America Is A Failed State
We Americans have a 243-year history of deluding ourselves. Whether it is our uncritical acceptance of the utter myths of our creation (the Founding Fathers were one percenters whose definition of “liberty” was largely “I don’t want to pay taxes to England,” and not much else), the denial of our blood-soaked history of white supremacist colonial genocide and slavery, to the patently-false and easily dismissed idea that we’re somehow the “best country in the world,” despite literally dozens of other nations whose citizens are more free, better educated, more secure, and with a far better quality of life. We’re good at believing nonsense. This comes as no surprise — when your earliest settlers were religious extremists and petty criminals, you end up with a 21st century nation where 77% of your adult population believe in literal angels.
You might think, though, that 2020 and 2021 would have led to something of an awakening. Not in a realization of the severity of the pandemic —as many Americans have died from COVID-19 in the past 500-odd days than have been combat casualties in literally EVERY war we’ve fought in during the past 243 years — yet a solid 1/3 of our population not only denies that we’re in a pandemic, but actively fights against any mitigating public health efforts. No, the realization which needs to occur is Americans coming to grips with the undeniable: Our nation is a failed state, unable to provide even the most basic protections of a society.
There has largely been no concerted Federal response to the pandemic — not just under the horrific abdication of any responsibility during the Trump years, but a set of half-measures from the supposedly more responsible Biden administration. A functioning nation would have shut down until the vaccines were available, paying all citizens their full salaries to stay home. A functioning nation would have nationalized Amazon & Walmart to no-contact deliver groceries and other staples during the shutdown. Hell, ours couldn’t even be bothered to keep our pandemic response teams staffed.
When the government did act, it was to provide billions of dollars to corporations, who, despite our “booming economy” being in the longest bull market in history, were unable to sustain themselves for TWO WEEKS before needing to be bailed out. This is an obvious red flag that our entire economy is a sham — and yet, nobody seems to be talking about the fact that the Emperor has no clothes.
Americans have been fed such constant anti-tax extremism that most of us seem to be utterly unaware of what a country should do for it’s citizens. We’ve come to expect nothing, and nothing is what we get. Our country does not provide health care. The richest country in the world has millions without homes, without food, without hope — and a surplus of empty homes. It’s obscene, and yet we shrug. 50 years of purposeful strangulation of the working class in favor of the top keeping more and more, and we don’t even get angry any more. We’re beaten down.
We are nickle-and-dimed, forced to pay out of pocket for the things which our taxes should pay for. What do we get for our taxes? We get an empire. The largest military budget in the world by a factor of 300%. Bases all over the globe, which do nothing to make the lives of citizens here at home any better. A reputation as the most warlike country in history, spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually to train and equip a military that has been humiliated again and again by poor insurgents for the past half-century. Yet there is no serious discussion of dismantling our empire. None. There isn’t even any serious discussion of holding our military budget where it is, let alone reducing it. Every budget, they get more.
The country is incapable of protecting its citizens. It leaves us open to the ravages of a pandemic. It has police forces that our own FBI warned — FIFTEEN YEARS AGO — have been infiltrated by white supremacist extremists… and nothing is done. When those police forces openly work with fascist paramilitary groups, and gun down citizens with impunity, protests are met with jackbooted violence… and nothing is done. Our so-called 2nd Amendment “patriots” need to ask themselves — in a nation where an agent of the state can murder you with no consequences, simply by claiming that they were in fear for their life… do you REALLY have the right to bear arms? Perhaps you should ask Philando Castile.
The country is incapable of protecting our most basic right in a democracy: our right to vote. The Republican Party has decided that it cannot win fair elections, and so has moved to prevent their opponents from being able to vote. This is after the last Republican President claimed without evidence that his election loss was fraudulent, and literally led domestic terrorists in an attempted coup, followed by more than half of the elected Republicans voting hours later in support of that coup. Say it with me now: nothing is done. There has been no urgency from the Democrats to protect voting rights, or even to hold the domestic terrorists accountable. Openly insurrectionist Republicans still sit in our Legislature, and the doddering geriatrics of our government do nothing, clinging to the yacht-club chumminess of collegiality and the ridiculous dream of “bipartisanship.”
There is literally no function of government that is actually working for the citizens. None. It’s time to face the fact that our system is irrevocably broken, and America has become a failed state — it’s already dead, it just hasn’t stopped moving yet.
I used to hope for the Democrats to recognize the urgency and act. Now, a little more than a year out from the midterms, I don’t hope any more.
Now I wait for the first states to realize that to provide for and protect their citizens, they need to secede and become a nation. I fear that it may already be too late.
