This reminds me of a 1995 Norwegian song, freely translated by me and chatgtp:

    We dreamed of America
    where the soft wind lives.
    We dreamed of America
    where honey flowers grow,
    where the sky is vast and blue
    with stars and stripes upon it too.
    We dreamed of America,
    but not anymore,
    no, not anymore.

    I don't know when people first began dreaming of America.
    Long before Columbus, people dreamed of America, I think.
    A place of everlasting flowers where everyone was free and happy, and
    no one had to take off their hat for anyone unless they wanted to themselves.
    A smiling paradise where love lasts forever,
    and old age is beautiful, a place without any smell.

    In 1945—before that too, but certainly in 1945—I knew what I was going to be
    when I grew up.
    I was going to be an *American*.

    That spring, the first films from the Pacific War arrived,
    where the Americans stood with bent knees on jungle paths and shot Japanese soldiers with U.S. carbines.
    The Japanese were ugly, with protruding teeth and protruding ribs,
    while the Americans were brave, handsome, clean-cut, and immortal.
    And even if they did die, they died with a courageous smile and said:

    "Give this letter to my mother; she will understand."

    While the Japanese died like grubs and worms,
    and we felt no pity for them.

    Besides being ugly, they were portrayed as horribly stupid—so stupid that they spoke broken English even when talking to each other.

    I know that we dreamed of America well into the 1960s.
    A scentless land beyond the sea,
    where everyone had cars and white teeth.

    I don't know exactly when it stopped.

    But one day in the 1960s, we not only stopped loving America as a god;
    we began hating America as a fallen god.

    And nothing falls so heavily, so hard, and so deep
    as a fallen god
    who turns out not to be a god at all,
    but merely America.

    Then America was blamed not only for the Vietnam War and environmental disasters,
    but also, for example, for car culture.
    And the greatest share of the blame fell on the man who discovered America.

    Now, 487 years after his death, Christopher Columbus is blamed not only for the slave trade from West Africa,
    but also for the murder of Kennedy,
    and for all the worlds traffic accidents.

    Now they say Columbus was a bastard.

    Because it was he who discovered America in 1492.

> America was supposed to be the next step of humanity, a new land stripped from the ills of the old wor

wat

This kind of sums up my sentiment.

All throughout my adult life the US (for all its apparent faults) was to me a shining example of progress and humanity. It was the best large scale implementation of human rights, laws, and democracy. Sure it was far from perfect but “as good as it gets, for now”

Became very disillusioned with that image of the US in the last couple of years. Maybe it’s always been like that - but the recent cronyism, the blatant openly displayed corruption and complete disregard for all the values it used to champion really destroyed the good image I had of the US.

In years to come they will realise what this loss of image (or “aura” as the kids would say) really means in a very practical and blunt sense.