Flowers: In Italy, Trump gets respect

I write this from my hotel room, a two-minute walk from the Colosseum.

My trip to Rome has been planned for months, and I looked forward to it with anticipation since well before Christmas.

But after the election, I knew that I’d need to prepare myself for foreigners who tend to ask questions like “why did you Americans vote for the candidate who hates Europe?”

I’d already experienced that reaction when I traveled during the first Trump administration.

I’d also suffered through the raised noses of Frenchmen when, in 1982, I lived in Paris during the Reagan administration.

The patronizing attitude of our Gallic cousins was exacerbated by the fact that their then president, Francois Mitterrand, was a communist-turned-socialist whose Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, had outlawed the use of English phrases like “le weekend” and “le hot dog.”

And two decades later, I had to deal with Europeans who hated George W. Bush and blamed him – not Muslim fundamentalists – for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Let’s face it.

Despite the fact that we’ve fought together in war, traded liberally with each other and commingled blood and culture through generations of immigration, there has always been a latent bit of hostility towards the USA from the conquerors and colonizers across the seas.

We are a brasher race, a less contemplative and impulsive sort of creature, often abandoning diplomacy for more aggressive tactics. We literally, and figuratively, do not speak the same language. Whether it’s disapproval or a vague sense of envy, Europe is usually just not that into US.

So I wasn’t expecting much support for Trump when I visited my ancestral land. But I was wrong.

At least anecdotally, based on my personal interactions with Italians, they are intrigued by this president who pulls no punches and speaks with an uncomfortable and uncompromising clarity that is rare on the international scene.

This is a man who breaks balls and paradigms. And there is, based on the people I spoke to, a grudging respect for that attitude.

It could be a vestige of the Mussolini years, because unlike the Germans who distanced themselves with a vengeance from Hitler, Italians have not entirely disavowed the history of Mussolini.

In fact, they elected his granddaughter Alessandra as a congressional deputy for numerous terms in office.

They also turned another millionaire businessman with sharp elbows and a penchant for nepotism and authoritarianism into their leader: Silvio Berlusconi.

And of all the European leaders who are currently licking their wounds about Trump’s rhetorical attacks, it is Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni who has — in the words of Janis Joplin — taken “another piece of [his] heart.”

So the irony is that Italians seem to like Trump better than the sort of American who goes to an official event, the president’s address to Congress, and heckle him.

Who refuses to stand and applaud the release of a Russian prisoner, Putin’s hostage.

Who looks the other way when a young boy suffering from brain cancer is given a huge honor, deputized as a law enforcement officer.

Who sits on their hands when a 13-year-old who was raped and murdered by noncitizens is honored by an executive order renaming a wildlife preserve after her.

Who keeps raising signs that say “lies” and “not true” during a speech as if they were participants in a macabre auction at Sotheby’s?

Who refuses to acknowledge any of the objectively good things the president had done since January?

Even reliable leftists were upset at the petty, whining, infantile attitude of far too many Democrats.

U.S. Rep Al Green waves his cane and screams incoherently like a senile street person, and they decry censorship when he’s escorted out of the building.

Any sane person would agree that a president who survived two attempts on his life should not be subjected to the maniacal ravings of an angry man. Emphasis on “sane.”

It’s fine to disagree with Trump. I do. I’m not on board with his immigration policies. I wish he’d curb the “Pocahontas” comments, and act like a big boy.

But disagreement with his policy and distaste for his style doesn’t mean I get to disrespect him, and in doing so disrespect other Americans he’s honored at a public event, especially not a little boy suffering from brain cancer.

The American left could take lessons from our neighbors across the ocean, especially Meloni, who knows when to accommodate the flaws in the name of a greater good.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at cflowers1961@gmail.com.