An Open Letter of Apology to the People of the World

Dear Fellow Citizens of the World,

      I write to apologize for the accession of Donald J. Trump to the Presidency of the United States. I would not presume to apologize for all Americans, though I do believe that all Americans, to one degree or another, owe you an apology. But I am only a single private citizen, thus I extend my personal regrets for the responsibility I bear in this ongoing tragedy.
      Donald J. Trump is in all ways- intellectually, temperamentally, cognitively, and morally- unfit to serve in the office he holds. This is not only proven by his many transgressions against proper order, good taste, basic decency, and the greater good (for example: his travel ban, family separation policy, withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord and the disarmament treaty with Iran, to name only a very few), but was clearly evident from the very beginning of his campaign. We the American people knowingly elected a pathologically narcissistic, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic ignoramus to the highest office in our Republic. It is certainly among the greatest miscarriages of civic responsibility in the annals of democracy. 
      My personal culpability is admittedly limited- I did not vote for Donald Trump. But if I ask myself honestly whether or not I did everything I could to prevent his election, the answer must be "no". Given the enormity of the consequences involved, anyone who did not exhaust muscle and marrow in the effort to prevent the Trump presidency must acknowledge some failure of civic duty.
      To be clear, I do not write out of guilt. Laboring you with such petty concerns would add insult to injury. I extend this apology because I understand something that many of my compatriots seemingly do not: in committing this grievous error we have squandered your trust. In the wake of WWII, the United States helped build a set of institutions that, with admittedly varied success, fostered order, stability, and peace on a global scale. Through negligence or malice, Donald Trump is now dismantling those institutions and undermining that international order.
       Many Americans believe that this is simply a temporary phase. They fail to realize, however, that participation in the global system that the US helped build (which was not limited to allies of the US, but extended to neutral nations and even enemies) was predicated, in part, on a faith in the commitment of the US to respect certain norms of diplomacy and international politics. Now that we, the voters of the US, have elevated a man who told us that he would not respect those norms, the international faith that once animated broad participation in the post-WWII global order may be irrecoverable. How can you trust us, moving forward, never to elect a reprobate like Donald Trump again?
        This is a question of more than academic interest. Even someone as feckless as Donald Trump takes the durability of the post-WWII order for granted. It is why he is comfortable fawning over Vladimir Putin or threatening to rain "fire and fury" on Kim Jong-un. Where is the danger in such rhetoric? We live in a world in which great-power conflicts no longer happen, right?
       Except that as Trump and his supporters (and many other Americans) fail to grasp, since the US has now squandered the trust upon which the post-WWII order was, in part, based, the order itself cannot be taken for granted. Unless the US can reclaim some part of the world's trust, we are in danger of slipping back into a world prone to grand geostrategic conflicts. This is a horrifying prospect, because of course, in a nuclear-armed world, the next geostrategic conflict will be the closing act of human history.
        So it is not as a salve to our consciences that Americans should apologize, but to broadcast our recognition of the scope of our error and the depth of what is at stake. Unless the US can regain the trust of the world, the international order that has helped maintain the peace may be irrecoverable, and if that proves to be true, we all may suffer collectively. So once again I say, I am sorry. I understand how disastrous the election of Trump was for everyone on earth, and I am determined to do everything in my power to see that it never happens again. I hope that most of my fellow Americans will join me in that resolve.


                                      Sincerely,


                                       Andrew Meyer