What do we call it when a stronger person decides to rob a weaker person because he can? It is just gangsterism. We are the most dangerous gangsters in the world today. Not in the sense of being charming rogues or alluring antiheroes. We are the bad guys. Americans, as a people, are extremely allergic to the belief that our nation is a malign force in the world. It goes against our national mythology, it goes against our national education, it goes against the natural human impulse to imagine ourselves as good people. Additionally, under our current regime, it goes against a deliberate program of quasi-religious nationalist propaganda now being rolled out as fast as possible through every channel of the government’s power. Even the most credible news outlets in America can rarely bring themselves to portray us in the cold, accurate light that our conduct deserves. And the number of credible news outlets is shrinking as they are systematically being taken over by regime allies in order to broaden the larger propaganda campaign we are all living through.

The most generous interpretation of the U.S. as a global actor in 2026 is that we are in the hands of a bunch of amoral, dangerous gangsters, and that the stability of the world depends on the political opponents of Trumpism winning back control of the US government before too much damage can be done. The less generous interpretation is that the many systematic political and economic flaws built into our nation—investor capitalism, gerrymandering, the Electoral College, the antidemocratic nature of the U.S. Senate, the Supreme Court—are now, at long last, bringing about the final end of the age of American global dominance. That we are, in other words, on a ship whose thin hull has finally rusted through in too many places, that is going down no matter how fast the passengers desperately try to bail it out. Which of these interpretations you believe is mostly a matter of attitude. What is not debatable is that the United States government under Donald Trump is the most dangerous force on earth, and a serious potential threat to every other nation, and the leading cause of geopolitical instability. That usually causes a backlash.