Newpaper Reader posits its like that discarded sandwitch that was left in the back of the refigertor?
Jun 24, 2026
Editor: Stephens makes it easy to track his concluding paragraphs, political chatter via his underlining of what he thinks of as ‘key’ ? Though the final two paragraphs that enshrines Ronald Reagan as primay political actor! Yet in this political moment, what is compelling is the fact of Russian and Chinese ascendency, the utterly unexpected Iranian control of The Strait of Hormuz! Nor the ebbing nature , or better yet the decline of the cult of ‘Jean Monnet The First Statesman of Interdependence’ ?
To exist as a sentient American in the age of Trump is to live in a perpetual cringe — morally, aesthetically, intellectually, politically. If the administration were a play or film script, it would be neither farce nor tragedy but instead a kind of absurdist travesty, “Waiting for Godot” meets “Pulp Fiction” meets “Dumb and Dumber.”
However much we may disdain him, the president has the rest of us on the hook, as the face and voice of a country that ought to know better. Trump’s angry visage draped between the exterior columns of the Department of Justice? That’s us. His gilded, meretricious redecoration of the White House? That’s us. His repeatedly avowed admiration for Vladimir Putin? That’s us. His laughable claim about having achieved regime change in Tehran? That’s us. His Mafia-like threats against NATO allies? That’s us. His indescribably vain (and pathetically fruitless) effort to affix his name to the Kennedy Center? That’s us. His venal family profiting off his presidency in ways both transparent and tacky? That’s us.
The same goes for his insult of Meloni, which may be far from the worst of his sins but is also the most emblematic for being at once so utterly unnecessary as well as dementedly self-defeating. That’s us. The same country that freed its slaves, welcomed immigrants, invented airplanes, liberated concentration camps, landed men on the moon and challenged the Soviet Union to tear down this wall now bids to be the global equivalent of the expensively dressed man soiling his pants at a cocktail party.
For 10 years, I’ve watched my former political party work overtime not to cringe; to pretend that the Vesuvius of verbal infamies erupting daily from Trump’s mouth is either unimportant, or hilarious, or calculating and shrewd. Republicans turned their tolerance for the president’s mental goo into a shot-drinking contest — the more you drank, the manlier you were supposed to be. John McCain and Mitt Romney refused to play, to their everlasting credit; other Republicans, less admirably, did so only after Trump had ended their political futures.
But for 10 years, too, I’ve also watched the president’s opponents fail to appreciate the necessity of cringing — by understanding their role in Trump’s rise. The Democrats and their media enablers who, until June of 2024, insisted Joe Biden was fit for a second term (surely knowing, somewhere in the dim recesses of their minds, that this could only help Trump) are complicit. So are the progressives who, on one cultural issue after another, shoved the Democratic Party so far to the left that it became the very caricature of what MAGA-world said it was.
Here, then, is our American challenge: Let’s not be afraid to cringe. Ronald Reagan predicted, correctly, that the Soviet Union would end up on the ash heap of history; now it’s our turn to risk winding up on the ash heap of idiocy.
So let’s not look away from the parts we played in bringing America to this moment. Let’s remember who we once were, because it’s what we may yet be again — if only we feel the sting of our present shame.
Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber
French journalist
Britannica Editors
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Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber (born Feb. 13, 1924, Paris, France—died Nov. 7, 2006, Fécamp) was a French journalist and politician.
Servan-Schreiber volunteered in the Free French Army forces of Charles de Gaulle as a fighter pilot in 1943 and received the Cross of Valor for his services. In 1947 he graduated from the École Polytechnique. After serving as foreign affairs editor of the Paris daily paper Le Monde (1948–53), he founded and managed (1953–70) L’Express, a moderately left-wing weekly newsmagazine modeled on Time. The publication of L’Express was halted temporarily in 1954 when the magazine printed a top-secret government report. In 1956 Servan-Schreiber was drafted into the army, and the experience formed the basis of his first book, Lieutenant en Algérie (1957; Lieutenant in Algeria), which exposed French atrocities in the Algerian War of Independence. The controversial book was later credited with helping turn French public opinion against the Algerian conflict. In Le Défi américain (1967; The American Challenge) he warned against Europe’s becoming merely an economic colony of the United States. An immediate best seller, the work was eventually translated into more than 20 languages.
Servan-Schreiber was secretary general of the Radical Party (1969–71) and president (1971–75, 1977–79). His Ciel et terre: Manifeste radical (1970; The Radical Alternative, 1970) is a party manifesto. Elected as a deputy to the National Assembly in 1970, he served briefly as minister of reforms in the government of President Valèry Giscard d’Estaing but was ousted for opposing government policy on nuclear testing.
Servan-Schreiber founded the Mouvement Réformateur (“Reform Movement”) in 1972 with Jean Lecanuet and once again served briefly as minister of reforms in June 1974. He was president of the Regional Council of Lorraine from 1976 to 1978, and in 1979 he founded the Groupe de Paris (“Paris Group”), in conjunction with which he published Le Défi mondial (1980; The World Challenge, 1980). He also continued in the 1970s to be associated with the direction of L’Express. From 1988 to 1994 Servan-Schreiber was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States.
Quick Facts
Born:
Feb. 13, 1924, Paris, France
Died:
Nov. 7, 2006, Fécamp (aged 82)
Other publications of Servan-Schreiber include Les Réveil de la France (1968; The Spirit of May, 1969), a collection of editorials examining causes of the student uprisings in France in 1968; Forcer le destin (1970; “Forcing Destiny’s Hand”); Le Pouvoir régional (1971; “Regional Power”); Appel à la reforme (1971; “A Call to Reform”); L’Arme de la confiance (1976; “The Weapon of Confidence”); and Le Manifeste (1977; “The Manifesto”).
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