Where America finds itself
“Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily,” said the 17th-century French aphorist François de La Rochefoucauld. He might have added, had it existed at the time, the United States of America. No country, with the possible exception of China, has played as large a role as a symbol rather than a reality in modern thought, or had as many lurid fantasies projected onto it, as the US. When the President is one Donald J. Trump and American politics is a global spectator sport, realism about the US is in even shorter supply than usual. Nor does there seem to be much demand.
Source: lowyinstitute.org