Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, December 21. Political disability, economic imbalance, and social disorder – a political system that underscores the decline of the United States
Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhu Ruiqing
About the American system, American historian Charles Beard once described it as follows: a group of capitalists and speculators “successfully deceived ordinary people to accept a political system that is beneficial to a few nobles.”
Now, signs of failure of the US system can be seen everywhere: elections have become a “money game”, the confrontation between the two parties is becoming increasingly serious, the gap between the rich and the poor is growing, and racial conflicts are becoming increasingly deep, while the “in-depth government” that actually holds power only focuses on the interests of the political and business oligarchs, and is indifferent to the growing dissatisfaction of the people.
The problem is so serious that American scholar Francis Fukuyama, who once advocated the “end of history”, could not help but lament: “When people’s understanding of the system is solidified, or when powerful elites use power to block change to maintain their own status, the system will not keep up with the changes in the external environment and move towards political decline.”
Political disability: money dominates the party’s fierce battle
In early November this year, the US midterm elections had not yet officially started. In front of the ballot boxes in many places across the United States, security personnel were fully armed and ready to fight. After the vote began, in Wisconsin, a man entered the polling station with a knife and threatened to stop the Cinema vote. While the election counting was still in progress, some people took to the streets to protest in Harris County, Texas, Phoenix, Arizona and other places, holding slogans such as “Stop stealing votes” and “Respect voters”.
Elections are regarded as the core of the American political system, but in recent years, the American people’s attitude towards elections has become increasingly negative and disappointed. A poll released by the Associated Press and the National Center for Public Affairs Research, jointly founded by the Associated Press and the National Center for Popular Opinion Research in the University of Chicago in October this year, only 9% of respondents believe that the American democratic system is working well.
“In American politics, there are two things that are important. The first is money, and the second is I don’t remember it” – the golden sentence of campaign expert Mark Hanna more than 100 years ago has been repeatedly verified in elections again and again. According to statistics from the US “Open Secret” website, the US midterm election cost in 2022 as high as US$16.7 billion, making it the most expensive midterm election in history.
In elections dominated by money, most of the elected elected are the spokespersons of money. Politicians use the huge amount of funds provided by interest groups to gain power, and of course they have to use their power to repay their favor after being elected. Some politicians have turned to the business world after stepping down and exchanged the political resources accumulated over the years into real money. This “politic and business revolving door” has become an open means of exchange of interests in the United States. Taking the lucrative military industry as an example,The latest report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office shows that more than 37,000 military officials left office in 2019 alone to obtain positions at 14 large arms contractors.
In August this year, after former US President Trump was raided by the FBI to “Search the Family”, Democratic and Republican supporters and even violent incidents against the FBI occurred. The “civil war” became a hot word on American social networks for a time. The website of the American magazine National Interest said: “A lot of signs indicate that the democracy in the United States is in danger.”
In recent years, as the domestic economic and social situation in the United States gradually deteriorates, conflicts between the two parties and the interest groups they represent intensify, the struggles are becoming more and more intense, and political polarization and political paralysis are becoming more and more serious. Reforms that are truly beneficial to the people and the country are difficult to advance. If American institutional designers initially tried to achieve political checks and balances through partisan competition, the reality is far from the original intention.
The German Business Daily website published an article pointing out that the United States shows itself as a “guardian of democracy” to the outside world and emphasizes the maintenance of the Western world order. However, there are serious differences within the United States: abortion, gun control, immigration…
Thomas Edsar, a columnist of the New York Times website, warned that the United States has been divided and is in a “very dangerous situation.”
Economic imbalance: a huge gap between the rich and the poor, class solidification
Recently, there are long queues in front of the Babaylan Tour in Phoenix, Arizona. When the charity distributed Thanksgiving food in November, about 19,000 families from all over the state came to collect it, setting a new record. On December 13, Rosa Davila, a single mother who was queuing in front of the food bank, said in an interview with the American media that she had no job and the food was too expensive to afford. The three teenage children at home “eat snacks and ready-to-eat cereals all day.”
Data released by the U.S. Department of Labor on December 13 showed that the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 7.1% year-on-year in November this year, still at a high level. BabaylanThe survey results released by the U.S. Gallup Company earlier this month showed that 55% of Americans believe that rising prices have caused financial difficulties for families.
The upward trend of wealth accumulation in the United States has never changed over the years. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders quoted RAND Corporation data in September this year as saying that over the past 47 years, $50 trillion of wealth has been from the bottom of American society.90% of the people in the Cinema level have been transferred to the top 1% of the rich. Even if a major crisis occurs, it will only accelerate this process, because the Fed’s long-term implementation of extremely loose monetary policies will eventually lead to severe inflation, making the poor the main victims of monetary policy “release”, while the rich will benefit greatly from the prosperity of the stock and property markets driven by the currency. Data released by the Federal Reserve in October 2021 showed that after the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the wealth of the 1% of the richest group in the United States in corporate stocks and mutual funds increased by more than $6.5 trillion, more than five times the total wealth growth of the bottom 90% of people.
