The United States was a democracy, where Americans treated each other with respect under laws that applied equally to everyone via government institutions designed to balance everyone’s interests.
The way we were
That’s a somewhat elementary description, and things got more complex in real life, but it was a good starting point to describe basic American political values. Those core values then evolved into more advanced concepts that shaped America’s interaction with other nations. Such higher-level values, in turn, helped create U.S. alliances with many nations including Finland. As political scientist, consultant and author Ian Bremmer explained in a TED Talk broadcast after the recent U.S. elections:
“A lot of allies of the United States around the world are allies because they have shared interests but also because they perceive that they have shared values.
Those values include commitment to democracy and rule of law and the promotion of democracy and rule of law around the world. Commitment to a multilateral architecture where norms and values are largely agreed to. Collective security among allies and, to the extent possible globally, free trade and market access through multilateral agreements….”
That’s what I thought too. I’ve thought that throughout my 40+ year career as a lawyer in Washington DC explaining American values – and American laws based on those values – to Finnish companies doing business in the USA. Every Finn I know, especially the members of SAM Suomi and readers of SAM Magazine, also believed that those were real American values.
I was wrong. We were all wrong.
The election of Donald Trump as the next U.S. President with a Republican Congress shows how wrong we were, or at least how wrong we are now. To quote Mary Trump, a professional psychologist, the president-elect’s niece and a fierce critic of her uncle, “I am so deeply sorry…I thought better of us.”
The way we are now
Professor Bremmer said it straight:
“What we have just seen with this election is that the American people do not actually accept those values and that the American president-elect does not accept those values.”
Other experts have instead rushed to rationalize the outcome. They’ve noted how the Trump agenda is not supported by all Americans despite the wins for Trump and the Trump Party (the new name used by even some mainstream American media for what was formerly known as the Republican Party). They say that voters did not really understand what they voted for. They expect a robust debate about the changes to come and they have already begun to speculate about who will run in the next election to change things back again four years from now.
They are wrong.
There’s no reason to assume that Trump will be in the White House for only four more years. To the contrary, Trump and his party promised to overhaul and eliminate vital American institutions and to overturn fundamental policies and principles, especially those designed to ensure the long-term existence of American democracy and the legitimacy of future American elections.
The day after the election, a Trump acolyte re-elected to Congress, Republican Lauren Boebert, wrote on social media that “We need to ensure that our Republican majority…remains strong, and we must rally behind President Trump to secure his third term.” The U.S. constitution limits U.S. Presidents to only two four-year terms in office, but violating the constitution is apparently unimportant to a member of the U.S. Congress when it involves supporting Trump.
On the same day, Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump (co-chair of the Republican National Committee that formally controls the Trump party) said, “Maybe now it's the time, once Donald Trump is inaugurated…[to]…have a blanket federal election process that every state abides by and we feel very good about it all across the country”. Dozens of courts have already determined that no fraud occurred in the 2020 election and no one has shown any fraud in 2024 either. That’s apparently not enough to make her “feel good” – so she must mean she wants to feel good about the next election’s outcome by changing the U.S. election process to ensure that the Trump party’s enemies (i.e. candidates who are Democrats) can no longer win elections and perhaps not even participate in them.
That goal was made clear to American voters. Although Trump contradicted himself during his campaign, he never wavered in his open admiration of dictators and their one-party rule, his desire to achieve a similar role and his disregard for American-style rule of law.
A strong majority of Americans supported that goal by electing him again. Others didn’t want that, but they lost. Some voters may eventually regret their choice, but democracy-type voting means they could vote to replace the old voting rules. They chose a President and other candidates from the party who promised to do exactly that. It’s too late to get the old rules back. As the saying goes “be careful what you ask for because you might get it!”
Americans are stuck with the outcome of the 2024 election, even if it’s the last one. This is not hyperbole – it’s regrettably naïve to assume that the United States will have legitimate elections four years from now. They may be a lot more like Putin’s elections. If not for Trump, then one of his children may be “elected” instead.
The way we will be
So what should Finland do going forward? Once again, Professor Bremmer offered a concise and accurate response:
“U.S. allies around the world have to recognize that they still may have a lot of shared interests with the United States but they no longer have those shared values.”
He is right. Old American values will be replaced as promised. The new ones may be simpler than old values that accounted for Americans’ complex and diverse beliefs. One example arose throughout Trump’s campaign: the value of hate. Hatred gave his MAGA movement purpose and meaning. He claimed that President Biden “hates” Vice-President Harris, that Harris “hates” Israel and also hates Arabs. After Taylor Swift endorsed Harris instead of him, Trump posted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT” in capital letters.
Proudly hating other Americans is now an acceptable and popular American value. Similarly, the Trumpian view of America is that it’s a “garbage can,” that’s been “invaded and conquered” by “murderers, rapists, and illegal criminals” and “vermin” with “bad genes” who are “poisoning the blood of our country”. Anyone who says otherwise is “the enemy within.” Some enemies – immigrants and U.S. citizens alike – are “not people” (all quotes from Trump’s speeches). Rich Americans will get richer, at the expense of poorer ones. Women will be taken care of, whether they like it or not. Science and facts will remain secondary, if relevant at all. No one will be expected to tell the truth about anything. Wildly fictional stories about eating pet cats will justify widespread brutality against legal immigrants and people of color.
That’s wrong. It’s factually wrong and ethically wrong.
Yeah, whatever. Such morally bankrupt yet value-based choices will nevertheless guide the U.S. government’s policies and actions, rubber-stamped and funded by Trump’s Congress. Creating and then exploiting America’s internal divisions (real or imagined) is supposed to put “America first” and “make America great again”. I have no idea how that will work. Perhaps we’ll see that the old values that Americans voted to abandon weren’t so bad after all. Unfortunately, any wisdom we may gain later will be too little and too late because the United States will be a different kind of country.
Finns do not share such values, nor will they. I was wrong about the values held by most of my fellow Americans, but I’m 100% sure I’m right about my fellow Finns and their values. Finland needs to keep its values intact but, when dealing with the USA, focus only on shared interests in national and international security, cooperation in technology and business transactions that will let Americans think they are first and great again…whatever that may turn out to mean.
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Tom A. Lippo is a Finnish-speaking American lawyer. Educated at Yale, the University of Jyväskylä and Stanford Law School, he is the founder of FACT LAW, an international law firm established in 1985. FACT is the first law firm with offices in both Finland and the United States. Tom has been a lawyer in Washington, DC based on Capitol Hill for over 40 years.
