No longer 'the leader of the free world'

Trump just frittered away the title.

An astonishing moment in the White House today:

So I struggle with a paradox:

• I am the son of a man who declared conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War. I grew up among Mennonites who held a theological embrace of pacifism, and a long history of fleeing from one country to the next — Germany, Russia, ultimately to the United States — in order to stay true that ideal. It’s an ideal I have (imperfectly) embraced. I made my own move from straight reporting to opinion journalism in the years after the Iraq invasion, when America’s military adventurism and embrace of torture made it impossible for me to do the work of “objective” journalism without feeling like I was silencing my conscience. I have done my level best not to have any illusions about my country’s power and how it is used, how the comforts of my own life have — to an unknown extent — rested on that power and the lives it has damaged, mostly out of my view.

• But I also reached adulthood at the denouement of the Cold War. I thrilled when the Berlin Wall fell. Freedom had won. I had witnessed history. When Jesus Jones sang “Right Here, Right Now,” man, I felt that:

So: I have attempted never to rest in the easy idea that Americans are the “good guys.” But I also recognized that most Americans believed us to be the good guys, that most presidents framed even their dumber actions on that basis, and that much of the world — people who came here from other nations, fleeing harder lives — as well as folks who bought all those blue jeans and Velvet Underground records on the black market in Eastern Europe during the 1980s — saw as such. Or at least, the idea of us was an inspiration to a few good folks.

I think that ended today in the Oval Office.

President Trump said afterwards that he browbeat Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy because Trump want’s PEACE instead of war in Ukraine. That’s not really credible, is it?

Understand a few things here:

• I think it’s possible for the United States to decide that it does not possess the capacity to defend Ukraine at the levels it has over the last three years without being the “bad guys.”

• I think it’s good that President Biden supported Ukraine while also trying very hard to ensure that America didn’t end up in a direct, possibly nuclear conflict with Russia.

• And I think it’s possible to push for Ukraine-Russia diplomacy with a bit more vigor than has been evident over the last few years.

• But I think that Trump’s actions — demanding mineral rights from Ukraine, blaming Zelenskyy for the invasion, calling the Ukrainian leader a “dictator” — does little to accomplish peace. Or, if it does, accomplishes that peace on the basis of lies and blackmail.

• Which puts America on the side of Putin.

For my entire life, the president of the United States has been known as “the leader of the free world.” I was always a bit skeptical, but I wanted it to be true.

After today, I doubt it will ever be true again.