A request to my friends outside the #US: can you put a hold on the "LOL #Americans are so stupid" jokes for a while?

People, we know our recent outbreak of national idiocy has the rest of the world looking on in shock. We know that in the last three months we've done damage that will take decades to repair, if we ever can, and more is coming. We know a lot of you have written us off as a hopeless case.

If you care about us at all—*any* of us, individually or collectively—please remember that nobody is more dismayed than those who are trying to hold it together on the inside. Trying to figure out some way to mitigate the damage. Trying to keep our critical patient, the body politic, alive.

When that patient dies, we die too. I trust that most people reading my words, anywhere in the world, would see that as an undesirable outcome.

Honestly I've never been fond of humor that relies on national stereotypes, directed at my country or anyone else's. Most of the time I can shrug it off. Right now it's salt in the wound.