Unwashed America

Having the World Cup during Trump's second reign was not what organizers for the host committee dreamed of while assembling bid packages years ago. Instead of a president working to put the best face on the United States as an opportunity for soft diplomacy—we have a troglodyte-in-chief who values UFC blood on the White House lawn over anything athletic.

At least Trump is not trying to Riefenstahl these events and portray a MAGA that is not MAGA. So, at one level, Trump is not a Nazi—because, Stephen Miller's resemblance to Josef Goebbels notwithstanding, the event is not being exploited to sports-wash his "movement." No, Trump is his usual asshat self, denying entry to referees, staff and visitors. This unwashed view of our country, however, may well explain us to the world and, perhaps, turn some hatred for us into pity.

People from around the world will see, up close, the political hand our country has been dealt. The World Cup, more than the coming Olympics, provides a tasting flight of our country to international fans. Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York (well, East Rutherford — so close), Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area, and Seattle. Hell, nine World Cup matches are in Dallas alone. Visitors will see the cacophonous mess that is the United States. Perhaps they will better understand how Trump came to be—not as some organized fascist movement with broad American support and hatred of the world, but as the shambolic product of apathy, ignorance, prejudice and greed—all made possible by a governing system that puts property before people.

The Center Cannot Hold

Trump is de-centering the United States in world politics. As the only intact country after World War II, we built a global economy that favored us, that relied on our dollar and treasury notes. Even as the world recovered, there was little reason to reinvent systems that worked, and our preeminence held. Then Trump came along and the world now realizes U.S. political culture is held together with a name your clichéd flimsy material that was never meant to hold anything together. Presidents were constrained as much by custom as law—and if Congress walks away from any accountability of impeachment—there is no way to oust Trump. For a world of parliamentary democracies, this must be incomprehensibly horrifying to see unfold and will surely motivate structural economic changes that will overturn our global position soon.

No one is coming here for a savage journey to the heart of the American Dream. But this cross-section of international grassroots is traveling to parts of the United States such tourists often do not go to and interacting with Americans who never have seen a foreign tourist...

But this is the macro, theoretical view. International visitors, surging in after years of avoiding us, will see the current state of the nation on the ground. They might realize, for instance, journalism is near-dead. Newspapers, television—nothing challenges the status quo mostly because no one covers much news at all anymore. Or they might see just how unaware Americans are of, well, just about everything international and most things about ourselves and our own history. Not that every World Cup tourist is a Tocqueville, but I would think an average, likely more affluent, overseas tourist, with their native political understanding and grasp of their own history, could see what bad shape this country's political intelligence is in. They could look around, then just shake their head, make whatever sound their culture relies on to express astonished disappointment, and say to themselves, "Now I get it." It makes Trump less an expression of MAGA hating the world and more a product of a collective political dementia.

Yes, World, we should have known better, but after your tourists spend a week or so in Texas, tell us that you do not have a much better appreciation for how we got here.

Obviously World Cup fans are here for football, drinking and maybe just a bit of sightseeing. No one is coming here for a savage journey to the heart of the American Dream. But this cross-section of international grassroots is traveling to parts of the United States such tourists often do not go to and interacting with Americans who never have seen a foreign tourist and could never find those visitors' countries on a map. This is one million or so foreigners seeing MAGA America unmediated and unaware it should even clean up its act because company is coming over.

Now you see the problem

Progressives need to lean into this opportunity—explain to the world what we are dealing with. Our country is a damned mess. There are well-intentioned and generally good Americans across the country who, because of a horrible mix of geography, culture and our 18th-century property-protecting Constitution, wound up creating a now-unaccountable and diminishing Trump. Yes, World, we should have known better, but after your tourists spend a week or so in Texas, tell us that you do not have a much better appreciation for how we got here–and all the work it will take to leave.

Truck Update #2

My Ford Ranger still stubbornly resists internal combustion. I have spark, fuel and air—so I am left with a problem of their coordination and trying to find an Engine Control Module for my 30-plus-year-old truck. There are many Ranger parts out there, but mine is old enough to be just on the wrong side of the change in how computers in automobiles work and any part in a junkyard likely has the same problem my ECU has. There is certainly a political lesson here about plugging in old parts for today's problems. Recycled parts can work, but there are limits. I may need something entirely new.