This is automated translation of Tomasz Lis article which appeared in NaTemat online journal:
https://natemat.pl/blogi/tomaszlis/589934,felieton-tomasza-lisa-pozegnanie-z-ameryka
transformation is nothing short of shocking. The former leader of the free world is now evidently becoming its adversary. For decades, America inspired admiration and hope. Today, it evokes outrage or pity. A great power that elicits pity—this does not bode well.
The Roman Empire was attacked by barbarians. The American Empire has been assaulted by internal barbarians. The chief barbarian turned out to be the Caesar.
An America that not only tolerates but even rewards an approach to international relations exemplified by Vladimir Putin is becoming a parody of itself and a negation of everything it stood for over two centuries. Despite its flaws, shortcomings, and mistakes, America appeared to millions around the world as a beacon of hope.
America was the world’s first empire of good—willing to confront and pay the price of confronting successive incarnations of the empire of evil, from Hitler’s Germany to Stalin’s and Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, to bin Laden’s network of Islamic terrorism.
Over sixty years ago, a young American president, taking his oath, addressed the world: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, support any friend, and oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
Three years later, in Soviet-threatened West Berlin, he reassured its citizens, declaring, "Ich bin ein Berliner." A quarter of a century later, one of his successors stood by the Berlin Wall and called upon the Soviet leader to tear it down. America spoke in the voice of freedom, dignity, and human rights.
In 1989, the leader of Poland’s victorious Solidarity movement, Lech Wałęsa, spoke with deep emotion before a joint session of the U.S. Congress, highlighting America’s generosity: "This Congress," he emphasized, "appears to many oppressed and disenfranchised people around the world as a light of freedom and a bastion of human rights."
Today, that generosity is being rapidly replaced by pettiness, wickedness, and vileness. Instead of a free America, there is lawlessness. To paraphrase Churchill: Never before have so few, in such a short time, destroyed so much of the legacy of so many. The Statue of Liberty shrinks and collapses in shame.
An America that scorns its most loyal allies while openly rewarding its greatest adversary—a brutal aggressor and war criminal—is systematically erasing what has been the essence of its spirit and identity for two centuries. An America that favors and appeases tyranny is destroying itself.
Before our very eyes, Donald Trump is obliterating the principle of national self-determination, which, since the signing of the Atlantic Charter by Roosevelt and Churchill, has been the foundation of the Western political community. Along the way, he is dismantling America's soft power and the extraordinary legacy of talent and hard work contributed by remarkable individuals—from Michael Jordan to Steven Spielberg, from Einstein to Chaplin, from Martin Luther King to Whitney Houston, from Mark Twain to Stephen King, from Meryl Streep to Tom Hanks, from Walt Disney to Ralph Lauren.
All of this is being sacrificed to appease the man despised by the free world—Putin. Roosevelt sought to defeat Hitler, not to gratify him. American presidents, from Truman onward, aimed to overcome the Soviets, not to appease them. America’s entire soft power is being swiftly buried. Instead of America the Beautiful, we now have America the Terrible.
It is not only America that needs the world’s sympathy. The world, for its own good, needs an America that is liked and respected. Today, at breakneck speed, it is turning into an amoral outcast—both ethically and in terms of global perception—a toxic and radioactive state. Instead of leading the free world, it is becoming a pariah. This could be the greatest public relations catastrophe in world history.
Bin Laden and the Iranian ayatollahs could never have dreamed of such an outcome. Instead of MAGA, we are witnessing MASAcre. A world in which America becomes a laughingstock is a dangerous world. An America that disregards values loses its own value. America’s strength and prestige have never been just military power, but rather the power of its ideas and spirit. This was its historical uniqueness. Strength without virtue inevitably becomes a tool of evil.
Power without values is a colossus that, in the end, must collapse—a tragedy not only for America but for the world. The fall and disgrace of America is good news only for its enemies. For its allies and friends, like the Polish people, it is disheartening. It is deeply unsettling to realize that a nation once destined to protect the world may now become its greatest threat. And all of this within just a few weeks.
The worst is likely yet to come.
Original text in Polish: Felieton Tomasza Lisa. Pożegnanie z Ameryką | naTemat.pl
