The sooner we forget about Trump's hideous mugshot the better

What a pathetic, miserable old man.

The booking itself and what led to it? There was no humor in that.

Despite what I am reading and hearing in some unlikely places, this was in fact, a very sad day for America. I am still one of those people who cares how my country looks to folks staring inquisitively at us from the outside. I reckon that’s in large part because I spent many years as an outsider looking in while living in Europe and Asia.

It might come as a surprise that many people overseas have a lot higher opinion of America, and expect a helluva lot more of us, than we do of ourselves. These numbers are admittedly dropping, but no other country in the world is discussed near as often as the United States of America.

Whether we like it or not, folks across the oceans care deeply about what’s going on in our messy country. What they are seeing right now is a democracy that brave American patriots fought and died to protect hanging by a thread. They are watching lies inch towards truth, racism very publicly having its day, and women and minorities forced to scrape back decades-old, hard-won rights that are being stolen from them by our corrupt, right-wing courts.

They are watching Trump’s Republican Party not only defend absolute revulsion, but celebrate it.

If you are an American living overseas, people expect you to account for what’s happening in the most powerful country in the world. They see it as a responsibility to explain ourselves and our actions given our decision to deploy our troops in their countries and claim the moral high ground in the significant wake of helping beat back evil in a pair of brutal World Wars.

I remember fielding questions from an inquisitive German while sharing a bench at a biergarten in Darmstadt one balmy summer evening in 2004. The illegal war was raging out of control in Iraq, and he wanted me to do my level best to explain just what in the hell Bush and Cheney could have been thinking when they hatched that colossal mess.

I laid out my best guess, which had everything to do with oil and power, and he just shook his head in disbelief before asking, “Don’t Americans care about what WE think before doing these kinds of terrible things?”

I really wanted to just get back to my bier and enjoy the glorious European evening, but he deserved an answer, so I tried this: “Look, my friend, it’s not that Americans don’t care about you, or even like or dislike you, it’s just that Americans never even think about you.”

I’m not sure we said another word to each other after that, but I made sure I bought the next round.

I’d say Trump and his ghastly, weak Republican servants have done more to destroy our standing and reputation around the world than anybody in my lifetime, but the truth is we have been hemorrhaging goodwill and trust ever since the lout, W. Bush, opened a gaping wound with that damn war in Iraq.

Which leads me to another conversation I had in my office in Kaiserslautern, Germany, the day after the election of Barack Obama in 2008.

A reporter with Le Monde, France’s most venerable newspaper, called looking for American reaction to the election. I reminded her that as a newspaper-person myself I had to be careful about what I said.

She was exercising no such editorial judgment, and was clearly pleased W. was finally out, and Obama was finally in.

She said this: “Before we get started I hope you don’t mind when I tell you that nobody understands America.”

I told her I understood that completely, actually, and shared that sentiment myself. I asked her to finish her thought.

“America can do the stupidest things always … like re-electing George Bush,” she said. “And then you turn around and do the absolutely greatest things ever, like electing Barack Obama! We never know what to think, or what to expect!”

I told her I got that, too.

On Friday, our brothers and sisters all across the globe woke to Trump’s hideous picture, and millions are feeling nothing but pity for us. How is it the most powerful country in the world can’t seem to rid itself of this morally busted, wannabe tough guy, who celebrates only himself and writes love letters to dictators?

How is it that three years after running him out of office, he is still a thing?

How is it more of us can’t seem to remember that we actually did one of “the absolutely greatest things ever” on November 8, 2020, when we elected Joseph R. Biden to be our 46th President and protect our democracy?

How is it we can’t at least give ourselves credit for that?

I say it’s long past time we started spending more time on him … and less time on inmate No. P01135809.

Four more years.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough)