American Responsibility In The Age of Donald Trump
Are We Up To The Task?
The world has developed an unfortunate new habit: pausing mid-breath whenever the President of the United States opens his mouth. This is not due to awe, reverence, or the thrill of statesmanship. It is the pause one takes when a toddler reaches for a light socket while holding a fork. One freezes, not to admire the child’s confidence, but to determine the extent of the damage.
People who are watching the child are looking on in horror.
America, in a fit of democratic experimentation (and perhaps delusion), has elevated a man who speaks and behaves like a child possessed by a landlord’s ego. The rest of the planet is now expected to proceed calmly, trusting that this individual—who treats geopolitics like a game of Monopoly played entirely in tantrums—will not accidentally start a war because he feels insufficiently admired.
Observe the record. Greenland is to be taken, as one might take a lawn chair from a neighbor’s yard. Cuba is warned to “make a deal before it’s too late,” the traditional phrasing of either a mob enforcer or a cartoon villain. Mexico is threatened, Venezuela’s president is kidnapped, its oil is declared personal property, and Canada is joked about as if it were a parking space one might claim with a traffic cone.
This is not a strategy. It is not “tough talk.” It is the sound of a man flipping the board because he is losing and insisting that this, too, is winning.
Yet we are instructed—sternly—that this is normal. That this is strength. That leadership now consists of issuing ultimatums like a discount tyrant and expecting applause for the audacity. We are told to laugh, to shrug, to scroll past, as nuclear powers quietly re-calculate what a “red line” means in a world where impulse has replaced policy.
And here, regrettably, responsibility intrudes. Americans do not get to disclaim this performance with “I didn’t vote for him,” any more than a fireworks factory gets to say, “I didn’t light that fuse,” while everyone else stands around the catastrophic spectacle. This is our system. Our presidency. Our contribution to global stress.
The rest of the world does not receive a ballot. It receives consequences. Trade shocks. Energy chaos. Military recalculations. Parents in other countries now explain to their children why the news sounds tense again, because one elderly man in Washington feels the need to feel powerful before bedtime.
Let’s be honest. This is not a master strategist playing four-dimensional chess. This is a nearly eighty-year-old man, visibly deteriorating, behaving as though nothing after him matters. History teaches us that there is no leader more dangerous than one with nothing to lose and an ego that demands constant feeding.
Why should the planet pay for this? Why should families in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia—anywhere—absorb the risk because America failed basic self-maintenance?
This is no longer left versus right. It is sanity versus spectacle. There is no reset button once a country is invaded, once alliances shatter, once war becomes irreversible.
So yes, Americans must act. Not theatrically. Not politely. But urgently. Use the system. Impeach. Remove. Contain. Do whatever the law allows—quickly—because the rest of the world is tired of holding its breath.
This is no longer funny.
It is no longer tolerable.
And it should never have been normal.
