The United States of Bubble Wrap

CAVE CREEK, Arizona - A sign at the outskirts, “Where the Wild West Lives,” is hyped up horse flop. Despite old cowboy décor, people in this Disneyesque Frontierland and biker hangout mostly tune out a wider world in their United States of Bubble Wrap.

Like so much of America today, Cave Creek lives in comfortable ersatz reality, isolated from crises and conflict across an increasingly unlivable planet. Apathy condones outrages by elected leaders who in earlier days would have been tarred and feathered.

Cavalry troops wresting land from Apaches built an outpost here in the 1870s. Ranchers and gold miners followed. In 2000, the town, county and state bought the nearby Spur Cross Ranch to protect its 2,154 acres of unique Sonora Desert splendor.

At sunset on Spur Cross, pastels tint the tangled arms of giant saguaro cacti. Trails wind up rocky outcrops sheltering ancient Indian relics. Mule deer lurk in lush sage-scented greenery along the rippling creek. Soon wildflowers will burst into color.

But suburbia encroaches everywhere. Swimming pools evaporate as temperatures soar. Lawns suck up water. Gas-gulping power wagons stand ready to tear up pristine desert not yet bulldozed for new lots. An awful lot of TVs are tuned to Fox News.

In town, the mood is quickly evident. “I don't talk about politics,” one young woman told me. Elders tend toward a familiar smirk that delivers a clear message: My brokerage account is doing fine, and I know what I believe. Butt out.

Max Boot captured the national picture in a Washington Post op-ed, a twist on the paper's watchword: Democracy Dies in Darkness. “This is how democracies die,” he wrote, “not in darkness but in full view of a public that couldn't care less.”

Examples are stark in Arizona, a deeply divided state bordering Mexico. Even if a sizable voter turnout in November blends red and blue into purple, natural beauty and priceless cultural heritage have already been irretrievably lost.

Maricopa County, including Cave Creek and nearby Scottsdale, booms as wealthy sun-seeking outsiders move in. Many, in new cowboy hats and boots, regard Mexicans as “aliens” despite Arizona roots that run eight generations deep.

Arizona Republicans love the Wall. They allow miners and developers to destroy wilderness, squander scarce water and obliterate tribal sites held sacred for millennia. They cheer a demagogue president who imperils their children's survival.

Democrats prevail down in Pima County, “Baja Arizona” to old-timers. They see folly in costly barriers that devastate wildlife and Indian graves but fail to stop drugs that go under, over, around, or through them. Still, focused on domestic issues, most pay scant attention to Donald Trump 's global depredations.

When I was a kid in Baja Arizona, most of us reviled Barry Goldwater, a Republican senator who famously declared, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

When people called him crazy, the American Psychiatric Association invoked a “Goldwater rule.” Shrinks cannot diagnose someone they haven't examined. Fair enough. Although archconservative, he read the Constitution, respected his oath of office and compromised when necessary. He'd be a flaming “liberal” today.

Trump is different. In Cave Creek, a noted brain researcher passing through summed up what so many psychiatrists see: a bottomless black hole of narcissism that no amount of adulation can satisfy. A man like that is capable of anything.

Reporters don't do clinical diagnosis. But look anywhere around the world for evidence of Trump's impact. Just take countries beginning in “I.”

Trump flew to India after Narendra Modi promised him a crowd of 10 million in his home base in Gujarat State. It was about 115,000 in a cricket stadium, and many left during the speeches. He extolled the world's largest democracy where faiths “worship side by side” overlooking Modi's drive to disenfranchise India's 200 million Muslims.

After riots killed 800 Gujarati Muslims in 2002, George W. Bush banned Modi from a Washington visit. As Trump lunched with him in New Delhi, Hindus attacked Muslims elsewhere in the capital. At least 11 people were killed over two days. Muslim victims said police stood by as their shops were set ablaze.

Recently, Modi sent troops to impose strict curfews in Kashmir where India and Pakistan, both with nuclear arsenals, now chest-bump toward conflict. China backs the Pakistanis, who resent Trump's tilt toward India.

In Iran, Trump pushed hardline mullahs to the brink of war because, most likely, the deal to blunt their weapons buildup had Hillary Clinton's fingerprints on it. That reverberated in Iraq, where Shiites moved closer to Iran after Bush's invasion.

