‘Will the sane America please stand up - the world needs you’

Picture credit: Filip Bunkens

The Accidental Diplomat, a column by Paul Knott

American carnage and how to fix it

The comedian Frank Skinner once remarked that “there are two little words you can add to any story which will make me believe it is true, no matter how ridiculous it seems. Those two words are ‘…in America’.” Right now, the United States is providing plenty of reasons to regard it as the land of lunacy.

The lack of serious action to stop the horrific recent spate of mass shootings, and the less-publicised death toll of over a hundred people killed every day by guns, is clearly madness. It is also a sign of a failing state – one that cannot fulfil its most basic responsibility of protecting its people by controlling the use of force. Instead, the US remains paralysed from acting to prevent gun violence by people who prioritise the supposed right to own military assault rifles over children’s right to life.

The hypocrisy of the politicians who enable mass murder is highlighted by many of them also claiming to be “pro-life” when it comes to banning abortion, a step that will lead to the deaths of women prevented from accessing safe medical procedures or who experience complications in pregnancy. The recent Supreme Court decision to remove women’s right to decide what to do with their own bodies renders America’s “land of the free” claim somewhat hollow. Indeed, a decision largely driven by those who have twisted their religious beliefs in order to inflict their views on others is more reminiscent of the Afghan Taliban.

The common factor underlying these two awful situations is a broken political system. For decades, far-right radicals have enhanced their power through financial support from a group of wealthy backers and ruthless manipulation of mass media to shift the political debate.

This ruthlessness enabled the extremists to seize control of the once cautiously conservative Republican party and turn it into a destroyer of established democratic norms and institutions. By acquiring many state-level political and official positions, these Republicans have grabbed the power to rig electoral districts in their favour and restrict their opponents’ ability to vote.

The Republican extremists have also targeted voters in more rural states with smaller populations to take advantage of a system in which all states, regardless of size, elect two Senators to the upper house of Congress (the US parliament). Executing this plan has secured them huge power without needing to attract the support of a majority of the electorate. This power includes the ability to stack the courts with judges who do their political bidding, rather than impartially implement the law. These tactics have enabled Republicans to override the wishes of the clear majority of Americans who favour gun control and abortion rights.

CASTS A LONG SHADOW: Former President Donald Trump. Picture credit: Library of Congress

The extent of America’s political failure was epitomised by Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election he lost to Joe Biden. The Congressional Committee currently investigating the events of January 6, 2021, is convincingly proving how Trump and his cronies prompted the violent insurrection as part of their plot to overthrow American democracy. It remains to be seen whether the Committee will succeed in the more difficult task of shifting some of the millions of people trapped in their cult-like refusal to believe the evidence of their own eyes and ears.

There are multiple reasons as to why lots of Americans beyond the hardcore Trumpist minority are seemingly tolerating this dangerous threat to their country. But two stand out. One is the sheer scale of the place. Many Americans are lulled into complacency by the comfortable and enjoyable everyday lives they are leading. In such a big country, this can make the extremism, political turmoil and lives of those living at the sharp end of the consequences seem more distant and less urgent than they do to those of us far away, who see little else of America through our screens.

The other reason is the US’s fatal flaw. Most nations have one of these. Britain’s is its inability to realise a posh public school accent and intellectual ability are not the same thing. America’s is its fixation on money. Another great comedian, Bill Hicks’ riff-launching comment that “not everything of value in this world comes with a price tag attached” is less of a statement of the obvious in the US than elsewhere.

In the case of many working people this financial fixation is understandable. The US is a country where the daily distances travelled are large, public transport (beyond a handful of cities) barely exists and the social safety net is wholly inadequate. For these folks, the cost-of-living matters above all else because not being able to afford petrol for their car means not being able to work and put food on the table. This makes some of them (notably those whites who find they can ignore or even support the Republican extremists’ racism) vulnerable to appeals from politicians making bogus promises to fix the situation, rather than those like the Democrats currently in office who are demonstrably failing to do so.

The better off have less excuse. When the American carnage unleashed by the Republicans finally ruins their country and reaches their doorsteps, the marginally lower tax rates they thought they were voting for will seem pretty meaningless after all.

Those of us on this side of the Atlantic should also be concerned about this craziness because we will all suffer if a country as uniquely important to the world as the US falls apart.

SACRIFICE: Americans gave their lives to deliver Europe from tyranny. Picture credit: Thomas Bormans

Despite being tarnished by its many wrong turns along the way, the US remains an inspiring human enterprise - a country built on taking in a wildly diverse collection of the world’s poor, huddled masses and turning them into a broadly cohesive whole. In return for contributing to this collective success, most of these new arrivals and their descendants have received the opportunity to lead better lives than they would have had in the countries they left behind.

Culturally, many of the things most of us enjoy have a strong American imprint, from music to movies and modern technological marvels. And from a more mercenary perspective, the US is still the world’s biggest economy. If it catches the economic equivalent of Covid, then we are all coming down with it.

Most viscerally, we need America’s support to keep us safe from our own lunacies. As I travel around Europe, I am often struck by the multitude of American war cemeteries. These contain the many graves of Americans who came to help us fight off the Nazis. It was not entirely in their own interests to make that sacrifice and we would have succumbed to Hitler without them. Every day we have lived in freedom ever since is a reason to thank the USA for what it did.

Something similar is happening again now. Countries like Britain long boosted the Putin regime by eagerly stashing away its stolen money and buying ever more of its oil and gas, even while Russia was using nuclear and chemical weapons to kill opponents like Alexander Litvinenko and innocent bystanders such as Dawn Sturgess on our soil. As our craven lack of resistance made inevitable, the neo-fascists in the Kremlin are now threatening our security more directly. And it is America that is providing most of the funds and weapons to help the brave Ukrainians fight off Russia’s brutal war criminals on our behalf.

For all our sakes, we need this story to end with enough people “in America” waking up in time to use their rights to speak freely, protest and vote to defeat the Republican extremists while they still can.