The United States of America has always been imperfect, more imperfect than many of us ever realized because of our upbringing within the country. We've always been fed our view of the world, instead of other's view of us. But, most of the time the U.S. has eventually done the right thing, and that made the country respected enough around the world to become the world leader. But all of that progress and reputation is under attack by politicians and a President who have foregotten what made this country successful. The old saying that a reputation is built over years (or 200+ years), but torn down way faster is very applicable to the current situation. What makes it even more gut-wrenching is that 40-47% of the country either doesn't understand this, or doesn't care.
It's embarrassing travelling internationally right now. It's sometimes embarassing being from Texas right now. But, I remain hopeful that intelligent, charismatic, un-indoctrinated leaders will gain back control of our government institutions and insert integrity, honesty, critical-thinking, level-headedness, and morality back into these institutions. I don't believe it is as simple as Republicans/Trump bad, Democrats good. We have problems in both parties. And there are good people in those parties, although I have to admit that right now finding any in the Republican party is very difficult. If there are any, they're cowering from the orange moron makes them currently invisible. Similarly, we have few Democratic leaders making an impact. But, eventually I'm hopeful new blood will emerge and salvage this mess, in concert with major initiatives to expose and lessen the effectiveness of disinformation, which is really the root cause of the problem right now.