You're being such a fucking bully right now, America.

Moaning and groaning about the United States of America is almost a hallowed tradition in New Zealand. In this part of the world, everybody does it, from my young nephews to my old Nana. If complaining about how loud, brash and dumb America is was an Olympic sport, we'd be definite medal contenders.

It previously looked like that animosity reached some kind of apex in the mid-1980s, when the Labour government told the US to fuck off with its nuclear weapons, a stance that is still a source of real pride for almost all New Zealanders. David Lange's breath-taking articulation of the anti-nuclear ideal during an Oxford debate is truly one of the great moments in the country's history.

But we're entering into a new age of incredulous belief at the decisions our American cousins' government is making, and while there is fuck all we can really do about it on the arse end of the world, the side-eye is reaching epidemic proportions.

I love America. I've been there half a dozen times, and have visited New York, New Orleans, Seattle, Houston, Washington DC, Portland, San Francisco, Hawaii, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Alaska, and it's been a brilliant experience every time, with gorgeous, endless scenery, mind-boggling sights and some of the most generous and friendly people I have ever met.

I love the American friends I've made over the years, through comic books and the internet and working in the media. They're all smart, funny and compassionate people, whether they come from Northern California or the eastern seaboard. They're all, to a person, utterly dismayed by the messages their homeland is sending in the year 2017, because, obviously, I don't have any nazi fucks for friends.

I love its ideals of equality and freedom that are entrenched in its founding documents, and the always noble efforts to live up to them. It's literally taken centuries to come close to actually reaching those goals, and judging by some of the shit going down every day in the USA, there is still a long way to go yet, but by God, at least they're striving.

And I love its fictions, and a lot of the greatest movies, TV, music, and literature have come from the 52 states. I adore Western movies and rock and roll, and I own more American comics than from any other nation, because they are beautiful and enthralling, and sometimes say something a lot deeper about their country.

Sometimes it comes in unexpected packages, like an issue of Garth Ennis and John McCrea's Hitman comic, published by DC back in the 1990s, when Superman shows up and Tommy unexpectedly articulates one of the very best attributes of the American Dream with his 'I'm American, what can I do to help?' speech.

Or when something like The Searchers, the classic western by legitimate old white fucks John Wayne and John Ford, which is a weird tribute to hate and prejudice and revenge, and then the movie shatters all that when the Duke finally catches up to his niece, and his voice breaks as he tells her he's taking her home, because he knows that path of hate leads to nothing..

And I love that these stories still show there is a lot of work to be done - Tommy Mongahan still plugs his mark seconds after Superman tells him that Americans should always strive to be the best, and there is no place for Ethan Edwards at the new world at the end of The Searchers, and all that western death leads to that climactic moment in the rain at the end of Unforgiven, where Clint Eastwood tells the town to do right, or he'll come back and kill them all, framed with the US flag flying above his head. That's American as hell, as well.

And one of the things I love most about America is its firm anti-bullying stance, right from the days when it stood up to Mother England, and right up until its current role as a true global peacekeeper, doing its apparent best to keep any other nation from picking on a smaller rival.

It's what makes Captain America such a great super-hero. Sure, he can be cheesy as shit, and is a living representation of a society that remains deeply problematic, but he will always, always stand up for the little guy, all day long.

It all goes wrong when the US thinks it's the victim, and justifies unimaginable horrors through this. A persecuted mentality that can be nothing more than privileged white fucks worried about the smell of sweet curry wafting down the suburban street, or could be a return to the appalling days of mass lynchings and other horrors.

This has been the United States' reason and rationale for most of the conflicts it has been involved with in the past century. It didn't go into Vietnam or Iraq to beat up the locals, it was part of the grand global fight against communism or global terror networks or whatever. In its own blundering, misguided way, it sold intervention on that same argument of just trying to help a smaller ally.

The United States has done terrible things around the world over the past century, and it's always taken that moral high ground of the endless fight against bullies and the people they terrorise, even if they ended up terrorising just as many people.

But the high ground has proven remarkably fluid lately, because the United States is being such a fucking bully right now. The executive branch of the White House and its groaning, gasping orange blimp of a leader is deliberately pushing around women's health groups - including ones that aren't even in the damn country - and amazed when Mexico won't cough up its lunch money for a counter-productive wall, whining that the much smaller nation is being “unfair”.

When he isn't complaining about the media reporting the things he says, the fuckhead-in-chief is whining that trade deals that are essential to the global market are mean to America, and that a Muslim ban - which is what it fucking is - that is literally going after 5-year-olds who might grow up to have ideas, is the only way for the poor, shaken US to feel safe.

That bullying was made even worse last week when the immigration ban was immediately backed up by the customs people on the front line, blindly following retarded orders, even though the ban was clearly fucked, in the legal sense.

Supporters of these ideas like to think they're getting tough, but they're just a bunch of fucking bullies, and America can do so much better than that.

When people have laid into the States around my part of the world, I've always stood up for it for all the reasons here, but that hasn't always been so easy in the past few weeks.

This shit is not acceptable, and it's vastly heart-warming to see the people out on the streets, the lawyers on the floor at the airport, and the ongoing incredulity of most of the country at the incompetency and meanness of its ultimate leader. It's wonderful that there are still a lot of people who believe in the same America I do - of an open palm, rather than the closed fist (unless it's a Nazi. Give that genocidal fuck a right cross, that's what Cap always taught me.)

But it doesn't change the fact that this buffoonish administration is taking such pride in ideals that clearly go against everything that could truly make America great. I truly love the USA, but if things keep going down this horrific path, we're going to have to take a break from each other, because I never have any time for bullies.