The Islamic State no longer has boundaries, but Trump's policies make it more dangerous than ever, with shadowy offshoots in Africa and Asia, along with lone wolves who surface in Europe and America. And then, of course, there is Israel.

Growing anti-Semitism in America is fanned by Hitler-loving louts who chant on occasion, “Jews will not replace us.” Elsewhere, it is largely a reaction to Benyamin Netanyahu's one-state plan to colonize Palestine with American support.

In Indonesia, with the largest Islamic population, Chinese largesse blunts objection to brutal repression of a million Muslims Uighurs, a flagrant example of how China expands its disregard for human rights across the world.

The Italian right-wing follows America's example, closing borders to Africans fleeing conflict and crop failure caused by climate change. As Washington slashes aid to countries Trump calls shitholes, desperate human tides swells.

Ireland's border is one of multiple issues in post-Brexit Britain. The United States could help its closest ally, but Trump slammed down the phone on Boris Johnson, who then cancelled a trip to Washington.

Aides said Trump was “apoplectic” because his erstwhile pal allowed Huawei to develop its 5G network in Britain. Johnson, in turn, blames Trump for crippling the world economy with tariffs and trade barriers.

Nothing isolates America from reality. The GOP trump card is a stock market boom doped by tax-cut profits. It took only rogue microbes deep in China to panic Wall Street. The Dow dropped 10 percent in days. We have no idea what awaits as the coronavirus shuts down so much in an interconnected world.

“The West is winning,” Mike Pompeo told allies who listened in stony silence at the recent Munich Security Conference in a Germany troubled by disturbing echoes from its Nazi past.

“This is utter hogwash,” Simon Tisdall wrote in The Guardian, “and almost everyone outside a dishonest, self-deceiving circle of Republican stooges and Trump toadies knows it…In many respects, the US and Europe are further apart than at any time since 1941.”

Democratic debates focus on health care, taxes and sniping at one another. Cable channels obsess on small primaries and too-early polls. On CBS Morning News, “The World in 90 Seconds,” is routinely Trump tweets, minor national stories with dramatic video, sports and late-night comedians.

Young voters want action on climate, but few think through the challenges. Nothing America does alone matters much without a president who can convince China, India and others to put aside national advantage for a common cause.

A smart ex-student of mine synthesized Bernie Sanders' appeal: “We have no functioning government, and everything is on fire, so why not have faith in this man who has always fought for the right things?”

True enough, America badly needs a revolution of the sort Sanders and others envision. Vested interests, sclerotic politics and big money hasten climate collapse and risk unstoppable conflict. A gap widens fast between rich and desperate.

But the Electoral College system is skewed. Hillary Clinton won big in the popular vote, yet she lost. Sanders spooks swing-state conservatives. If he did win, his wish list would consume Congress with little chance of passing.

The question is whether voters look beyond a United States of Bubble Wrap. America needs a president who allies trust and adversaries take seriously, with a firm grasp of global complexities. Prospects are troubling. In Cave Creek, the only mention I noticed of an outside world were Belgian waffles on a breakfast menu.

Joe Biden was sharp, specific and calm in the knives-out CBS South Carolina debate. At 77, a year younger than Sanders and Mike Bloomberg, he is hardly the doddering old fool many call him. Before he was cut off by yet another paid Bloomberg commercial, he outlined smart policy toward China, North Korea and the Middle East.

Biden has made bad calls in the past. As Sanders said, when challenged on his own record all long-serving politicians make decisions they later regret. Good politicians evolve and adapt to a changing world.

Trump’s latest lunacies display his despotic intent. He told the Supreme Court, baldly in public, how he wants to be judged. He is suing the Times for libel on specious grounds, flouting the First Amendment. Craven Republican senators rubber stamp any excess.

Over the next four years, in my view, America needs to get back on course so fresh new leaders can shape long-term reform. For now, Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar are already in Congress where laws are made; in November, voters can give them a solid majority, with diverse young newcomers attuned to the times.

Whomever Democrats choose, it is now or never. The abyss between Trumpistan and what America needs to be is as wide as the Grand Canyon up north. Trying to leap across it in a single bound is not an encouraging prospect.