Just after college, I embarked on my international career when I accepted an assignment to Guatemala with the Peace Corps. As I prepared for this great adventure, the Peace Corps sent me a recommended reading list. That list included Bitter Fruit, The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala by Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer. I already had gained some vague idea of American interventionism in Latin America from my more radical college friends, but nothing prepared me for what I learned in the book. The authors describe how United Fruit successfully convinced the US government to stage a coup to overthrow a democratically-elected leader, Jacobo Arbenz, simply because he wished to take unused land away from the fruit company and distribute it to landless peasants.

The lawlessness triggered by the coup in 1954 led to a civil war that killed over 200,000 people. I continued to see the effects in the late 1980s, including indigenous villages inhabited almost exclusively by widows and orphans, after the military had murdered all the men. I see the continuing effects of our policies when I meet immigrants from Guatemala locked up in Torrance County Detention Facility.

When I lived in Hanoi, Vietnam for four years in the mid-1990s, I witnessed the enduring effect of what the Vietnamese call the American War. There were obvious signs of trauma. People were physically diminutive, obviously having suffered from malnutrition following the end of the war in 1975.

I will rail in a separate blog about our history of mass incarceration and how it connects to the concentration camps now housing immigrants.

In short, if we are honest about the history of the United States, there are many excellent reasons to feel shame. Genocide (both willful and via disease) of the indigenous population. Slavery, which, shamefully, continues to this day thanks to the exception in the 13th amendment for those convicted of a crime. Systemic racism that continues to cause vast disparities in wealth by racial groups. Mass incarceration of people of color. Our dismal failure to ensure that everyone in this country has a decent standard of living, despite our great wealth. Our dismal failure in preserving the environment and fighting the climate crisis.

Internationally, there is our long history of violent intervention in many countries. If you want more details about American atrocities at home and abroad—dating from long before the current administration—I suggest this article: The Case for Hating America - by Nathan Newman 🧭. Don’t be put off by the title. Newman is simply detailing facts that we all should be aware of.

I often find myself arguing with those who feel that Trump is exceptional. I mean, sure, he’s exceptionally evil, but he is also a manifestation of the uglier side of America that has always been with us. I understand those critics who are angry at our pro-democracy movement for focusing so intensively on Trump, as if America had always been a strong and just democracy that just happens to have slid into a deplorable state recently.

Yes, the damage done by the current regime is exceptional, and yes, we need Democrats in power to fix as much of the damage as possible. But to say that we can “restore” democracy, liberty, and justice by kicking the Republicans out of office and returning to the way things were, is delusional. As Nathan Newman puts it, “The reality is that we can’t move beyond Trump unless we deal with the genocidal history that has never been squarely confronted by our nation...”

Not just our genocidal history, either. Our ongoing racism, sexism, and other isms. The plundering of the poor and middle class to further enrich the wealthy. Our belief in capitalism without limits that is destroying the very system it seeks to protect. The fact that not just recently, aggravated by the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but for decades, we have allowed so many people in our country to struggle to afford health care, food, and decent housing. The abhorrent nature of our criminal “justice” system. And yes, all the foreign wars and interventions that were not meant to protect people’s rights or freedoms, but rather to benefit our corporations or prop up our own economic system.

So yes, these times are exceptionally bad, but our history is stained with outrageous abuses of all kinds. If we don’t learn our lessons from history, we will continue to commit those abuses long after Trump and his toadies are voted out of office. We need to take a clear look at what the United States has done to so many in the world and in this country, and be prepared to create a much better country in the future. As true patriots who believe in making America as great as it can be, acknowledging our history and making a concerted effort to do vastly better in future is the only path forward.