Yeah, I think most people feel that it’s not so much of a deal for the rest of the world (because if the US had been led by an authoritarian racist thin skinned narcissist hell bent on revenge with poor impulse control for the last 15 years, what would be different?) but rather that Americans will suffer. More specifically this is horrible for people of colour, muslims, immigrants, queer people, and women.
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Rest-of-world impact:
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Total destruction of what was likely the last chance to meaningfully limit the impact of climate change. OTOH, that was already down at a near-zero probability anyway.
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Massive geopolitical destabilisation in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. The status quo was already pretty bad, but randomly tossing the dice is extremely likely to make things worse. Best case: Russia and China are now free to fuck with their neighbours to their hearts’ delight. Expect China to get dangerously aggressive in the South China Sea disputes, and Russia to suddenly discover populations of “oppressed” ethnic Russians in all of their neighbouring countries. Worst case: a shooting war between major industrialised powers.
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Likely economic chaos. Trump is as incompetent as he is corrupt; the odds are very very high of another crash in the next few years.
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Global political atmosphere. Shitty things that happen in American politics have a tendency of filtering out to the rest of the world; our right-wing scum watch their right-wing scum, and they take lessons from each other. I would be entirely unsurprised to see a resurgence of anti-immigrant xenophobic bastardry here (and the base level was pretty high already).
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1 Nothing doing from the US anyway
2 We’ve just suffered through 20+ years of massive geopolitical destabilisation in Eastern Europe, Middle East led by the US with EU compliance. It hasn’t been pretty.
3 Last president was certainly competent, he fucked over everyone outside the US though.
4 Trump is a symptom of that, not the cause. It’s international anyway. See point two. The sociopathic hatred of muslims that the US has stoked has had horrific consequences for the entire world. The incoming US regime just looks like a logical continuation from here. I can imagine a world where Russia (which has been hating muslims for longer) will find common cause with the US…
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Twinned with Cumbria?
Or Lesotho?
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Same in French: “désolée” has an e at the end thus it is feminine.
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One language (not on the shirt) that might qualify is Japanese.
Japanese features a surprisingly large number of words that the dictionary translates as “I”. They carry different connotations about the gender, social status, and self-image of the speaker.
So far I can’t say I’ve gotten the hang of it, despite studying the language and watching too much subtitled Japanese TV. Most of the rules seem to be more like recommendations.
But using “boku” to refer to oneself is more common in boys than it is in old men.
That said, in Japanese, you can get away without saying “I” at all most of the time (“Sorry that the president is an idiot. Didn’t vote for him.”).
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And the one for the Obama years reads, “He may not sound like an idiot, which is why I voted for him, so sorry-not-sorry that his administration blew up your babies and your hospitals and overthrew your governments.”
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It made more than $10,000 in profit, which was donated to Doctors Without Borders.
Thank you Sir or Madam.
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I think there is more than that. The “I’m sorry…” thing is not, I think, the correct message to convey. It should start “It is not my fault…” I don’t need to excuse Americans because different Americans elected an idiot. I just need to know that the person in question wasn’t responsible.
But not a very popular one…
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Politics and international grammar aside, I’m always dismayed to see such amateurish typography given a highly visible platform. But kudos for the contribution.
This was my experience all last week in Europe. Everyone just assumed I wasn’t a Trump supporter.
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There are some errors in the Chinese. The person behind the T-shirt might want to double check the translation, spacing and punctuation.
Save for what this will mean for the environment and worries about market instability, yes, we are sympathetic.
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For the Simplified Chinese, presuming it’s for the benefit of citizens of the People’s Republic of China…you oughta add the phrase…“But at least we get to vote for our President.” Ah cha cha!
The couple of times I was out of the US during that period, or was speaking to foreign nationals within the US, I pretty much led off with “Yes, our president is a jerk and we don’t approve of him or his policies…” No one particularly gave me flak.
Unfortunately, unlike Bush, Trump is an idiot savant. He’s the freaking Rain Man of self-aggrandizement.
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What made the whole GWB disaster worse was that he got re-elected. No excuse for that.
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Pretty much my experience meeting Americans abroad. I bet the intersection of Trump supporters and passport holders is pretty low.
I can think of two I’ve known who seemed to have ideals that might be compatible with voting for Trump. One had some kind of small business going in China, the other is a missionary from a Baltimore megachurch. Besides that even the sassiest, southernest people I’ve met wouldn’t have a bar of Trump’s bullshit.
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