Americans once worried about how they were perceived abroad.
The phrase “the Ugly American” was a warning about arrogance on foreign soil—a reminder that power without humility could do real damage.
Today, that warning has come home.
A recent poll shows that many Americans no longer see their political opponents as merely wrong, but as morally bad. Not mistaken. Not misguided. Bad.
That shift may be the most consequential development in American political life—not because it reflects disagreement, but because it redefines it. When citizens begin to view one another as morally illegitimate, politics ceases to be a contest of ideas and becomes a struggle over virtue itself.
This essay examines how that change has taken root during Trump’s second presidency—an era in which politics has increasingly been conducted as performance rather than governance—and what it means for a republic that depends on the assumption of shared citizenship.
The Ugly American was once a stereotype.
Now it may be something closer to a diagnosis.
— Dunneagin
Civics Unhinged
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