A lot of Americans - and I mean a lot of Americans, and not just MAGA morons, either - seem to think that all of the controversy and stress and chaos caused by the two Trump presidencies will automatically go away pretty much as soon as his presidency is done.
Poof.
All gone.
This seems to me so outrageously clueless and naive, and so frankly entitled, that this kind of thinking could only come from 21st century Americans.
No, things are not going to go right back to normal as soon as Trump is out of office. If there was ever a chance of that - and that is a big "if" - it ended once Trump obtained office a second time. After all, you can maybe dismiss him being elected to be the elected face and the voice of the country once, because it could be an aberration.
But twice?
No, sorry. That means that quote a lot of people - far more than can be easily dismissed as a one-time fluke - actually agree with this monster on many issues. That his very loud and proud xenophobic, chauvinistic, Americentric talking points appeal to a lot of people. Even if we find out that he cheated to obtain office - which I suspect we will find out some day in the future - it still does not relegate the tens of millions of his Mindless MAGA Moron cult support to irrelevance. After all, despite all of the headlines screaming about how Trump currently has lower approval ratings than any American president in modern history, it still shows that tens of millions of Americans support him, even after all of the bullshit that we have seen now for well over a decade.
In other words, it can happen again. It happened once. Then it happened again. Tens of millions of Americans support it, to the point where their political movement effectively dominated American politics for over a decade.
That's not something that can easily be forgotten. Nor should it, even though many Americans opposed to Trump want to do exactly that.
And it's not because many Americans want to forget it that the rest of the world should forget it. After all, Trump is still in the White House even as I write this. He can still shape world events. And this man has threatened to terminate existing international agreements, to tear apart things like NATO. He had invaded some countries like Venezuela and Iran, and has threatened to invade other countries, including Gaza and even Greenland, which clearly traditionally was an American ally. Trump imposed economic warfare against pretty much the entire rest of the world, all at once.
So yeah, the world would do well to take notice. And not to forget the lessons which the Trump administration indirectly and unintentionally taught them. Canadian Prime Minister Carney outright said it: the reliance on the United States was too much. Now that the stability and reliability are no longer there, they ought to try and find other ways to function on their own, and not rely on the United States as much as they do. It makes all the sense in the world. What other choice does someone like Trump give them, anyway?
That is why this will not simply be forgotten and quickly forgiven. Things will not simply "return to normal" once Trump is gone, even if the next American president (assuming there is one) is much more to their liking, like Obama was.
Because deep down, they know that the next president might just be a temporary break from the next MAGA-style political movement. We Americans have proven to be unreliable partners. And Trump was just the most outrageous, in your face version of this disdain towards the rest of the world. Remember, Obama loved drone strikes and surveillance, even against traditional allies like Germany. George W. Bush aggressively pushed for an illegal and immoral war, and mocked the entire rest of the world, claiming that we Americans did not need a "permission slip" from the rest of the world to go to war with Iraq. Those were his words, not mine.
It's been building for some time now. But Trump has accelerated it and made the division so obvious that nobody can ignore it any longer. Whether you like it or not, that will have a lasting impact that will go on long after Trump is gone.
The impact of this pathetic era of American politics will last many decades to come. And we collectively will come to be regarded as the "ugly Americans."
At least until we get over ourselves and our collective nationalist conceit and finally decide to rejoin the world community. Until that happens, the rest of the world is right to distrust the United States.
America’s Allies Are No Longer Waiting for Trump to Leave They now figure isolationism and protectionism will be U.S. foreign policy for a long time to come. By Vivian Salama photo of President Trump Klaudia Radecka / NurPhoto / Getty September 22, 2026, 7 AM ET Share Discuss 343 Save
https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/09/allies-trump-canada-foreign-policy/688729/?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_content=edit-promo
America’s Allies Are No Longer Waiting for Trump to Leave - The Atlantic
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