“Descending great power”
The American crisis, exacerbated by civil unrest, disease, poverty, Chaos: Despite all the innovations and digital wonders is the American society in a deep crisis. She was in sight. Opinion Martin Kilian, Washington 1 Kommentar1Der the outbreak of the disease has aggravated the already precarious situation for black America.Keystone/Bebeto Matthews
In January 2019 Martin Dahinden, the outgoing Swiss Ambassador in Washington, criticised, indirectly, the media coverage of the United States. Since the sixties, gives the impression “that the United States makes a descending Major,” said the Diplomat. The absolute peak would be achieved in the country, however, “services”, the universities are world class and the products are innovative.
The objection might be entitled to, and reflected, however, only a part of the American reality. Because the depth of the crisis that is unfolding now in the Corona epidemic and, among other things, to the unrest and riots in U.S. cities, manifested in your Outlined in January 2019 already seen.
So Facebook, Google and Apple incident: The American life expectancy has declined, millions of Desperate and Suspended were opiate-dependent, tens of thousands died per year. Alcohol abuse was widespread, about 30 000 Americans have lost their lives due to firearms, either by their own Hand, or murder. And about 40 percent of the population was obese, what is the American death-drives now in the times of the Corona pathogen rate up.
Firmed Extreme
The political System did not work long before 2019: polarisation and mutual distrust prevented urgent reforms, confidence in social and governmental institutions was badly shaken. The political center to the Extreme were stronger.
The history of the country since 2000, was marked by the rise of the digital wonder of the world. It was also marked by the botched presidential election in 2000, by the Terror of 9/11 and the disastrous Intervention in Iraq for the price of two trillion dollars. And from the Horror of the flood disaster in New Orleans in 2005 and the Great recession of 2008.
The desolate American state in the spring of 2020 has therefore deep roots. One of them is the refusal of the Obama administration to pull the perpetrators of the financial crash of 2008, both politically and legally for the responsibility. Millions of Americans were getting poorer, many lost their homes, while at the top of the wealth and, with it, the grotesque inequality of American society continued to grow.
Also this time, billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg will be even richer. The economic downturn affecting, however, have over 40 million unemployed, including many minorities. Before the Department store chain J. C. Penney filed for bankruptcy and thousands of employees dismissed, helped Top management to dollar million. The same thing happened at the rental car company Hertz. Surely it will happen elsewhere, if the expected bankruptcy wave is coming.
An arc of the inhumanity
The most of the Corona-crisis-hit are the front-line soldiers of the disease of capitalism, including a disproportionately high number of Latinos and African-Americans. You die, you get sick more often, their economic future is more uncertain than ever. And now unrest to put over the symptoms of a long-ailing company, a new race, once again triggered by the Brutality and the death of an African-American in police custody.
Of lynching in the American South in the fifties and sixties of the last century about the murder of Martin Luther King, of the serious unrest in 1991 in Los Angeles, in the Wake of police violence against Rodney King on the fatal shot to Michael Brown in 2014 in Ferguson to George Floyd’s Die in Minneapolis in the last week an arc of inhumanity stretched.
protests degenerated in several U.S. cities, including Atlanta.Photo: Lev Radin/Anadolu Agency/
in addition, deadly attacks by right-wing radicals were in the last few years, increasingly On a synagogue in Pittsburgh, an African-American Church in Charleston, and Latinos in Texas El Paso.
Institution without a moral instance
The fabric of the American society held together, is not only since the beginning of Donald trump’s brittle. But his reaction to the onslaught of armed right-wing radical in Charlottesville in August of 2017, signalling that the presidency as a unifying Institution and a moral authority existed. It was cancelled by a President who warned on Saturday with a view to protesters in front of the White house, he was protected by “the most vicious dogs”, and “the ominous weapons I’ve ever seen”.
The American project is always unfinished, a historical work, with UPS and Downs. The events of this spring are once more an indication that, for many Americans of unlimited possibilities is very limited have become. Unrest, warned Dr. King, were “the voices of those who are not heard”. Despite all the progress made since king’s civil rights movement, black America remains in a precarious position, made worse by the outbreak of a disease.
A half-century after James Baldwin denounced in his essay “The Fire Next Time” racism and black life of uncertainty, but at the same time to a reconciliation of White and Black had hoped for, must be in Minneapolis the national guard to maintain peace. What cities is happening there and in other U.S., announced a long time ago. Unavoidably, it was not foreseeable, however, already.
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