The examples of worldwide heartbreak, injustice and abuse are endless, but let’s just leave it at this:  We are incredibly fortunate to live in the United States of America.  Above all, let’s be profoundly grateful to live in this exceptional, one-of-a-kind place.

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We are the country that welcomes the poor, the tired and the huddled masses.  We are the country that celebrates life, liberty and justice for all.  We are the country that perfected the right to peaceful assembly, freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion.

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Lately, there have been evil forces that have tried to divert us from these ideals, but we will not allow them to win this battle. Our greatest responsibility as Americans is to preserve and protect the very reasons that America is so great, and to make sure America’s light shines far beyond our shores once again.

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Notice we said we should let our light shine, not arrogantly try to dominate the entire world by acting superior and bossing everyone around.  It’s unnecessary for America to be a bully.  It’s unnecessary for America to be threatening and hostile.  It’s unnecessary for America to be arrogant or petty. America does not need to overtly flaunt our strength because we are actually strong.

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Instead, we like the idea of the United States being partners with other countries.  This does not mean we should give up our title of being a global leader (actually, still the global leader if we don’t screw it up), but mutually beneficial international partnerships will only strengthen our position.

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Just look at what a collaborative, compassionate, and supportive America has achieved around the globe. We are the country that initiated the Lend-Lease policy, which helped defeat Germany, Japan and Italy in World War II by providing weapons, food, oil, and other supplies to the United Kingdom, China, the Soviet Union and France.

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We are the country that enacted the Marshall Plan, which enabled Europe to rebuild after years of devastating war. With our support, South Korea evolved from an extremely poor, vulnerable autocracy to a vibrant, healthy democracy — as did Japan. China was able to integrate into the global economy, which helped reduce poverty for billions.

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Around the globe, our security and support have provided countries the opportunity to foster democratic governments and strong economies. We were instrumental in creating international organizations like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. 

We crushed the Cold War and stopped communism in its tracks.  We spent billions to fight HIV in developing countries, which provided almost 10 million people antiviral drugs and prevented hundreds of thousands of babies from being infected with HIV at birth. 

 

High five, America!!

 

Compare these honorable, spectacular successes to Donald Trump’s isolationist, transactional, and conditional approach to foreign policy.  Instead of strengthening and solidifying our position on the world stage, the Trump administration was hell-bent on just tearing everything down without replacing it with anything more substantial than disrespectful Tweets and insults.

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It’s not just the policies he initiated or failed to initiate, it’s also the mixed signals, the reversals, the inconsistencies and contradictions, the trashing of our intelligence agencies, the dismantling of key international agreements, the breakdown of our relationships with European partners, and the outright lies that caused so much harm.  It’s the complete absence of risk versus reward analysis, serious deliberation with experts, or even the most rudimentary inquiry into potential consequences.

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It cannot be denied that the four years of the Trump administration — and now, thanks to the absolute tragedy that unfolded in Afghanistan and a lack of a realistic strategy in either Israel or Ukraine, the Biden administration — shook the world’s fundamental assumptions about American exceptionalism and called into question the special role we have played in foreign affairs for decades.

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From the day he took office, Donald Trump wasted no time trying to abdicate our unique position. He withdrew the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Open Skies Treaty, the Paris Climate Accord, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (a.k.a. the Iranian nuclear deal), plus several organizations within the United Nations system including the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, and the UN Relief and Works Agency.

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He constantly undermined — and threatened to withdraw from — the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); started trade wars with half the globe; authorized a Muslim travel ban; and engaged in full-fledged love fests with authoritarian leaders like Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan…to the point that he sold out our intelligence agencies in front of the entire world by siding with Putin in Helsinki and shared highly classified information with the Russian foreign minister and Russian ambassador in the Oval Office.

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All of this would be bad enough if Donald Trump’s authoritarian, tough guy approach worked, but it didn’t.  His mode of operation only served to alienate our allies and empower and embolden our potential adversaries, handing authoritarians around the world — whether Chinese, Turkish, Saudi, Russian, Syrian or North Korean — almost all of America’s leverage without getting anything of consequence in return.

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China called his bluff on trade and Kim Jong-un is essentially shooting us the bird as North Korea fires short-range ballistic missiles and rockets, conducts ground tests at its nuclear test sites, and increases production of long-range missiles and the fissile material used in nuclear weapons.

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Iran has not only resumed its nuclear program, it's scarier than ever.  Soon after the U.S. withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran increased the number of its centrifuges enriching uranium and its stockpile of low-enriched uranium and, as a result, has gotten much closer to obtaining fissile uranium, another ingredient needed for nuclear weapons.

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The “peace” deal the Trump administration signed with the Taliban may be the worst agreement in the history of agreements.  Basically, the United States capitulated to every single one of the Taliban’s unimageable, outrageous demands…to the point where, in our final days in Afghanistan, the Taliban were giving us — THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA — orders, like we were their bitch.

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Venezuela, Turkey, Syria and Russia have gotten in the habit of pretty much ignoring anything we have to say.  Meanwhile, China was investing in new strategies and technologies to exploit our vulnerabilities, and Xi Jinping was carefully cultivating military and diplomatic alliances around the world — all while actively undermining the United States at every turn.

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China also made it a priority to boost its geopolitical standing through increased outreach as well as providing vulnerable countries with things like medical supplies and vaccines. “Gracias China!!!,” Mexico’s foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard posted to Twitter after China — now the second-largest trading partner in Latin America — sent a planeload of masks, testing kits, and ventilators during the Covid-19 crisis.