The imperial eagle may have lost many of its feathers and its awe-inspiring majesty, but its insulting arrogance and taste for abuse remain intact.

"If the Maduro regime decides to retain them, we will use all the tools," said the secretary of state Mike Pompeo, the former director of the CIA, the U.S. agency well known for a history of murder and torture around the world.

In other words, the U.S. government will use even force to rescue two American mercenaries, part of a group that intended to either assassinate or kidnap the Venezuelan president. They were captured along with 28 other invaders, all participants in something called Operation Gedeon, seemingly concocted to try to collect the $15 million that Trump, the worst president in the history of the U.S., offered for the capture of Maduro. 

And one has to wonder once again: Who the hell do these people think they are? How does the Trump administration dare talk about democracy and human rights when it has done everything possible to curtail democracy and infringe on human rights in its own country? How does this gang of racists, misogynists, homophobes, pseudo fascists, and greedy old crooks pretend to teach other countries how to govern? What right does the U.S. have to intervene in other nations’ affairs when its incompetence and neglect of its own citizens has tragically made it the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the world?

This excerpt from an Israeli commentator, cited in Common Dreams, reflects the way much of the world looks – in disbelief for sure --at what the U.S. has become. 

“The country seems like a train wreck: Its systems are failing, hospitals collapsing, patients crying for help and corpses piling up in makeshift morgues. New York, the jewel in the crown, has turned into a ghost town and valley of death: the undeclared capital of the free world cannot hide its shame...

“It could have been America’s finest hour... Rather than serving as a role model for all, Trump’s United States has turned into a bad joke.”

More than a bad joke, a tragedy, and a nightmare.