For those of us who wondered how bad it could get with the new administration, we have our answer. It is going to be awful. Years of establishing relationships around the world has been rendered meaningless in a matter of days.

Under the rubric of “disruption” and “change,” much has been destroyed. If there was a coherent plan on how to govern more efficiently and carefully, this may make sense. Instead, it is the indulgence of long-held beliefs that government workers are lazy and worthless at best, foreign assistance is a waste of money, and any reduction of government activities or regulation is good.

It is alarming that Congress has allowed its prerogatives enumerated in the Constitution and by law to be ignored by this President. They fear his electoral and financial anger and therefore we are about to have the most unfit Cabinet Secretaries in key positions since Warren Harding.

Democrats don’t know what to do and it is true that they set the stage for this abomination by not recognizing that they had become a party dominated by special interests that insisted on agreement whether it was social or environmental policies. No deviation was accepted and, in the end, they weren’t a party but a coalition of practitioners of identity politics.

None of this excuses the excesses we are seeing, but it helps to explain them.

Now we have to see not only people standing up to Trump and Musk, but an alternate vision of America and what we stand for. Unless this happens, we run the risk of a long period of undermining all that America has established in the minds of the world and we will become just another self-interested voice in an increasingly unpleasant world.