I grew up in India — a country so corrupt that you can get away with anything if you have the means and right connections. All levels of government, from cops on the street to members of parliament, are inept. Indian bureaucracy is so oppressive, it’s exponentially more efficient to pay someone in order to get things done. I didn’t know much about life in America when I moved here in the early 2000s — most of what I had been exposed to was what I had witnessed on vacation and what I had seen on American TV. As a new insider, I thought that the American government was efficient and it had its shit together. Oh boy, how wrong I was…
Donald Trump is uniquely unqualified to be the president of the United States. Prior to his appointment in 2016, he was an adulterer, had no prior political experience, was the co-founder of a fraudulent university, had a foundation that was allegedly used to evade taxes, the list goes on and on… Trump ran his campaign on the claim that he would “drain the swamp” and rid Washington of corruption. He has done the exact opposite. Every day, Trump does and says things that should enrage us, while helping himself and those closest to him. The GOP now serves Trump and his faithful, loyal allies. It has gotten to the point where most Americans are desensitized to his actions and some wait nervously for the next egregious thing that is going to come out of his mouth. Most recently, he fired the independent watchdog in charge of overseeing where $500B of OUR taxpayer money goes. Any bets where that money will end up? Most likely in the pockets of Trump and his allies. He is so shameless and open with his disregard for the rules because he is protected by a spineless senate and DOJ. It’s almost like they’re telling us: “Yeah, we’re breaking the law. What are you going to do about it?” He even openly said that if everyone in this country voted, we’d never have a Republican in office ever again. The US Postal Service needs ~$630B to stay afloat, yet Trump threatened to veto the CARES Act if there was any help for the Postal Service. The CEO of FedEx was one of his donors, and USPS makes it easy to vote by mail — coincidence? You tell me.
Trump disbanded the pandemic response team in 2018 to reassign those funds elsewhere and his dithering on COVID-19 was motivated by his desire to not spook the stock market (one of the pillars that he has been relying on for his re-election campaign). That indecision has already cost tens of thousands of American lives, millions of jobs, and billions (soon to be trillions) of dollars in stock market and economic losses. Every day, in an attempt to placate his base, he manages to outdo himself in his press conferences by blathering and making dubious claims that are factually incorrect. He thinks reopening the economy will fix the stock market — but how will people go to work if they’re dead? Most recently, I read an article where he claimed that COVID is a “brilliant enemy” that is dangerous because “antibiotics can’t keep up with it.” Antibiotics — on a virus. Let that level of incompetence sink in.
I think America’s problems run deeper than Donald Trump, our gaslighting president who prefers playing golf over being present in the Oval Office. He is a petulant narcissist at the helm of a ship that is rotting from the inside out and the infestation is finally being revealed to the rest of the world. COVID has really hurt America’s reputation on a global scale. America is no longer considered a safe and trustworthy ally. I think the deep rooted issue that has caused a lot of our problems is unfettered capitalism. Companies and people are so obsessed with personal gain and wealth, that the most important qualities of our society including basic human decency and rights fall by the wayside. America is run by a group of unsavory CEOs who are far removed from the financial reality of the typical American and who frankly don’t care if the average citizen lives or dies. Why are we bailing out airlines and cruise companies (cruise companies that don’t even have their headquarters in the US for tax reasons), only to neglect the everyday people who need the money to survive? The for profit healthcare system is causing states and hospitals to outbid each other for basic supplies — doctors and nurses who are putting themselves at risk to treat us are wearing trash bags and reusing masks. Do people not see a problem with this?
I read recently that if the American economy shuts down for two months, the average American will still work around the same number of hours as someone in Germany would over 12 months. Germany, known for its efficiency, is the third largest exporter in the world (the country is around 1/4 as populated as the US). Some not-so-flattering areas where the US leads the world: obesity, incarcerations, illegal drug usage, COVID deaths, and shootings, just to name a few. In 2020, the average minimum wage is $11/hour. If the minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it’d be around $20/hour. A chunk of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and live in a system that is designed to keep them exactly where they are. Healthcare is broken to the point where people ration insulin because they can’t afford to keep buying it, food companies exploit people’s ignorance and lace food with antibiotics and refined sugars, and the for profit education system riddles students with debt for most of their adult lives. Again, the list of issues is too long. While Boeing is under fire for endangering people’s lives to further the interests of its shareholders, is is by no means the only company to do so. Look at pharmaceutical companies who knowingly manufactured harmful, addictive opioids and aggressively encouraged sales to profit billions; look at Nestle trying to privatize the supply of water; look at GM dismantling the LA public transport system just so they could sell more cars, pollute the world, and raise their bottom line. These are systemic problems that go beyond Donald Trump. These problems prove that there when left unchecked, capitalism ends up doing more long-term harm than good.
America, while boasting the largest economy in the world and the largest military on the planet, comes in at #18 on the list of happiest countries in the world. We think that the concept of socialism is taboo and offensive, yet we don’t see the irony when the government has to bail out farmers, Wall Street, airlines, and cruise companies — where does that money come from? (Hint: it’s our taxpayer money.) Is that not “selective socialism” to help out a select few rather than the 99%? Canada, with universal healthcare, has had under 1,000 COVID related deaths. New Zealand has had TWO. Instead of improving the might of our military, why don’t we hold ourselves to a higher standard and try to lead both happier and simpler lives? There needs to be a fundamental shift in the way America thinks and functions for its people. Our system is broken, and it might already be too late to fix, but it’s better to go down fighting than to not try at all.
PS: I welcome comments and dialogue if you disagree with my point of view. Please try to keep things civil.
