Americans are angry. I suspected they would be, but it got confirmations of it in Miami, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Minneapolis, New York, and Boston. Basically, everywhere I went while “taking pulse and temperature” of this country where I used to live, cumulatively, for much more than a decade.
“What is your job?” Shouted an African-American lady, right in the middle of the Union Station in the nation’s capital. Obviously, it was a rhetorical question, as she almost immediately answered her own query: “There are no jobs!”
Mr. Floyd got murdered by perverse, sadistic police officers. The economy is collapsing, at least for the poor and the middle class. The COVID-19 pandemic is like a rollercoaster, up and down, up and down, with no end in sight.
People are confused, while the government is increasingly aggressive. Much of the so-called “progressive media” is suddenly not behaving progressively at all. Racism is sometimes fought against with brand new types of racism. Anti-racist movements get periodically infiltrated by the extreme right-wing groups, as I witnessed in Minneapolis.
The US government is basically attacking countries like China, Venezuela, and Iran. Not just verbally, but militarily. And the reason why our world is not in the middle of WWIII, yet, is because of tremendous restrain and wisdom of the US adversaries.
***
At home, no jobs, no coherent policy on how to fight against the COVID-19, and no national unity in the moment of disaster.
What I have been witnessing so far were some jerky, inconsistent moves on the part of the governments (the federal and the state ones), as well as the ensuing confusion, half-hearted, and patchy solutions. Quite the opposite of what I experienced in Asia, be it in socialist China and Vietnam, but also in the far from the socialist nations such as Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines.
Just a quick reality check, and it becomes clear that the US system already failed, squarely and patently: 30 million people out of jobs since the pandemic began. Three million infected, and probably, by now, much more. Over 130.000 US citizens lost their lives. Of course, it all depends on how the total number of victims is calculated. Still, no matter how it is done, even if the lowest numbers are correct, the United States is the most affected country on Earth, which is an absolute shame, considering that it is still one of the richest.
The Trump Administration is, of course, aware of all this, and just a few months before the Presidential elections, it is desperately searching for someone else to blame for this enormous national disaster. The President and his men are frantically pointing fingers in all directions: from China (P.R.C.) to the World Health Organization (WHO). From the Communist Party of China, from President Maduro to the US state governors and those very few “disobedient” members of the mass media who still dare, at least occasionally, to challenge the official narrative.
Conspiracy theories are abundant. Demonstrations and protests are taking place all over the nation. In New York City, the murder rate is up. Sirens are howling. People are uttering clichés: “Follow the money,” I hear everywhere.
Who to blame? Inept regime? Monstrous outdated capitalism? Corporatism? Shitty education system? People don’t now. While ‘false prophets’ are thriving.
Government, mass media, as well as a great majority of the so-called ‘progressive’ media (do not confuse it with left-wing media, which hardly exists in the United States), are blaming socialist China, and they are blaming Russia, Iran, and other independent-minded countries.
***
This is clearly a political fight. The pandemic is there, of course, but for the White House, it is nothing else other than background noise. The US regime is fighting for its survival. Trump is clashing with various foreign countries, those which have a real, left-wing ideology.
Much is at stake. The entire survival of the system is now in question. If this terrible scheme collapsed, the whole world would rejoice; it would benefit. But the majority of North Americans would lose. Even those who like to paint themselves as ‘progressives’ or ‘different ‘or “also victims.” And so, there are thousands of conspiracies aimed at discrediting the rage which followed the killing of Mr. Floyd. There are countless theories about the origins of the pandemic, as well as its management, or, more precisely, mismanagement.
For both the Trump and his Democratic Party opponents, it is absolutely essential to discredit morally and socially much more successful countries like China, Russia, even Cuba.
