of Asia, a small and loyal ally of the United States, with a significant and growing Asian-born population, caught between our strategic alliance with you and our economic future with China. Britain is tangled in Brexit, with neither the time nor the inclination to focus on a former colony on the other side of the world. We feel worried, lucky — and alone.
How did Prior become an expert on American politics? Watching television and movies, of course, no really… that’s what she said:
We absorbed your politics by osmosis, across the semipermeable membrane of celluloid. We know about Air Force One from “Air Force One” and the West Wing from “The West Wing.”
You can read the entire letter, in which she mourns the end of the America that she loves. I guess no one told her “The West Wing” was cancelled years ago. that this kind of infantile behavior is still going on two months after the election is what is sad. This is America, we’ll be just fine, our Constitution guarantees that, it’s what makes our Country so great.
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