The harder a person or country tries to avoid absolutely any embarrassment, the more fun it becomes to embarrass them a little bit.
Trump hates the fact he's called the orange buffoon. On a Fox show or in front of fans he can pretend he believes nobody says that, nobody thinks he's an idiot, they're all huge fans because America is so strong now, but in fact he's a laughing stock and he knows it.
A sign of American hopelessness would be the famous Onion articles "No Way To Prevent This". There are a bunch of these "Everybody else knows how to do it" issues but gun control is hilarious because even average Americans know how to do it but they won't anyway. That is helplessness.