Ours is an ideal, fragile thing really, that can
carry the weight of the world on its shoulders. It is a place for people who
yearn to breathe free.[i] It
is a place where the poor can come with the hope of a better life, it is a place
where institutions count. America isn’t easy. People have to trust the police, their
leaders; they trust their schools and financial systems. They must trust their
unions, their employers, and religious leaders. It works best when it serves all
the people equally, the common good. It requires trust that the government and
its leaders trust the people, believe in the people, and work for the people. Like
any relationship, the people must trust each other, each other’s motives, and
each other’s values.
Lack of trust frays the edges of the whole-cloth
that we call America. Others from afar see our tattered reality, and we, up
close see how threadbare that weaving has become. To work well for everyone,
everyone must have the dream, believe the dream, and share the dream. The
COVID-19 pandemic lays bare the weaknesses of our frail system. The incompetent
management of our national epidemic, its concomitant financial disaster, and a
government that tries its best to wrestle control from the people has taken on many
of the characteristics of a failed state.[ii]
The House and the Senate might as well be on total shutdown. The Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on whether or not the sun is shining. The Senate has refused to take up hundreds of Bills passed by the House. The members of the Freedom Caucus, the Minority Leader, and the President praise a loony-tunes nominee for Congress, who espouses QAnon conspiracy theories. The sad part of the story, of course, is that she got the most votes by the people of the Georgia13th district. There is confirmed evidence that points to Russia paying the Taliban to kill American soldiers. The White House said nothing and extracted no retribution. Newspapers showed the digital trail of money transfers and pictures of the piles of Russian money found in enemy bunkers. The White House did nothing. Weeks later evidence showed that Iran also paid our enemies to kill American soldiers. There has been no response from the Leadership. We have lost so much prestige that other nations openly taunt us. Civis Romanus Sum applied to us as well, once.
Every four years we elect a president to lead the
nation, to be its guiding light, to unite any divide and to protect its place
in the world order. The US, since the end of World War II particularly and
regardless of which party in power, exercised its influence because we were the
best because we could do what had to be done and because we kept our word. We
were the model for a world seeking freedom and prosperity. Today, we have
disengaged from the rest of the world. We have extricated ourselves from every
major treaty and agreement made in the last several years or generations. We
joined over 100 nations agreeing to try to do something about the changing
climate. We pulled out. We no longer stand by our word. We and several other
nations negotiated an extensive treaty with Iran, not a country we can call a
friend, but which agreed not to build nuclear weapons for ten years if we would
lift economic sanctions and free up their money in Western banks. We pulled
out. We no longer stand by our word. Iran is now free to make as many bombs as it wants, although the other countries in the treaty are sticking to their
word, and are now the nations of influence. We were part of a multinational
trade agreement that ensured markets for our goods and had elements of free
trade for our goods and services. We pulled out. People can’t trust our word.
The other nations continue to abide by their agreement and are trading goods
with each other at better prices than ours. We started a trade war with China,
which like all trade wars ended up costing us more for foreign-made goods and
lost markets for our goods and services. We broke our agreement. People can’t
trust our word anymore. Moreover, the President lied to the people when he
said that China was paying billions in tariffs for the goods they sold us. The
seller never pays the tariffs; the buyers pay the tariffs when the goods land
on our shore. It was a “big lie.”
If other nations can’t trust us, they will establish
lasting relationships with each other and leave us out. We are no longer the
leader of the free world because we encouraged the downfall of most of the
alliances that kept the relative peace for decades.
During WWII the US Office of Strategic Services
prepared a profile of the leader of Germany.
“His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off;
never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your
enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on
one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will
believe a big lie sooner than a little one, and if you repeat it frequently
enough people will sooner or later believe it.” The “big lie” strategy is effective
more times than not. When the leader of the country and his minions repeat lies
day after day that are repeated night after night of biased talk shows, people
start to believe the lie.
It is campaign time again. What could go wrong?
There has been speculation that the federal government would do what it could
to mess up the USPS so that voting-by-mail (VBM) would be ineffective. Speculation
morphed into reality when the President announced that he wouldn’t sign a bill
authorizing more money to help make VBM more effective. The head of the postal
workers union reported that mail sorting machines are not only being taken out
of service all over the country but also taken out of the buildings. The USPS
was caught removing mailboxes in Iowa neighborhoods that tend to have more Democrats.
Come to find out it was a plan to be implemented across the country until they
got caught. Forty-six states were notified that the USPS could not deliver
mail-in ballots on Election Day. The Post Master General, to his credit, told
Congress that no more machines would be removed and that all mail-in-ballots
can be processed in a timely way and delivered on time. This was and is an
example of “the big lie.” The constant repetition of the lie that VBM is a bad
thing was starting to become fact in the minds of many, irrespective of the
facts.
There have been allegations that Russia interfered
with our 2016 elections, allegations strongly denied by the President and his
campaign staff. Investigations by Special Counsel showed collusion, but the day
to day denials was accepted by much of the public and even members of
Congress. The big lie was told often and over again. This month, after a nearly
four-year investigation, the Senate Intelligence Committee published their
nearly 1,000-page report that confirmed the Russian interference in 2016
campaign and outlined what they are doing already in the 2020 election. The
bi-partisan vote was 14-1. No word from the White House yet. The “big lie”
about Putin’s denial of interference is more reliable than our intelligence
agencies blows up for all to see, but still no word from the President.
When a candidate for the presidency wins the
election, the country should accept policy changes and legislative actions to
implement their view of how America should be. Usually, the opposing party isn’t
happy with the changes, but they accept their role as the “loyal opposition”
and start working on their four-year plan to recoup the leadership.
Transparency forces me to state that I don’t like about 99% of Trump’s policies.
I don’t like the fact that he is doing much of what he said he would do. He has
reduced taxes for the richest people, he has bludgeoned laws designed to ensure
fair treatment in the workplace, reduce air pollution, put more vigilance into
the banking systems, threatened to take us out of NATO which is designed to
protect Europe from invasion by Russia, and the list goes on and on. But, there
are a lot of people who think that these policies are good things. I disagree.
The United States is no longer the leader of the
world, as we knew it. China’s aggressive influence peddling and infrastructure
programs in Africa and the Middle East outmaneuver us at every point. Germany
and France are now the go-to nations for economic stability programs. Our
approach to the COVID-19 pandemic showed how little united we are, and how
little influence the national President actually has. The George Floyd death
exposed police brutality against minorities that was hidden to too many for too
long. The economic shutdown was wasted for lack of a national program and a disregard
for science. For lack of a national program, each governor vied against the
other for PPEs and ventilators, for the most part, manufactured in China. The
‘big lie’ approach to communications put our institutions at risk.
The next election will determine the kind of country
we want to be. It will determine if we will be the shining light on the hill,
the land of the immigrant, the land of opportunity or the land that operates in a too similar fashion to the despots who rule other nationalistic but un-free
nations, most of whom came to power through the election process. Then they
rigged the voting system and keep getting re-elected. Do we really want to be
another Belarus?
[i] The New Colossus
– Emma Lazarus - 1849-1887 -
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied
pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your
poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
[ii] Wade Davis, University of British Columbia Chair of Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk – The Unraveling America – Rolling Stone, August 6, 2020
