I get it, and their opinions are completely valid. That's completely correct, and I'd be horrified if other countries didn't think less of us after Trump. But that's the macro, and I'm talking about the micro.
Let's imagine that I go on and on about Boris Johnson to a Brit. After a time, they ask me if I can stop, because what is a headline for me is a hellscape for them. Do I say "you know, I read the news, and I know what I'm talking about here, like it or not, your country is not an isolated entity?" No. Their lived experience is greater than my news-worthiness or lofty ideals of globalism. They may have been directly affected by his policies, and I need to respect that. That's all I'm saying here.
Tell that to the Afghan girls who are forbidden to attend school due to their gender; all the Afghan women who can't leave their homes without a male escort from immediate family (if none, they're forced to marry and often subjected to 'nikkah' i.e. temporary marriages for sex to pleasure a bunch of fanatics); and the women's rights advocates who've been beaten and tortured after the Taliban took over last August. All because
both Trump and Biden wanted a quick US exit from Afghanistan to pander to (domestic) voters, and lost patience in the hard, long and expensive work of rebuilding Afghanistan. Wouldn't you say their lives haven't been directly affected by US policies in a manner where "hellscape" provides the perfect label?
Yes
@tinkertailor, I totally get your point and have addressed it already in my response to
@Woolery in the above. And yes, there are
many 'outsiders' (i.e. not all) who glibly and judgmentally offer caricaturized views on domestic issues on which
many 'insiders' (i.e. not all) have a much better grasp. Such noisome commentators are everywhere, they're 'inside' and 'outside', and feel entitled to offer glib and over-confident views on virtually
anything based on little or no knowledge. And yes, we do see some of that even here on MB, irrespective of political leanings or nationality.
But let's not sweep the powerfully and often devastatingly global impact of US policy-makers (and those of any powerful country) that 'you guys' elect without our leave (pun intended), for the
rest of our nuisance under the ideological carpet of 'globalism'. Those Afghan girls aren't globalists. They're brave survivors and strugglers.
That we're an interdependent world that's shrunk into a neighbourhood isn't just a political cliché by the sprout-nibbling hippie but a painfully lived fact for billions of people across this one planet of ours. And the failure to see that fact by dividing the 21st century world into 'us insiders' and 'them outsiders' contributes to its continuing descent into an ever-worsening vortex of problems.