ARROGANCE ACCELERATES IGNORANCE

How American Superiority led to Trump's Presidency

The Independent published on AOL this morning an article called “The world doesn’t trust Trump’s America as our reputation plunges in international polls,” written by Alex Croft and published June 25, 2025. It is based on “The Pew Research Center’s survey of more than 42,000 people in 36 countries between February and May of this year.”

The following are some of the statistics they revealed: “Overall the poll found 76 percent of adults questioned had no confidence in Trump’s leadership on the world stage . . . and there is no country surveyed in which attitudes toward him have become more positive. The countries with the lowest opinion of Trump are Turkey with 92 percent, followed by Sweden at 89 percent and Mexico at 88 percent.”

Trump’s second term has featured a more confrontational foreign policy, including tariffs on countries worldwide, the abduction of Venezuela’s leader, threats to seize Greenland, and an unpopular war against Iran. The poll also found that 57 percent of respondents now view the United States unfavorably, particularly under Trump’s leadership.

This poll also showed that 76 percent of the people surveyed in 36 countries disapprove of how Trump handled Gaza and 77 percent denounced his aggressive tariffs.

In 2022, when Joe Biden was president, 82 percent of UK respondents viewed the US as a reliable partner; but four years later, only 49 percent still held that view.

David Andelman is the creator of Substack’s Andelman Unleashed. His Substack discusses “How the World Views the United States.” He is a veteran correspondent for The New York Times, CBS News, an editor of Forbes and a multi-award-winning columnist for Reuters and CNN Opinion. He is the author of five books. His Substack provides headline news from about 90 countries, and my favorite part is the cartoons from different lands. If you are reading this, take the time to view his work.

From 1960 to 1990, U.S. foreign policy was defined by the Cold War’s bipolar structure and focused on containing communism. This strategy led to costly proxy wars, while domestic unrest and growing foreign economic competition in the 1970s and 1980s made adaptation difficult for the United States.

In 1962, I graduated from high school and was working undercover with a Top-Secret security clearance at a hidden office in Moffett Field, California. By 1968, I graduated from college and continued working with the CIA at their Los Angeles office. The ‘cover’ name on the door was “Army Signal Corps.'“ This employment and relationship developed a dedication to the U.S. government that began in my youth. I went on to spend twenty years living and working in the USSR, Russia, Central Asia, and Ukraine. My last meeting with them was in the summer of 2014 in a little café in Scottsdale, AZ. I finally got my “thank you for your service” speech.

It was in the 1980’s that Mikail Gorbachev began his appeal to end the Cold War. He used the words “perestroika” and “glasnost” to convince American leaders of his intentions. These are the same words used by Stalin in the 1930s to convince Soviet farmers to give up their land and use it as a commune for the benefit of Russia. It was brainwashing. President H.W. Bush, never before exposed to Russian indoctrination and anxious to report he ended of the Cold War, shouted at the top of his lungs that “America had won.” Not for a second, did he understand that this was a hoax – but the US transitioned from a globally competitive country to the world’s sole superpower. He was officially credited with this universal shift, and his arrogance was due solely to his ignorance. The world believed the Cold War ended and Russia was no longer an adversary. By the time the Berlin Wall fell along with the Iron Curtain, Gorbachev’s ideas were buried, Yeltsin took office, and Putin began his climb to the top.

From 1990 to 2015, the United States saw itself—and often acted—as the world’s sole superpower. This arrogant attitude, exaggerated sense of our own importance, and an inflated sense of competence have culminated with Donald Trump – a Russian asset, elected to the U.S. presidency. That period moved from post-Cold War optimism about democracy to the intense focus of the Global War on Terror, before giving way to a more multipolar world shaped by rising powers, especially China and Russia – countries with roughly matching forms of governments.

The western delusion and misconception regarding Russia’s democratization phase left the United States unarmed, while a new superpower was hatched using millions of stolen monies from The World Bank and from USAID. Guided by Russian old-world KGB men and women, Putin was selected by Yeltsin to first head the FSB and all banking in Russia, then become the Prime Minister, and finally Yeltsin’s replacement when he resigned in 1999. Putin, a hardline communist, life-long KGB and dictator, were believed to have written his presidential goals in a 1997 book called The Foundations of Geopolitics - 3 years before he became president of Russia. These goals clearly describe the destruction of the United States of America.

While the United States was still wallowing in its sole superpower status, Putin and Russia was building a stealthy international order merging government with mafia - infiltrating the U.S. from the bottom-up with Russian Organized Crime and from the top-down with Donald Trump.

Craig Unger, a NYT bestselling investigative reporter has written six books on this topic. His latest includes information on how Trump was secretively captured by Russian intelligence using flattery, money, and beautiful women; how Russians maneuvered Trump into the presidency by degrading Hillary Clinton; and how the FBI chose to ignore the growing U.S. infiltration of Russian Organized Crime and Russia mafia throughout America. Currently it is estimated that there are over 3 million Russians in the U.S. and they earn through gambling and drug distribution about $3 billion annually. This black cash is then laundered through the cash sales of Trump condos worldwide with Trump receiving a hefty fee. You can learn more at Unger’s Substack called American Kompromat.

While American education systems were failing our students, with fewer attending college due to costs, Russia’s education requires students begin studying English from grade school. They must fluently speak English by the end of high school to go on to higher education – all free. Russian children learn from a young age that the United States is their enemy and capitalism leads to moral corruption.

In his ongoing effort to dismantle the U.S. Government, Donald Trump has closed the Department of Education. An uninformed and less educated public is more likely to elect leaders like him and believe that his feeble assassination attempts were genuine or his nauseating repetition of wording is anything but a form of brainwashing and mind control.

And as the vanity of the U.S. government, leaders, and our people continued to believe in its own superiority, Russian clandestine operations in the U.S. have rapidly escalated. We have no one to blame but ourselves. Our arrogance led us to believe the Cold War ended and we won – we did not. Our ignorance is still hard at work today, denying the reality of Donald Trump’s rise to power with Russian assistance despite his massive and obvious destruction of our own government.

On the Medium, there is an article called “The Arrogance of Ignorance” written by Meeta Sengupta, Jan. 26, 2016.

“There is the ignorance of those who know, because they have worked hard at knowing the world. Maybe even peeked over the parapet, questing to know more, dizzying as it can be for first timers. Then, there is ignorance of those who do not know, because all they wanted to know was their own world.”

*We will be offerring on Amazon a free eBook version of From Democracy to Democracy in July. The date will be announced at a later date.

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