Editorial: Trump Has Made America a Laughingstock | Ivan Krastev/The New York Times
Donald Trump promised to make the world respect and fear America. In the end, he accomplished neither. He has made a laughingstock of America and its democracy. Nobody could blame Russian, Chinese or Iranian leaders for thoroughly enjoying what they saw on Jan. 6 as a mob incited by the president ransacked the Capitol. The scenes looked like something out of a “color revolution,” the street protests in Ukraine and Georgia that toppled governments and sent shivers of fear down many authoritarians’ spines: irate citizens, propelled by social media, protesting what they viewed as fraudulent elections and calling for democracy, draped in the American flag. The only difference was that this time it was not an opposition candidate but a sitting American president protesting a “rigged election,” and the storming took place in the United States. There is already an abundance of commentary on the impact of Mr. Trump’s mutiny on American democracy. We can only hope that the attack on Congress was the final battle of the last Civil War, not the beginning of a new one. The 19th-century German chancellor Otto von Bismarck is often said to have asserted that “God has a special providence for fools, drunkards and the United States of America.” If he was right, we have reason to believe that America will eventually transcend its current crisis. But what happens in the meantime?
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