As Trump promised, America is winning again...
BUT ONLY IN HAVING THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF CORONAVIRUS DEATHS ON THE PLANET
AMERICAN exceptionalism – the inherent belief that no country on Earth is more prosperous, better prepared, as intelligent and successful as the States.
Throughout generations, from one leader to the next, no nation has done more to promote itself as having a unique destiny, and which stands alone in shaping the rest of the world, than the States.
Walk down Main Street in any town, and you’ll find star-spangled flag-wavers only too happy to boast about having the best economy, the strongest military, greater wealth and more freedoms than anywhere else on the planet.
If America were made of chocolate, it would eat itself.
And according to Donald Trump, never before has the country been more edible than it is today.
From entering the White House, the US leader set the tone, bragging that his inauguration crowd was the largest ever – it wasn’t.
It was a sign of what was to come. Over the past four years nobody, he says, has done it better.
America, Trump claims, leads the world in every conceivable way, including its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
He has pitted the States against all other countries, friends and foes alike, repeatedly boasting no one else has tested more people for Covid-19 than his administration.
The harsh reality for the reality TV star is, however, exceptionally bad.
Through his chaotic leadership, no single nation has as high a death rate as the States.
While Trump once bragged the virus would very quickly disappear, despite presiding over just 4% of the world population, his country now accounts for around 30% of pandemic fatalities.
While he uses China as his new scapegoat – Mexico is so 2016 – the States is now the only advanced nation where the death rate is still climbing.
As experts predict up to 3,000 a day could die until June 1, Trump has pushed for social distancing measures to be relaxed, while loosening lockdowns. Both have led to a spike in mortality rates.
While he repeatedly blames an Obama administration that has not been in power for almost four years for lack of tests (Covid did not exist in 2016), no other developed country has been as unprepared for the pandemic as the US.
Nor has any other nation left it to local governments to acquire personal protective equipment and ventilators or seen states and cities forced to bid against one another to see who lives or dies.
You’d think it couldn’t get any worse but it does.
Trump has boasted how wealthy he has made America, yet no other western country has plunged so many of its citizens into poverty so quickly.
Around the world, governments are providing generous income support, but not here.
At best, Americans have received one-off payments of £980 – barely enough to cover things such as the mortgage, bills and food for a week.
So busy are the unemployment offices, having to deal with 33 million new claims, very few are being processed to get paid out.
It is a far cry from the world that Trump promised Americans in January 2016 when he was sworn in.
“From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this moment on, it’s going to be America First,” he declared.
“I will fight for you with every breath in my body – and I will never, ever let you down. America will start winning again, winning like never before.”
But almost four years in, an ever-increasing number of Americans are still waiting for their first victory as the only exceptional part of Trump’s leadership has been his monumental failures.
Together, with his cronies, he has taken a once-great nation and led it to become the world’s biggest joke.
Sure, any country can make a mistake in electing a poor leader once.
But if Americans choose Trump again come November, they are giving the clear, unmistakable message to the rest of the world that stupid extends far beyond the White House fence.