Or if you prefer some UK perspectives:
Americans have had the privilege always to be naval gazers. We are a large country with a huge economy so if an American so chooses one can for the most part really ignore the rest of the world (this is a condition that impacts Chinese btw as well). Internationals pay at times more attention to what we are doing than many of us pay to ourselves. This is the ultimate flattery. A flattery that is draining away.
Those of us fortunate and curious enough to have traveled and done business internationally feel the angst our friends and colleagues internationally feel as our country devolves under the current national leadership. Folks who have not had these international opportunities do not understand the reservoirs of goodwill the U.S. has built over the decades. For all of our faults, America has been a beacon. A beacon culturally, a beacon politically and despite our missteps a source of stability in maintaining order throughout the world.
An administration like Trump's abuses these relationships, squanders these reservoirs of strength and goodwill and opens the door not only to our adversaries but to those internationally for whom authoritarianism is appealing. The good news these reservoirs and the need internationally for a country like the U.S. to be strong and helpful remains huge. But the reservoirs are not limitless. We allow these reservoirs to dry up at own peril.
The challenge, of course, is our own president appears to want his fellow citizens to believe our country is on fire so that he can play the strong man and "do what it takes" to bring back his version of "law and order". He is wrong, the country is neither on fire, nor in need of his authoritarian cosplay.
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