Our Planet’s Having a Hard Time Making Sense of America’s Cultural Phenomena

This reverence for semi-automatic machine guns is most certainly among America’s current cultural phenomena that mystifies Europe (and the rest of the world), but it’s hardly the only one.

The entire adoration of Donald Trump, a tawdry criminal, is also totally lost on folks outside of our borders.  Our 44th president was a man of principle and intelligence. Yet only a year after he left office, the United States had become the object of a strange and unlovely mixture of pity and contempt by the world’s people.

As a gentleman from Sweden told me a few years ago, “Had this (Trump) happened in Paraguay or Botswana, I don’t think anyone here would have even noticed, let alone reacted with shock.  But we never, ever thought it could happen to the United States of America, formerly the envy of the planet.  We simply feel sorry for you.”