Learn it from the turtle: These long-lived creatures generally have slow metabolisms, low-stress lifestyles, and protective, sturdy shells. Turtles can live up to 150-250 years.
IMPORTANT to know about the United States of America and Trump Tourism:
Even in today’s turbulent political moment, it is important to remember that the people in the United States remain open, welcoming, and deeply human—from an American who loves his country.
Built by people from every corner of the world—of every culture, belief, religion, and identity—America continues to invite visitors to experience its wonders: the vast beauty of the Grand Canyon, New York’s iconic skyline, the charm of San Francisco, and the sun-washed beaches of Hawaii, Florida, and Puerto Rico.
Americans love to connect, to share stories, and to learn from those who visit—and Americans also love to travel, explore, and get to know people beyond their own borders.
That enduring spirit of openness—defended at great cost by generations of brave American service members—remains unmistakable, from sea to shining sea.
From Hollywood films to country music, from the hula dancer to American folk traditions, from Hamburgers to Tacos this cultural openness will endure. It will survive the Trump era—and whatever comes next.
Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos
By any honest measure, Donald Trump’s second Davos appearance was not just another spectacle. It was a declaration that the United States no longer believes in the world it once helped build.
When US President Donald Trump took the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, he did what he has always done: he ranted. He mistook volume for strength, domination for leadership, and grievance for strategy. But this time, something shifted. The speech was not merely crude or chaotic—it was clarifying.
It stripped away the last ambiguity about how Trump sees the world.
In that worldview, there are only two kinds of countries and two kinds of people: those getting screwed, and those doing the screwing. Power is zero-sum. Cooperation is a weakness. Trust is for fools.
Trump did not offer policy so much as a declaration of belief:
- That all international relationships are transactional
- That alliances exist only to exploit the United States
- That force and leverage are the sole currencies of power
Gone was any acknowledgment that American influence had historically rested on predictability, institutional trust, and shared norms. Trump treated that entire architecture as a scam perpetrated on “suckers.”
That worldview marks the end of an era—not because it is new, but because it is now openly embraced by the country that once underwrote a different idea of global order.
Mary Trump and the Psychology of Power
Few people have articulated this more clearly than Mary Trump, the president’s niece and a clinical psychologist. In her response to Davos, she argued that her uncle’s performance was not a policy failure so much as a psychological inevitability.
Donald Trump, she explains, was shaped by a childhood in which humiliation was currency and empathy a liability. From that upbringing came a rigid internal logic: life is a brutal contest, and safety lies only in dominance. Cooperation is a trap. Reciprocity is naïveté.
Scale that mindset to the presidency of a superpower, and the consequences are global.
Mary Trump’s insight aligns uncannily with what the world saw in Davos: a leader who does not recognize that American power once rested not merely on force, but on trust—on being broadly predictable, broadly decent, and broadly committed to shared rules. Trump treats that entire architecture as a con.
And syllable by syllable, he dismantles it.
An Ending Without a Beginning
Henry Kissinger once observed that certain figures appear in history to mark the end of an era and force it to surrender its pretenses. Trump fits that description perfectly. What he does not fit is the other half of the historical pattern.
In 1945, standing amid the ruins of Europe, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson warned that the ultimate danger to us all was not simply brute force, but the abandonment of reason itself. At Nuremberg, he said, the trials of Nazi war criminals were “the most significant tribute that Power has ever paid to Reason.”
Trump is instinct, not reason. He is grievance, not judgment. He is an appetite without restraint.
He may indeed be the man who ends an era. But he will not build what comes next. Others—quietly, urgently, and without waiting for America—already are.
Napoleon destroyed dynasties—and built the modern state. Franklin Roosevelt shattered laissez-faire orthodoxy—and created the New Deal. Deng Xiaoping ended Maoism and constructed state-led capitalism.
Trump destroys without building. He is an ending without a beginning. That realization has spread well beyond political families.
The Journalist Who Said the Quiet Part Out Loud
Veteran journalist Terry Moran, who covered Trump’s first Davos appearance in 2018, later reflected that the global elite once viewed Trump as disruptive but manageable—a strange presence in an otherwise familiar system. This year was different.
In a now-infamous post on X, Moran described Trump and senior adviser Stephen Miller as “world-class haters,” arguing that grievance and animosity are not side effects of Trumpism but its fuel.
For that assessment, Moran lost his job at ABC News after nearly three decades.
The network cited impartiality standards. Critics cried bias. But the episode revealed a deeper tension: in an age when leaders openly reject cooperation and reason, even naming the pattern can be treated as a professional offense.
Yet what Moran articulated—like Mary Trump—was not ideology. It was a diagnosis.
Tourism: Where the World Still Comes Together
And here is where the story turns.
While geopolitics hardens into transactional blocs, one arena remains where cooperation stubbornly persists: tourism.
The World Tourism Network recently observed that this moment—defined by political fragmentation—is precisely an opportunity for the world of tourism to come together even more.
We saw this vividly in Madrid, at FITUR, one of the world’s largest tourism fairs. On a single floor, on a single platform, countries otherwise divided by war and ideology—Israel and Palestine, Iran and Syria, Iraq and the United States—stood side by side.
They were not negotiating treaties. They were doing something more elemental: inviting others to experience their landscapes, their culture, their food, their people.
Tourism, at its best, is not transactional domination. It is human encounter.
Madrid’s Quiet Leadership Started at FITUR, UN-Tourism and WTTC
With UN-Tourism (UNWTO) and the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) now jointly anchored in Madrid, the city is emerging as something more than a symbol of mass tourism. It is becoming a convening space for a different global logic.
That this moment is being shaped by two women at the top is no accident.
Shaikha Al Nowais of the UAE, leading UN-Tourism, and Gloria Guevara of Mexico, heading WTTC, represent a leadership model grounded not in grievance or coercion, but in connection, sustainability, and shared interest. From the Spanish capital, they are positioning tourism as a counterweight to zero-sum geopolitics—a reminder that power can still be relational.
Reason, Instinct, and the Choice Ahead
As political power retreats into domination and fear, other systems—tourism among them—are quietly modeling a different future: one based on encounter rather than coercion, shared strength rather than submission.
Trump may indeed be the man who ends an era. He will not build what comes next.
Others already are—on exhibition floors, across borders, in shared meals and shared stories—proving that even as geopolitics fractures, the human instinct to connect endures.
And that may matter more than we yet understand.
From the Majority of the People of The United States of America
“We the People” means all of us. And many Americans—indeed, the majority—feel compelled to apologize for a president who should represent everyone.
We ask the world not to turn away, but to stand with us as we continue our own work: to make America great again not through fear or exclusion, but through freedom, dignity, and pluralism. An America that deeply cares about people and human rights, about the planet we share, and about a life that is secure, joyful, and filled with opportunity—for all.
