I doubt this is the answer, but I was talking to a European about this, and he said it's not like Europe is much better. If you look at the largest Europeam economies—Germany, the UK, and France—all are facing their own issues not unlike the US, right now.
Not the USA, but political turmoil in South Korea and even Japan has been pretty harsh lately (and India, might as well call Trump the USA’s Modi). Yes, Trump is an autocrat, but the presidential drama in South Korea has just been downright bizarre in comparison. Every western developed country right now is dealing with a declining birth rate combined with the inability to compete in infrastructure and manufacturing anymore (even Germany), especially when compared with China but also other Asian tigers.
It is clear that something is going on and it isn’t just an American thing. I can’t really tell you what that is though.
I think you're on the surface correct. But below the surface it can't be denied that in most of the western nations there is an increasing far right party on the knife edge of gaining power in each (Afd, RN, Reform UK, etc). We can hope that they remain out of power, but its hard to say that we won't see a bunch of Trumpist policy repeated in any one of those nations if they do take power.
The problem as I see it, is that the US was a frog in a boiling pot for ages before this. All trump did was drain the water.
The UK is comparable. In that its largely been white anted by Brexit. But you still would have quite a job introducing poms to daily gun violence statistics.
Are there any other modern western nations where you get locked up for sharing memes about the government at a border crossing?
UK again I guess, did destroy its trade relationships with the whole planet and sent itself back to the blitz without a german bomber in sight.
But most of the rest of the world seem stable in comparison.
Thye arent (yet) facing a christian-fascist takeover, a ministry of War that wants to let the military practice in its own cities, economic policiy decided by the bonkers ideas the president had in the 80s and a paramilitary organization that is just randomly kidnapping citizens.
