The world didn't just laugh at Trump yesterday; they laughed at us---

[Atticus]

---the people who are ALLOWING him to steer the world's greatest democracy into the sewer.

Get used to it. Unless-----

[Hortensis]

1. The rise of dangerous populist movements here

and their threat to our democracy is hardly our own problem. Many nations are endangered, and seeing it happen here so suddenly is a big part of why the people who laughed are actually most of them very worried. The world's greatest democracy is supposed to be able to help stabilize their governments, not empower their own destroyers by destabilizing.

[Atticus]

2. I agree much of the laughter was of the "nervous" variety: "If THEY can be subjugated---". nt

[Hortensis]

3. We're not subjugated. We are undergoing an attempted

takeover by factions hostile to the western liberal democracy that our founders established and that has been aspired to and copied by nations around the planet ever since.

COUNTDOWN TO MIDTERMS: 40 days.

[Atticus]

4. Agree we're not subjugated, but that may not be the view of other nations, especially those

with "strong man" leaders who flatter Trump.

Appreciate your remarks.

[Hortensis]

8. :) I think many other nations, especially those with strong-man

leaders, probably have a pretty good idea of the difference. Also the pattern of an endangered democracy into which we now fit.

Look at Turkey, which not long ago was a successful democracy and advanced nation. People there live in real fear now that it has become an authoritarian state. A quarter of the judiciary has been dismissed or imprisoned. It's genuinely dangerous to be a journalist or academic, one of those who hasn't already been imprisoned. Many citizens have been imprisoned and otherwise disappeared.

I once had friends there, before internet days, and often wonder how they're doing.

[NRaleighLiberal]

5. Yes

[dalton99a]

6. .

[helpisontheway]

7. They are laughing at Trump and his deplorable..nt