As a child growing up in the 70s, I never had a high esteem for America's self-acclaimed guardianship of justice and freedom.

Reading your "Audacity of Hope" (2006) came as an eye-opener. I started studying American history with a fresh perspective. Your eight years were more than the audacity of hope. They were a lantern in a pool of darkness.

Later, the books by Khizr Khan, and most notably 'This is our Constitution: What it is and why it matters" (2017) even taught me how to admire the American story and the pillars on which it is built.

Of late, POTUS45 has managed to undo all this. And what has been happening since Nov 3, and now on Jan 6, is sort of the final blow.

In the mean time, every 33 seconds, an American citizen dies of Covid-19 - a death count unimaginable anywhere else in the world.

Again, I am back where I left off as a kid, a half century ago: America does not deserve to be called an example of democracy - and neither has America the right to teach any of us non-Americans a lesson.

America is a failed democracy. America is a failed state.