Is the United States having a breakdown?
Even with things in the United Kingdom not looking particularly rosy at the moment, when I look over the pond at what’s currently happening in the United States, I get particularly worried. The COVID-19 pandemic is clearly an unprecedented crisis, and very few governments have dealt with it in an exemplary way. However the United States is, and has always been particularly vulnerable to pandemics due to its lack of universal healthcare. This is also exacerbated by the lack of paid leave due to sickness.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, it is claimed that most Americans couldn’t afford a $500 emergency, and homelessness was skyrocketing. Now with unemployment at a record 15%, and expected to get worse over coming months, many Americans are losing their health benefits just when they need them the most; the fissures of inequality in American society have never been so visible.
Taking a moment to look at the President’s behaviour, we see the typical patterns of a nation falling into isolation. Trump’s America First initiative seeks to put the needs of American workers above those of the rest of the world. This is totally understandable given the levels of personal debt in America. However this hides a much deeper problem, only exacerbated by the Trump administration’s policies, such as their cornerstone tax cuts for the wealthy, which only worsened already appalling inequality statistics.
But it’s Trump’s behaviour on the international stage that I want to take a closer look at. At the time of writing Trump has withdrawn the United States from at least the following treaties:
● The Iran Nuclear Deal (also known as the JCPOA)
● The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty
● The Open Skies arms control accord
The Trump administration has also withdrawn funding from a number of international aid organisations, including:
● The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)
● The World Health Organisation (WHO)
And I want to take a moment to draw parallels with what happened here in the United Kingdom with Brexit. At the peak of the Brexit negotiation hysteria, Europeans accepted that the United Kingdom had become a ‘sick patient’ — having lost touch with reality, pulling away from its closest trading partners and making repeated unreasonable demands.
I believe this analogy can now be applied to the United States, especially as suicide rates begin to dramatically increase and with the record numbers of mass shooting events, including two on the same day just this week.
Looking ahead we see an upcoming election between Donald Trump and the Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden; someone often perceived as a lame duck candidate; someone who is clearly struggling with his cognitive functioning at the ripe old age of 77, and someone who it is believed has very little chance of beating Trump. And let’s not forget that, awaiting a failed re-election campaign for Trump, are an army of lawyers looking to make up for lost time with the Mueller and impeachment trial outcomes, which he has been largely insulated from during his presidency. Trump is not going to go without a fight. And that leaves America in a dire situation — another four years of a Trump presidency, whilst a rising China begins to take centre stage …
