Pride In America-- Shame And Embarrassment About The Soon-To-Be-Gone Political Leadership

I spent most of the years Nixon was in the White House living abroad. He was nearly as bad as Trump and I couldn't live in a country where he was president. So embarrassing. But eventually-- it was a morning after I woke up dreaming in Dutch instead of English-- I decided I wanted to live in my own country. I moved back to the U.S., the country I can now say I chose to live in, didn't just happen to be born in-- though I was that too. And even if I'm on a ferry on the Chao Phraya, Bangkok's river waterway, talking with some friends and a Danish girl comes up and asks us how we can let Trump be president... I'm still proud to be an America. Maybe a little embarrassed sometimes, but never to the point of seriously consider changing my address.

A new Gallup poll released over the weekend, though, shows that national pride here is America has fallen too a record low-- the lowest since Gallup started polling the question in 2001. They report that "15% of Americans say they are 'moderately proud,' 12% 'only a little proud' and 9% 'not at all proud.'"

Do you blame Trump? How could you not? This is just a small thing, but it's a good example. Reporting for Bloomberg News from Seoul yesterday, Jeong-Ho Lee, Nick Wadhams, and Jennifer Jacobs wrote that Trump and Pompeo forced U.S. Ambassador to South Korea, Harry Harris, to remove two gigantic banners on the front of the embassy honoring the kind of U.S. diversity that has been so admired around the world-- and so detested and feared by the Trumpist Regime. One honored the LGBTQ+ community in celebration of Pride Month and the other honored Black Lives Matter. This is the "before" picture:

This makes me feel proud of my country. Trumpists flip out though

Señor Trumpanzee hasn't responded to this tweet from the Embassy on his Twitter account yet... but plenty of Trumpist shills have: