You can feel it in people’s voices, in their eyes. An American, oh. There’s an awkwardness, embarrassment in their hesitation, as happens after the loss of a spouse or a publicized defeat. You used to be so much bigger in folks’ estimation. Not that they blame you for the troubles – you, personally, are still the same guy – but your stature has shrunk. You’re less of a winner now, less trusted, a risk.

In 2016, America made a bad hire for President. A shame, but hey, everybody makes mistakes. In 2024, we repeated that mistake. The world had no doubt. Informed, alert Americans had no doubt. But we couldn’t stop ourselves. To repeat a mistake differs from being accident-prone; it defines one’s character. The once proud, even haughty Americans were now dangerous screw-ups. And that characterization does not exclude me. I may not have voted wrong, but I failed to dissuade fellow Americans from voting wrong. That failure can’t be scrubbed from my transcript. That will always be part of who I am.

I am ashamed. I don’t want to travel to other countries and apologize. The only way to expunge my shame is to rid ourselves of its cause, first things first, but the absence of him and his won’t restore our old panache. We will continue to be untrustworthy, an unreliable partner, a risk to mankind. Having screwed up twice, why not again?

The America I believed in would never have sent troops against its own citizens, gloated in lying, defaced our sacred (and beautiful) people’s house with a pretentious ballroom; never have gloated in lying, bullying, or going to war unless we had to; never abducted another nation’s leader, much as we loathed him; never thumbed its nose at science, risking the inhabitability of our planet; never celebrated denying medicine and food to kids and the poor; never sold pardons or permit the megarich to plunder our nation’s treasury; never… But you get the picture. We’ve been vile on so many fronts. And now it seems we’ve plunged the nation – and increasingly the world – into a calamitous war – for what? I believed in an America that licked Hitler, underwrote the Marshall Plan, helped create the UN and enforce its ideals, expanded and defended the plebiscite, waged war on poverty, invented modernity... And sure, we did plenty wrong – we were far from perfect – but we were basically, dependably good. Even politicians I excoriated had our nation’s and the world’s best interest in mind, most of them anyway.

No longer. I am a citizen of an autocracy, kleptocracy, gun-toting, lying, cheating, racist thug gang – mea culpa, mea maxima culpa – and no absolution’s on offer, at any price. Having done the crime we must do our time, and that time will be generations, at a minimum. How long did it take the Germans to put their mistake behind them?

The criminal faces a choice: embrace criminality as their destiny or do their damnedest to repent and be reborn. Neither path’s a cakewalk.

I opt for repentance. Not because I enjoy repenting but because turpitude offers few charms. I long to eke out an epitaph, “At least he tried to do what was right.” I do not expect to recover the old mojo or cocky gait, but I hope to “hold my head up.” I may never again be proud to be an American, but I can still take pride that some Americans saw the light and turned our ship of state away from the dark.

The Nameless One stole from us much. Most grievous, for me, has been my self-esteem.