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I enjoyed much of the essay but disagree here. Outside the US, amongst non-Americans, Americans are indeed looked down upon and considered stupid.
Some clips from Jeremy Clarkson: https://youtube.com/watch?v=JsMVncOU1K4
It's not merely my personal 'America is a greatly flawed country in many respects but also with great strengths' opinion but the strawman version of 'Americans are stupid, fat, uncultured, violent and fascist too'. My well-off Australian friends constantly bemoan America, how they harass you and ask for passwords and social media and fingerprints if you want to enter the US - those are just stories they've heard since they don't want to visit the US with Trump and all.
Even before Trump America was looked down on, the Clarkson clips are old and somewhat representative of ambient anti-American stereotypes. The War on Terror is perceived as a dumb idea executed badly, that the US dragged us into. Same with the war in Iran for that matter. They don't like American lifestyle either, how the food has chemicals in it, the tipping culture, the drug commercials, feeling unsafe in major cities... When I went to the US with some friends we didn't really like it, saw some guy shooting up on the street which was a new experience. Much preferred Europe, though it's also hard to feel safe in Paris with all the troops wandering around.
Nobody respects 'American institutions from law and universities to science and the humanities'. Nobody really thinks about them at all, except insofar as Trump is perceived as wrecking them. What good are these institutions if Trump emerged and seemingly took over, people think. My legal-inclined friends don't like US jurisprudence, they think it's a mutated and degraded cousin of proper common law. All maluses and no pluses. It's an immature way to think about countries but that's just how the media seems to behave, that's the base expectation. I could point out to them that in terms of authoritarianism, our freedom-of-speech is much more limited than the US, the UK arrests many more people for political crimes but that's not something that people feel comfortable saying or thinking so much.
Maybe it's different in the developing world or China or Japan.
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