The USA Remains Still The World’s Last Best Hope For Survival If We Wake Up!

By Donald A. Collins | 18 October 2022
Church and State

(Photo: Ramo / Flickr / CC BY-NC 2.0)

Ukraine is highlighting a fact that gets clearer daily to any knowledgeable observer.

However, the complexity of modern life with all of us fixated on our cell phones thinking we have full and accurate knowledge of everything may keep us from seeing the big picture.

What is the big picture? As my headline notes, with all its shortcomings, America is still the place where migrants want to come as our southern border influx proves.

Yes, the troubled melting pot of racial conflict seems alive and well. Just watching tv will show you not only an astonishing variety of racial representation but sadly still we experience daily attacks of powerful racism.

And the predominant racial purity of China, Japan and others no longer will help them if human life on our tiny orb can’t survive a 6th great extinction.

Are we now close to what could be an Armageddon?

The route to “saving” us citizens has increasingly been taken by those who see the political right wing as the best option.

Examples are especially well pointed out by an article entitled “Leaders of democracies increasingly echo Putin in authoritarian tilt” by Marc Fisher in the October 17th Washington Post. The names of the many right route takers offer no surprises in including China, but also mentioned are the right turning of many democracies including the USA.

And of course, if Trump and his GOP win, powerful repressions may prevail. The rabid Supreme Court is just the most notable so far of Trump’s legacies.

Fisher makes clear that the move to the right inevitably leads to repression and turmoil. Here are his words:

Recent years have brought a sharp reaction in many parts of the world, as globalization, political polarization, the rise of social media and a collapse of trust in major institutions have left many people feeling betrayed by their governments, torn apart from their careers and alone in their communities, according to historians, political scientists and sociologists who have studied these shifts in the world’s economies and governments.

The result has been a similar quest for nationalist solutions in country after country, and a growing bond among the far-right autocrats in those places. For example, Hungary’s prime minister, Victor Orban, and Italy’s likely new prime minister, Giorgia Melonic, have spoken to acclaim at gatherings of the Conservative Political Action Coalition — a group that has helped propel Trump’s movement in the United States.

“The trend we are seeing reflects a disillusionment around the world that the democratic process fails to produce effective, charismatic leaders,” said Nikolas Gvosdev, a professor of national security studies at the U.S. Naval War College. “In country after country, the idea spreads that we need strong leaders who get things done. And it’s not just in politics: We see the valorization of tech CEOs like Elon Musk as problem solvers who get the job done.”

These right-wing promisers fail to bring what they promise as Fisher tells us.

“Populist leaders “use ‘divide and conquer’ to explain everything,” Naím said. “Through identity politics, parties become like sports clubs, polarizing people into hard and fixed camps. And with the rise of social media, anything goes and people don’t know whom to believe, taking us into the post-truth era.”

In a time when governments around the world are finding it “devilishly difficult to deliver what citizens feel they deserve,” the three P’s result in a craving for the order that strongmen promise, said Naím, the author of “The Revenge of Power.”

In the United States, trust in government, business, media and other major institutions has been on the decline for decades. A pervasive sense of insecurity spread among many Americans after the 9/11 attacks, the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic upheaval, and the collapse of local communities as the internet nationalized the culture. All of that led the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance to conclude that the United States has fallen into “democratic backsliding.”

Putin has been only too happy to encourage the insecurities that lead to support for such displays of strength. The Russian president directed his government to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to undermine faith in the democratic process and to help Trump win, according to U.S. intelligence agencies. He also has latched onto controversies such as gender politics, as he did in his speech last week, “as part of a deliberate effort to destabilize the politics of Western countries,” Gvosdev said.

But the polarization and the spread of disinformation on social media that have altered American politics stemmed primarily from internal domestic changes and dislocations, not from Russia’s interference, Gvosdev said.

Read this extremely important article in full here.

However, US innovation has been and will likely in future lead to more efficient market driven results than government directed initiatives in places such as China.

Taiwan with a functioning democratic government and a vibrant market economy has become increasingly attractive to Xi Jinping. Assuming (big IF) his invasion succeeded, Xi’s gain of Taiwan’s innovation offers only temporary advantages in a technologically competitive world marketplace.

In short, the advantages of our democracy have long been proven better than the repressions of the authoritarians.

Now with our midterms upon us, we hear increasing GOP politicians’ calls for our becoming a Christian, anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-immigrant, white majority—read racist—nation.

Fortunately, we have already, because our non-punitive religious, cultural, and economic freedoms, seen the immense benefit of newcomers from all over the world.

That there here is now a US labor shortage indicates the urgent need for educational empowerment of our citizens, especially any newcomers and our less affluent citizens who are being denied access to advancement that such opportunities can provide.

This is not a call for open borders but a yet unresolved opportunity to balance our needs with fair immigration laws which all our citizens can respect.

My constant reminder to my readers has been the urgent need to address the looming crisis of too many humans worldwide, now 8 billion, doubling 4 times since 1930.

Failure to urgently address the goal of saving human life by saving all life, all flora and fauna must be further undertaken before a real Armageddon prevails.

Now with 8 billion of us grappling for Earth’s limited resources both renewable and unrenewable that can’t be sustained, restraint, resilience and resolve must be focused on the fact that continued human growth must be checked.

Do we need a new heroic leader to wash away the filth and flummery of Trump and his ilk? Not in my view. Biden is trying and the problem is more an awakening of our sleeping citizens to the greatness and resilience of our USA than anything he did not do. He has been overtaken by Ukraine, worldwide inflation, and the acidic lying by Trump and his GOP.

It is beyond high time for us citizens to wake up and NOT fly right.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?” and “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”.

Authoritarianism poses increasing threat to democracy

Why are autocrats popular? – Assault on democracy | DW Documentary

Wildlife in decline by almost 70% since 1970, says report – BBC News

United Nations: World Population Expected To Hit 8 Billion By November 2022

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