US decline and the swamp that will not be drained

Foad Izadi, associate professor at the Department of American Studies, Tehran University

In the remarks of the Leader of the Revolution on April 4, 2023, a point was raised regarding the issue of bipolarity in the US. The issue goes back to the 2020 elections in which Joe Biden declared victory, but at the same time, Trump also declared that he had won. According to the available polls, about 80% of Republicans believe that Trump must be the president of the United States, and they have not accepted the election results so far. This bipolarity continued in the 2022 congressional elections and raised the issue of the 2020 elections again. The problems that occurred in the 2020 US presidential elections have not been resolved yet, and they still persist.

In recent weeks, the issue of the indictment of Trump has also been discussed. The indictment was issued when Trump announced that he will be the Republican Party candidate in the 2024 elections. This shows that political problems and tensions still exist in the US and no solution has been found for them. One of the reasons that these problems remain unresolved is the lack of a strong system in the US that would have the final say which would be then implemented in practice.

This problem has been established within the political structure of the US and the degeneration of that country’s policies, which is why the issue of bipolarity persists and there is also no clear future. Also, in order to better understand why this bipolarity was formed and why a person like Trump became the president of the United States, it is necessary to refer to a point that had been already mentioned several times in the remarks of the Leader of the Revolution in the past years, and that is the issue of “decline of the US.”

The American people have also realized that their country is in decline and they are in a dire situation. The rate of decline is very rapid in the eyes of the American people. But what did Trump say in the 2016 elections in which he won? Trump said that the US is declining, but he has ways and solutions that can solve this problem. He was elected with this slogan and leveled serious criticisms against many previous politicians, both Republicans, and Democrats. He referred to the state of Washington as a “swamp.” Basically, one of Trump’s main election slogans was “Drain the Swamp!”

Now, what Trump did in practice and how this swamp of corruption that was in Washington expanded during the Trump era is another issue. But this was Trump’s slogan at least. Why did this slogan attract some people? Because of the seriousness of America’s decline and the realities that the American people see about their government in their daily lives. The end result was that some people became interested in Trump and voted for him.

In the meantime, another group of American people knew that the solutions presented by Trump would not solve the problem. They too believed that the US is in decline, but at the same time, they believed that a person like Donald Trump cannot solve the problems. Later on, due to the pressure of the problems that were on the entire American population, the fight between the first and the second group became serious and the bipolarity expanded.

The US has had problems in the past too. However, due to its thefts and lootings from different countries, there were enough financial resources, or let’s say a buffet table, to compensate. Around this proverbial buffet table gathered individuals from across the political spectrum, and they didn’t quarrel with each other very much. But now, due to the decline of US power in various political and economic fields, those financial resources have diminished.

Currently, the US debt problem, the US budget deficit problem, and problems like this can no longer be resolved by throwing money at them or printing and injecting dollars. Now, America’s problems have grown and the process of decline has accelerated.

The outcome of America’s downward trend and its decline is that these fights and disputes in the US have openly turned the American society into a bipolar one. In this sense, Trump himself is the outcome of that bipolarity. In the aforementioned period, a bipolarity had been formed in the US, and Trump was able to exploit this bipolarity to become president, and then the pursuing incidents that we have seen in the past few years occurred. America’s problems go beyond Trump’s controversies. Even if Trump dies tomorrow, these problems will persist.

Ultimately, the situation we are witnessing is the result of America’s weakness — a weakness that increases day by day and will persist. The US is gradually changing from a superpower in a unipolar world to a normal country, and it is losing its superpower status.

Dr. Foad Izadi is an associate professor at the Department of American Studies, Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran. Izadi received his PhD from Louisiana State University. He earned a BS in Economics and an MA in Mass Communication from University of Houston.