Gift Link: Trump Has Destroyed What Made America Great (NYT)
Bracing and empowering perspective from an Obama foreign policy advisor
Hello faithful readers of Opposite of Nihilism. I am still learning a lot about running this newsletter, and one of the things I’m working on is not allowing it to tumble down my list of priorities when either A) other areas of my life get busy, like my real pay-the-bills job, or B) I feel too nihilistic about the country to feel like this is important. The past couple of weeks have been a mixture of both. While I take this week to reset (and continue collaborating with contributors who are waiting to hear from me), I thought I would share this op-Ed with you from former foreign Obama foreign policy aide Ben Rhodes, published today in the New York Times. “Trump Has Destroyed What Made America Great. It Only Took 100 Days.” (This is a gift link and does not requires a subscription to read in full.)
This column clarified for me a major goal of what I’m doing in this newsletter. Quoting from the final line: “If we recover our sense of agency, we can re-engage the world.” Opposite of Nihilism exists, in part, to celebrate our agency and the parts of this country we must fight to preserve and evolve, even at great cost. Below, I am sharing a longer excerpt from the column. It is worth reading in full, and any leftist readers who are skeptical of American power will find more nuance in the piece than what I am sharing here:
In the short term, treating international relations like a protection racket could yield some bilateral transactions. Yet something more fundamental is being lost: trust. An America that, for all its mistakes abroad, guaranteed the security of its allies. An America that, for all its nativism, took in refugees and educated countless world leaders through its universities and exchange programs. An America that, for all its hubris, responded to humanitarian crises and showcased an appealing cultural openness. An America that people around the world liked more than its government.
The destruction of that trust will hurt us more than the rest of the world…After 250 years of growing more diverse and more connected to the world, Mr. Trump and his cohort are imposing the staid insularity of self-imposed decline. The draining of democratic values from our national identity will leave America defined by its size, power and quixotic lust for profit: a place, not an idea…
Here is the good news: A nation’s relationship with the world is not defined solely by its government, particularly one as big and multifaceted as the United States.
…Our institutions also have a choice. Part of what has shocked the world about their capitulation to the Trump administration is the failure to grasp that the moral choice is the best path to self-preservation. Law firms can choose to care more about the law than whether a callous competitor will pick up some of their business. Universities can build credibility within an interconnected world instead of validating the lie that a few students chanting “Free Palestine” is more dangerous than a far-right takeover of academic freedom. The entertainment sector can tell compelling stories about a consequential era instead of algorithmically designed superhero junk. Billionaires can spend money on STEM education for girls instead of financing celebrity trips into a higher part of the atmosphere…
The wrong way to respond to our current emergency is to promise, as President Joe Biden did, that America will be “back.” That ignores the enormous mistakes elites made over the last three decades and the political context that allowed Mr. Trump to return to power with the mind-set of an arsonist. We’re not coming back, and that’s OK. Indeed, it’s an opportunity.
Our intention should be to return to the world as a different country.
Here’s that gift link again if you want to read the whole thing. Thank you for subscribing, back to regular programming next week!
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