When The Worst Person is Leading the Greatest Nation

I’d just hopped into a cab in Toronto, on my way to the airport after a weekend speaking engagement.

My driver's name was Mohammed, a middle-aged man born in Afghanistan, who earned his PhD and moved here in his twenties.

We talked about the weather, about my work, about our children, and about family car trips to Disney World.

Then, we started talking about America.

As we got closer to the airport, I joked with Mohammed that, given my open critiques of the current Administration, I was unsure whether they'd let me back in, and with my feelings about the state of things right now, I wasn't all that excited to go back anyway.

He quickly grew animated.

"I just don't understand this!" he said, his voice booming, his shoulders shrugging, and his face reflecting incredulity.

"How can the worst person in the world be given the greatest country in the world to lead?" he remarked. "It's disgusting."

Before I could respond, he went on.

"The whole world is laughing at America. It's terrible what he's doing. Every day it gets worse and worse. It makes me so angry."

As Mohammed shared his heart with me, I was simultaneously encouraged, ashamed, and pissed off.

It was a comfort to hear a voice outside of my country express solidarity with me and the millions in America who feel like prisoners of this predatory, fraudulent Administration.
It was embarrassing to realize that for the first time in my life, I have trepidation to claim America as my own, because of all it now represents.
It angered me that a middle-aged man from Afghanistan could be more perceptive and wise than 77 million of my countrymen and women who've spent their lives here and have much more at stake.

It was a cab ride that I was sorry to see end.

I don’t know if Trump is technically the worst person in the world, but let's just say he’s on the short list of any reasonable human being (and as far as America being the greatest nation, well, I can easily think of scores I’d prefer at the moment, based on education, healthcare, and safety, alone.

But still, there was a sad truth beneath his hyperbole. My new friend, Mohammed, gets it all: the bigotry Trump has unleashed here, the lawlessness of his Cabinet, the hypocrisy of religious people who support him, the ineptitude that the entire world is talking about, the fractures to our national image.

He sees that the prejudices and fears and phobias that this President brokers in are dangerous things.

Most of all, he sees that this nation is being led by someone far beneath it, in complete contempt of it, and irreparably detrimental to it.

I'm hopeful enough people in America see such things; that regardless of political affiliation, religious worldview, or nation of origin, a vast majority is as stupefied and outraged as Mohammed is these days—and ready to rescue themselves, though how this will happen remains to be seen.

I hope that more people in this country can see what so much of the world sees about us:

That we are a terribly flawed nation with brief flashes of embodying the goodness our Constitution aspires to.
That we are a place filled with beautiful diversity, which is still our strength.
That we do deserve far more than this reprehensible human being, who has never had a noble or decent impulse in his life.

And regardless of this country's past and current collective sins, and despite far too many of its people once again co-signing a man of such inhumanity, I still strain to believe we’re better than this, better than him.

I said goodbye to my new friend and headed into the terminal, but the entire way home, his words bounced around repeatedly in my head:

"How can the worst person in the world be given the greatest country in the world to lead? It's disgusting."

It really is, Mohammed.

It really is.