Monstrous propaganda tsunami has been unleashed in the United States, but also the UK It is unprecedented and overwhelming. Alternative voices are silenced. Censorship, even amongst the so-called ‘alternative’ Western publications, is becoming bulletproof. And it all happened literally overnight. While my essays used to be reprinted just 2-3 months ago by at least 20 major outlets in the United States and Canada, now it is at most five who dare. My internationalist, left-wing angle did not change at all. But their true colors got exposed. But my work has been gaining great support in non-Western countries. This says a lot about the situation!
But back to Trump. He is attacking foreign countries, horrified that people could notice how optimistic and compassionate some other nations are. But he is also antagonizing those who are now bringing down statues, symbols, of Western bigots, genocidal cadres, slave owners, and conquerors. Not to mention the health officials, who dare to paint bleak (read: realistic) picture, and urging him to put people’s interests above those of the economy, particularly the private sector.
On July 8, 2020, CNN reported:
“Five months into a still-raging pandemic that has killed more than 130,000 Americans, the long-simmering tensions between President Donald Trump and the health experts who staff his government have escalated from private griping to shrugging disagreement to now open dispute.
The result, people at those agencies say, is a new sense of demoralization as they continue their attempts to fight a once-in-a-generation health crisis while simultaneously navigating the whims of a President who has shown little interest or understanding of their work.
That Trump does not trust nor follow the advice of experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, is hardly new. The President has not attended a meeting of his coronavirus task force in months, and recently its sessions have been held outside the White House, including on Wednesday at the headquarters of the Department of Education. Fauci was told to participate in the meeting remotely by videoconference, preventing him from participating in a midday task force press briefing…”
Precisely, nothing new. Except that even CNN, one of the mouthpieces of the regime, is finally noticing! It is all about spreading nihilism, on both domestic and foreign fronts.
China is getting attacked in the most extreme, unreasonable, and even bizarre fashion by both President Trump and his team, but also by their adversaries. After winning the fight against the COVID-19, the P.R.C. has been blamed for virtually everything, from withholding data, negatively influencing the WHO, and even for the manufacturing of the virus in one of its laboratories based in Wuhan, and then spreading it everywhere, afterward. “Chinese Virus,” the White House has been calling it, while no one knows yet for certain, where it actually really originated. Naturally, Beijing and entire China have been indignant.
None of the US government accusations have been proven. Allegations after allegations have been ridiculed by the US medical, scientific community, and often by the academia. But the administration already went too far, and it is clearly unable to stop its own attacks anymore. It ignores ridicule, hoping that its macho, vulgar and provincial rhetoric would appeal to certain group of uneducated, extremist part of the population, and win him the second term.
Analyzing the uprising which followed the murder of Mr. George Floyd (who happened to be COVID-19 positive), I spoke to dozens of Americans of all races and social standings. The majority of them have been outraged by the government’s handling of the epidemy and the unrest. Not one person that I spoke to actually blamed China or any other foreign country, directly, for the dire situation in the United States.
Anti-Chinese rhetoric is clearly a political football played by both Republicans and Democrats. The same goes for the anti-Russian sentiments, including belittlement of the Russian foreign aid sent to the United States, at the very beginning of the pandemic.
The strategy of the US government is simple; some would say primitive: “Whatever terrible is happening inside the country, just counterattack and blame everything on the political opponents, and if you can’t, attack the foreign countries; China, Russia, even Iran or Venezuela. Or the United Nations agencies, like WHO. Send insults to all corners of the world, but also the battleships.”
There is much that is going wrong in the US, very, very wrong. Tents with homeless people could now be spotted all around the downtown Washington D.C. The White House has been converted into a fortress. And while millions of American people are marching, protesting against the endemic racism and discrimination, the KKK and its affiliates like Proud Boys, are burning cities and infiltrating legitimate anti-racist demonstrations (something that I will soon be addressing in my essays).
Images are apocalyptic. The situation is explosive.
This is one of the most dangerous moments in world history. But, shockingly, not much is being written about the urgency and threat which our planet is facing!
Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He’s the creator of Vltchek’s World in Word and Images, and a writer that has penned a number of books, including China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries Saving Millions of Lives. He writes especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”