"We often think that what we should be waiting for is fascists and
communists marching in the streets, but nowadays, the ways democracies
often die is through legal things at the ballot box — so things that can
be both legal and antidemocratic at the same time."
"Politicians use the letter of
the law to subvert the spirit of the law."
Daniel
Ziblatt, political scientist, Harvard University
 |
| Reuters President Joe Biden |
"Our democracy held. We the people endured. We the people prevail. For
the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election
-- he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob
breached the Capitol."
"But they failed. They failed. And on this day of
remembrance, we must make sure that such an attack never, never happens
again."
U.S. President Joe Biden
"The American spirit is being tested. The answer to whether we will
meet that test resides where it always has resided in our country, with
you, the people. And the work ahead will not be easy. Here in this very
building, a decision will be made about whether we uphold the right to
vote, and ensure free and fair elections. Let's be clear. We must pass
voting rights bills that are now before the Senate and the American
people must also do something more."
"We cannot sit on the sidelines, we must unite in defense of our democracy."
"In
order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic
tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare
and secure Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and to our prosperity and
posterity."
"That is the preamble of the Constitution that President
Biden and I swore an oath to uphold and defend and that is the enduring
promise of the United States of America."
U.S.Vice-President Kamala Harris
Have
Americans ever been more polarized? The promise of a great
coming-together with the election of a Black President in Barack Obama
held great promise; if America could finally yield to the premise in
their own Constitution that "all men are born equal",
recognize the leadership quality in a bi-racial American, bring him to
executive office and anticipate a rebirth of the nation, a cleansing of
the past, a bi-partisan Congress to advance the United States of America
into the future, the world's ills could also be solved.
"Yes we can" was the optimistic spirit of the time, but "Yes we did"
failed to come to fruition. Under the Obama administration the
Democrats and Republicans gave short shrift to working together,
surrendering opposing ideology for the good of the whole. The response
to two terms of an Obama administration gave birth to a Republican
presidency introducing the world to uncertainty and the spontaneity of
an uncouth character shattering the comfort of the West to be by a
stable, resolute mind of intelligent repute.
That
single term led to a completion of the polarization of values held dear
by Americans who had cultivated the myth of standing strong together
against the evil empires of the world, leading the free world to
victory, and the unfree world to democracy. With the consequential
election of an aging Democratic leader of uncertain virtues mindful of
the creeping influence of vociferous progressive voices hating the
America that is and urging on an America that never was, a series of
judgement failures has voters howling in rage.
Illegal
aliens stream into the United states; over 1.7million in 2021. A
fearsome epidemic of looting and record-breaking levels of killing
splurges across major urban centres with a dozen major cities breaking
annual homicide numbers in 2021. Black Lives Matter which rampaged and
rioted with the death by police mishandling for a minor misdemeanor lit
the fuse of public rage that turned to trepidation when Black criminals
became untouchable even by Black police chiefs and Black mayors.
The
mantra of 'defund the police' gained traction, demoralizing police
forces who stood back giving free rein to the civil threats, the looting
and pillaging, the street violence suddenly unleashed in numbers barely
imagined. The racial tensions that the killing of George Floyd
resonated throughout the world, his death and ignominy brought to U.S.
society on the global stage had his visage writ large as the ultimate
U.S. victim, a symbol for all Black Americans, stinging U.S. pride in
itself as a just society ridden with Black crime.
Gun
sales surged as society became further estranged in the countless
deaths caused by an unseen plague out of China flooding the world and
extracting from the United States record death numbers. That same United
States mounted a scientific defense through its fabled enterprise in
science and entrepreneurship counter-flooding the world with life-saving
vaccines against a pathogen that refuses to be tamed. And then the
Biden administration shocked itself and its allies by its cowardly
withdrawal from Afghanistan, leaving the vulnerable in the clutches of
the Taliban.
57
percent of Americans polled by Fox disapprove of their new president's
focus on and response to crime; 80 percent are extremely concerned over
the crime surge, with 21 percent placing the blame on a "breakdown of
moral values", with 15 percent feeling weakened criminal penalties the
cause, 13 percent the availability of guns and 12 percent decreased
police funding as reasons for unprecedented crime levels plaguing
American society.
 |
| Andrew Harnik/AP Rioters gather outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on Jan 6, 2021 |
Little wonder Republicans still gather around the promise of a returned
Trump administration in 2024. Donald Trump had a single term as
president before he was vaulted out of the position as most powerful
person in the world community; president of the great United States of
America. President Joe Biden stands a fairly good chance of celebrating
one pathetic term in office before he too is ushered out of the Oval
Office, having done perhaps more than his share of humiliating his
countrymen and women and baffling America's foreign allies.
Close
to two-thirds of independents fail approval of the Biden administration
on all counts. In 2021 more Americans perished from COVID than did in
2020 under the previous administration. Hispanics, most of whom voted
Democrat, no longer approve of their management of the nation's needs.
America, no longer a civil-minded nation, where crime and violence are
taking over the streets as lawlessness prevails past the 'defund the
police' demands, is in peril, and its allies and friends look on with
alarm and sorrow.
But there is guaranteed satisfaction in the
situation from other sources. From countries that have presented as
potential harbingers of global destabilization, countries whose
ideological roots and pervasive antagonism to the West and to the
democratic ideal, look on with both disbelief and curiosity and no small
amount of gloating as they see internal discord and societal breakdown
within America as it tries desperately to find its moderate middle and a
return to sanity.
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