Catania           I’m counting the days now until I’m home, as I wind down this five-country global business tour.  The travel has been longer than I like, but there have been some benefits aside from meeting new friends, helping push new organizing drives farther, and celebrating milestones with our affiliates.  Frankly, it’s been nice to be able to learn about other countries about their issues and interests and be free for a couple of weeks from Trump world and its daily horrors.

It’s been days since I’ve had to write about my home country, even if the subject comes up frequently in my meetings.  There’s no escaping the fact now that Trump’s shadow and his attacks on any figment of democratic norms and legal restraints has removed America from its status as a vaunted “city on the hill” inspiring others, enforcing by actions and example limits on power, and showing generosity to neighbors and those in need.  Now, we have become an enabler of oligarchs, autocrats, dictators and the far right as it knocks on the door of fascism. The fact that Trump’s reign seems to be impulsive and often to lack rhyme or reason does not alter the impact it is having across the world.  Rather than being a safe haven in a troubled world, Trump has made us mean-spirited and bullying.

I’m not just talking about the way the USA is now dealing with immigrants and deportation, but that is a good example of the worst face we are showing the world.  It has allowed the far right in Britain to boldly promise they will deport 600,000, if they win the next election.  It has allowed Italy, to suspend applications for asylum, to hold people in detention for 90-days with no limits on extensions.  The USA is now making commonplace the notion of sending deportees to countries that are virtually failed states, and other countries are now following our lead.

I wish it was easy, when asked to explain our foreign policy now, to simply answer that we have none, except perhaps a domestic mandate to further our own interests above any other consideration.  At lunch in Malta, the daughter of a former prime minister of that country who had lived in Texas for many years before returning home, pressed me over and over about how we were enabling the human rights abuses and war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, while continuing to supply arms and jet fuel to Israel.  Citing the shift in voting by a few Democratic Senators against continuing to send Israel arms sounded so embarrassingly lame coming out of my mouth, that I wished I had just shrugged, apologized, and taken my beating.

It’s never been easy to explain some actions of America, like how we neglect and abuse our lower income populations, the growing gap between the rich and poor, our bellicosity and frequent, endless wars, but there was never a reason to feel we owed an apology.  We did our part to stop these things, so we worked in solidarity.

Now it’s different.  It seems, individually and collectively, we are impotent.  Despite all our claims, even when somewhat strained, about “balance of powers,” “rule of law,” “countervailing powers,” strength of institutions, and democratic norms, all of these supposed bulwarks turn out to have been built on sand and unable to stop one man and his minions, who seek to wield power without restraint or even rational limits, from doing so.  One minute he’s trying to fire an independent Federal Reserve governor and the next he wants NFL teams to return to their insensitive names, museums to tear down exhibits, and Roger Clemons to be enrolled in baseball’s Hall of Fame.  This is crazyville.

Worse, he is now mobilizing the military against American cities, their elected leadership, and their citizens, simply because he wants to do so.  There was a time that the US would react in horror, make threats, and impose sanctions, if a leader in another country sent troops without pretense to muscle up on the opposition in their cities.  Now, that’s exactly who we are, so why would anyone believe there were limits elsewhere.

It’s not enough to say we’re sorry.  It’s pathetic to claim, while we’re being rolled over, that somehow the next election will turn this around.  These are dark days.

Here’s one last kicker, as I prepare to come home.  If I were trying to get a visa to visit the United States for work or pleasure, everything I’ve now said here would virtually guarantee that I could not be admitted, because “my values” and belief in things like “the people shall rule,” be able to speak and assemble, work for justice and build power, would clearly not align with what Trump and the State Department now see as acceptable American “values.”  For that matter, I might now be labeled a “terrorist,” for no reason whatsoever.