Ottawa            Trump is doing everything he can to degrade the United States in the eyes of American citizens and the world.  We’ve now gone through more than a year of new wars, constant threats, sickening corruption and self-dealing, autocratic narcissism, and more as the list is endless.  Foreigners are blocked at the borders, denied anything other than expensive visas, bullied and profiled in domestic immigrant communities, and blocked in higher education enrollments.  This is the first year that more people have left the country, than have come into the country.  I could go on and on. I have been prattling about this endlessly as Trump 2 has driven us to new, unimaginable lows never seen in the US.

I’m having a problem though.  A counterintuitive notion, maybe crazy, keeps popping up in my tired brain.  Maybe, just maybe, as much as a disaster as Trump is for the US and much of the world, is there any chance this emerging “new world order” might end up building a stronger world, even though we will tragically be living with a weaker America?

Hear me out for a second.

Take Ukraine.  When Trump and the US dominated the supply and the backstop to Russia’s invasion, Ukraine was a ping pong ball going back and forth.  They proved that they couldn’t count on the USA for defense.  Despite horrific losses, that realization forced innovation that has now changed the face of warfare forever.  Not for the better necessarily, but sufficiently to allow the country to fight to a standstill even with 100,000 in dead.  That’s to their credit, but it also a credit to European countries that have seized this bull by the horns to support Ukraine for its sake and their own with material and money, as well as strengthening their own defenses to be ready for Russia or other intrusions.

Trump cut the money off ocean monitoring of climate change.  The European Union stepped in to say they would fill the gap.  Trump is putty in the hands of his fellow billionaires and a tech toy thing, but whether Ireland or the European Union, other countries have taken the wheel administering huge fines and forced changes, including protecting children from abuse.  How about Canada?  One announcement after another has been made by their current government to decrease its dependence on the US.  Japan and other Asian countries dependent on the US and Qatar for LPN gas seeing how depending on a reckless US can endanger their own economics have started increasing their move to alternative fuels and suppliers.

There are other examples, but I need to quickly try to establish that even as I look for a silver lining in these clouds, I’m not naïve.  The US is still a big dog barking with a world shaking economy, even if delivering unequal benefits, a huge army, even if run by a madman, and a resilient and can-do population that no one man, even Trump, can permanently degrade. We’re a player, along with China, at the top of the game, and we can’t be easily replaced or sidelined in the near term.

But, Trump and his instability around world and domestic affairs, is proving that other countries relying on the US do so at their peril.  Even where the USA is Plan A, Trump has proven that it is crazy to not have a Plan B.  The Trump isolationism and chauvinism change the world for the future.  The idea of America has been smashed by the actions of America now. Turns out that we are not what we thought we were, nor what they thought we were.

I can’t help thinking that if we survive the next couple of years until Trump is off the stage, it will take the US and its people a long time to recover, but just maybe the rest of the world, were able, will have stepped up and moved forward to fill these gaps, having realized that it is a mistake to rely on of us too much now and in the future.  Sad, but true.

Think about it.