USA in the World

Fifty-seven years after Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech, thousands of black Americans turned out on the same Washington Mall to reaffirm that ‘Black Lives Matter’ on Saturday, August 29th, setting off speculation that the country may be descending into a kind of civil war.

The United States, in the fourth year of the Trump presidency, is in near anarchy.
On April 29, 2020, a 600-car caravan, mostly trucks, from the ‘suburbs’ of Portland, Oregon, drove through town on what was ostensibly a Trump political rally.
Demonstrating in town, and at this time no one is sure exactly what is being demonstrated for or against, were a few hundred “stragglers.”  The real demonstrations had ended some time ago, moved on elsewhere.

The world community is being transformed. The current pandemic is only another phase of a metamorphosis set in motion decades ago. The intersection of our physical and digital lives is the battleground, where the last hopes of freedom are being bludgeoned to death. Few can see this because most people are already casualties the old world order sacrificed before the altar of liberty.

Two weeks ago, to halt demonstrations against police brutality, President Trump dispatched federal troops, as well as private military contractors, to Portland, Oregon, raising fears of authoritarianism. Now, the Republican controlled Senate is refusing to extend relief for workers forced to stay home due to the Covid pandemic, setting the stage for more demonstrations that would ‘justify’ sending federal troops to more cities — especially those controlled by Democrats, as the President threatens.

Voter behaviour is not really so complicated. I once even took a course in it; about all that I can remember is that the “incumbent and name recognition is all that really matters” in getting re-elected, especially for a US President.

The city of Minneapolis is where it all began. It is where the last drop fell on the surface of a proverbial overflowing lake, causing the dam to burst, consequently starting to destroy the foundations of the empire.
A death of just one single man can, under certain dreadful circumstances, put into motion the entire avalanche of events. It can smash the whole regime into pieces. It can fully rewrite history, and even change the identity of a nation. It can… although it not always does.

Am I about to suggest that space flights affect the climate? No, the link is between the race to space and the deterioration of planet earth as a human habitat.

One of the advantages of liberal democracy is that there is a greater separation of powers in that system than a dictatorship, or the pseudo-democracies run by oligarchs behind the scenes, can ever have. Governments can be forced to answer to parliaments, even when they don’t want to, and judiciaries can act according to law rather than government dictate.