United States, no more. It is a failed state

Manifest destiny: but the US is besieged by problems. Picture: AFP

Once upon a time there was a magic kingdom. No, that’s Disneyland. A magic republic. Proud of its constitution and believing in manifest destiny. Then something went wrong and it lived unhappily ever after. To be more accurate, a lot of things went wrong, and like many an imperial power before it – from the Romans to the British and the Soviets – it fell. The United States no more. It is a failed state.

A departing president, once a warrior, warned the people in 1961 that their nation was in the grip of what he called “the military-industrial complex” – an unholy alliance of the most vested of interests that has kept the US at war for most of its history; wars mostly on the wrong side of history. But it had been at war with itself even earlier: the so-called American Civil War that cost more than 600,000 deaths. A war fought largely over slavery, the great atrocity perpetrated on four million Africans – at a time when the total population was about the same as Australia’s. It’s a war that rages to this day, as judged by the ongoing destruction of black lives and mass incarceration.

And there are ongoing mass shootings – 246 of them in the first 22 weeks of this year alone, all too often involving schoolchildren – as a direct consequence of a wilful misreading of the sacred US Constitution orchestrated by an all-powerful terrorist organisation called the National Rifle Association, which turns politicians into puppets. America’s citizens own 400 million guns, and not even presidential assassinations or Sandy Hooks or Uvaldes will lead to significant disarming.

While living children remain targets, unborn children will be “protected”. Thanks to a Supreme Court stacked by Republicans, abortion will be re-criminalised. Already red states are passing legislation that will charge doctors and pregnant women as murderers. It won’t stop desperate women seeking abortions. It will simply make these procedures far, far more dangerous. In many senses of the word.

On the one hand US science gave us the most effective Covid treatments. On the other the Trump regime so bungled its response to the pandemic that more than a million people died. And Washington DC is the HQ for the climate change denialism that dooms millions more. Where once many in the world looked to the US for leadership, now the country shocks and awes us with its fatal and fanatical stupidities. (Covid? “Drink detergent,” said Putin’s puppet president. Democracy? “Drink my Kool-Aid.”)

America’s death rows are full of men, mainly of colour, awaiting execution while the penal system groans beneath the weight of grotesque drug laws. Speaking of the law: the most venal and corrupt president in US history – this against some stiff competition – tried to orchestrate the violent overthrow of what’s left of lawful, legal US government. And yet Trump may rise again, with his puppets poised to regain power in both houses in the looming mid-term elections. And the world looks on in disbelief and fascinated horror.

This is a country all but defined by ultra-violence, in its media and on its streets. The country with far and away the world’s mightiest armoury of nuclear weapons. Would we be relaxed and comfortable with Trump regaining possession of the nuclear football? Trump’s finger on the button?

Biden may be but a brief speed-hump on the road to US demagoguery. Welcome to the world of populism, courtesy of the Dutertes, Bolsonaros, Modis, Putins and Trumps. Welcome to the age of Failed States.