A Reckoning Seems to Be Upon the U.S.

BY: Martin Love

The American public is fed up. It has been watching the U.S. economic decline for years featuring the wealthy “elite” growing wealthier with tax cuts, with attacks on labor and the poor, plus job outsourcing, financial deregulation, and trillions of dollars spent on military adventures overseas, all of the latter debacles spun over many years that have eviscerated the security of average American families across the country

NOURNEWS/NORTH CAROLINA - So, a white cop with a record of mistreatment of “people of color” in Minneapolis causes the death of an arrested, manacled Black man who allegedly tried to pass off a counterfeit $20 bill for a minor purchase, and the cop sets off all sorts of mayhem and protests across the U.S. that were not solely aimed at endemic racism. The protests were aimed at myriad problems in the U.S. and this incident was merely a spark of ignition.

In the same week, a fairly high-level, single, finance professional female of 41 with an MBA working in New York tries to sic the police on a courteous, Harvard-educated Black man in Central Park who had merely insisted, as was the rule at that park location, that she put her dog on a leash. She, now a former “Mistress of the Universe”, knew damn well that calling the militarized (by Israel) police might have gotten the man killed since she falsely claimed he was attacking her. She not only had her dog taken away from her by the canine adoption agency she got it from two years ago, but she also lost her precious job when the financial firm which had employed her declared that it does not tolerate racism. As for the Minneapolis cop, he has been charged with third degree murder but there is a clamor for a first-degree charge. In both these cases, the response (for starters) was appropriate. Both incidents went viral across the U.S.

But in fact the American public is fed up. It has been watching the U.S. economic decline for years featuring the wealthy “elite” growing wealthier with tax cuts, with attacks on labor and the poor, plus job outsourcing, financial deregulation, and trillions of dollars spent on military adventures overseas, all of the latter debacles spun over many years that have eviscerated the security of average American families across the country. Western capitalism, now married to Facism whose leading face is Donald Trump (whose allies like Natanyahu and Bolsonaro are also Facists), has proven to be incapable of reversing the economic decline for most Americans. And because of the Covid 19 pandemic, mismanaged by Trump from the start and resulting in the highest viral toll of any country in the world, Covid 19 has just been speeding up the decline dramatically.

Meanwhile, the U.S. “elite”, and that includes the current government and much of Washington and its supporters (not the vast majority of citizens) is at war to varying degrees of cold or hot in some locations with half the world (if one includes Russia and China). And now the U.S. may have (if one includes those who have not looked for a job for over a year) 100 million unemployed people and lately various cities in complete, sporadic chaos. Is it any wonder the internal chaos has blossomed? And still the U.S. has political “advice” for Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, North Korea, Yemen and other countries, as if it holds the keys to harmony and prosperity if only the world would cooperate with U.S. diktat. Really? This has to be the most outrageous joke ever deployed. And most of the world knows it.

The so-called “liberal” world order instituted by the U.S. in the wake of World War 2 and promoted to this day does not look particularly “liberal” (and never did) and was aimed at bolstering U.S. hegemony almost exclusively from the beginning. It has been said, even in the New York Times recently by a journalist, that this faux “order” was built upon the extermination of millions of people -- in Latin America, in Asia, and now in the Middle East especially during this century.

Of all countries of late, Iran looks positively heroic coming to the aid of beleaguered Venezuela with several tanker shipments of gas and oil field and refinery supplies denied to that country by U.S. sanctions. Iran has done a brave deed, for the Trump Administration threated military piracy to halt the tankers. Iran in turn threatened to do some damage to U.S. assets in the Persian Gulf if the tankers were attacked.

The notion, put forth by Mike Pompeo and others, that the U.S. was “for” Venezuela’s people with its sanctions has to be yet another claim so absurd that it must be an indication of hubristic insanity in Washington, if not just pure blindness.

At any rate, it’s a good thing that Trump and minions have apparently been distracted by problems inside the U.S. No one literally with a clear mind wants to see the U.S., or ANY country, overwhelmed by internal discords, but when it happens because of gross governance errors, it does have its positive effects. And the most positive potential effect for the world generally is a U.S. government that one way or another has been forced to turn away from militancy and sanctions to cooperation with other countries in a world beset with more challenges that it has ever previously faced, and that includes climate change and environmental degradation.