American
"I believe in America!" said the gravedigger Bonasera in Vito Corleone at the beginning ofThe Godfather (both in the novel and the film). However, the scene seemed to suggest that America, the United States, had disappointed this man; its justice system had failed him when it hadn't been able to punish his daughter's attackers. That's why he was now asking the head of the Mafia family to deliver 'justice,' to punish the violent young men because the legal system hadn't been able to (one of the young men was from a 'good family').
The United States was a kind of promise of well-being and justice, but for many people there was no 'American Dream,' and they had to find a way to make a living and find justice elsewhere. The rise of Trumpism must also be understood from this perspective, as a failure of that dream, or of the legal system and the opportunities for everyone, even though putting a mobster in the White House was, in principle, done to restore this chimera through populism—a chimera in which many millions of Americans continue to naively believe, a questionable paradise.
The anti-elite rhetoric of Trumpism is nothing more than an attempt to make people believe that if the System doesn't deliver on its promises, it's because it has been co-opted by bureaucrats and intellectual elites who despise the working classes. But the United States has always had a bad reputation: the caricature that has always been drawn of that country from the perspective of the more or less authoritarian left has led us to see the US as a caricature, well represented by a genre of stereotypical American films.
A country of lunatics, Bible-obsessed and rifle-wielding, uncultured and racist, fat and greedy. Here in our Spain, we had the longest right-wing dictatorship of the 20th century, a country of shocking ignorance, with death penalties and political violence—ranging from Francoist torture to beatings for wanting to vote in a referendum—but we have no other job than to look down on the US, the country with the most awards, with superiority and condescension.
Trumpism is a scourge that would harm any democracy, but it's not much worse than any corrupt government; or perhaps it can only be worse because behind Trump is a massive army and the most powerful economy in the world. Luckily, our Trump supporters only invaded Perejil Island, not Greenland, but they did kill dozens of people at the Ceuta border—at Tarajal—while a progressive movement stood by passively, a movement that now wrings its hands over videos of US police officers also shooting at immigrants or protesters. Trump is a grotesque figure who only serves to excuse our own banana republic miseries. If all this seems more scandalous to us than our own inadequacy, it's because we have a market of distractions that makes us look toward the US so we don't notice the mess at home.