Nobel Prize winner in economics and a professor at Columbia University in the United States pointed out in his book “The Cost of Inequality” that a major reason for the widening gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is that changes in public policies have made the distribution of income and wealth increasingly beneficial to the rich and increasingly unfavorable to the poor. These changes include relaxing controls on the financial sector, constantly weakening the corporate governance system, providing the rich with policies and rules for monopoly profits, and canceling or weakening welfare subsidies for middle- and low-income people, etc.不言而喻，这些政策的最大受益者是高收入阶层，而受到伤害的是中低收入阶层。
Now, the “American Dream” known as “Everyone is born equal, and struggle changes destiny” has gone to disillusionment, and the liquidity of wealth and opportunity has almost disappeared. As the study of Harvard economist Raj Chetty shows, for American children from low-income areas, there is less than 5% chance of rising from the lowest-income fifth to the highest-income fifth.
Richard Haas, president of the American Diplomacy Society, pointed out that in the past, some people believed that the United States was a country built on the concept of “as long as you work hard, everyone can improve their own destiny.” However, this ideal of everyone having a chance to succeed has been replaced by the reality of class solidification.
Social disorder: racial antagonism and violence
African-American Nathan ConnollyKomiks and his wife Shani Mott intend to sell their home in Baltimore, with the first estimate of $472,000. The couple then took off all their photos from the house and had a white colleague meet with the house appraiser. This time, their house is estimated at $750,000. The same house, the same location, the difference of nearly $300,000.
CinemaIn the book “The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the 21st Century”, historian Penil E. Joseph helps readers understand the hidden racial inequality in American society through real stories in daily life like this. From the identification discrimination in estimating the value of black housing, to the water crisis in predominantly black cities such as Flint, Michigan and Jackson, Mississippi, to the ever-expanding list of unarmed black men killed by police… These clues gathered to let people see that in the United States, racial hatred and racial discrimination remained deeply rooted, despite the long-lost legitimate slavery and apartheid.
In sharp contrast to the discrimination received by black people, the preferential treatment received by white people. Kyle Rittenhouse, a 19-year-old white young man, is now “little famous” in the United States because during the large-scale protests and demonstrations triggered by the police in 2020, Rittenhouse shot and killed two people and injured one person, but was eventually sentenced to “accredited” by the court.
The case caused huge controversy in the United States because the media disclosed that the jury members of the case were almost all white. After Rittenhouse was found not guilty, marches against racism appeared in many parts of the United States. Some people held up signs with the words “Either modify the system or fail Komiks” “Rittenhouse—sincere! sin! sin!”
Elizabeth Semer, co-director of the University of California, Berkeley’s “Death Clinic” program, pointed out that in every study conducted across the United States, both in state and federal courts, there is a common discovery that there is always racial discrimination in the juror selection system. “In California, North Carolina, Connecticut, or Washington, Oregon, the results are the same.”
Dominic Mo, a French political scientist and special consultant at the Montaigne Institute, believes that the Wisconsin jury’s acquittal was the perfect embodiment of the “American disease.” This decision has nothing to do with justice, and it interprets the profound and insurmountable divisions within American society.
The public security situation is a key indicator for whether a country’s social system is operating well. In addition to the racial discrimination issue, RittenThe House case also reflects another long-standing problem in American society that has been deteriorating over the years – gun violence.
Today, violent crime has become a deeper and deeper scar in American society. The New York Times concluded through research statistics that gun violence has become the “number one killer” of child deaths in the United States. Last year, 3,597 children died from gunfire, and the child shooting death rate set a record for more than 20 years. As Dean Kilpatrick, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina, said, large-scale violence has constituted a major public crisis in the United States and has been staged regularly in communities of all sizes, which has scared countless people.
Gun violence is also frequently associated with racial hatred. On May 14 this year, a white gunman attacked black people in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, causing 10 deaths and 3 injuries, and 11 of the victims were black. The gunman broadcasts the attack live through the camera on his helmet, with racist words written on the gun. Data released by the FBI on December 12 showed that more than 7,200 hate crime cases were reported across the United States in 2021. U.S. Vice President Harris admits that a “hate epidemic” is spreading in the United States, which has been confirmed by violence and paranoid behavior.
Institutional failure: Oligarchs make profits and people suffer
In the United States, there is a saying about “deep government”. Mike Lovegren, who has worked in the U.S. Congress for 28 years, said that the president will step down and Congress will change hands, but behind this is a “deep government”, a “permanent government” composed of intelligence agencies, the military, the judicial system and interest groups. It is an interest alliance that combines key government roles and financial integration and industry-leading interests. Washington has been controlled by such a rigid bureaucratic system, and ordinary reforms cannot affect this system at all.
No one publicly acknowledges that the “deep government” really exists, but the phenomenon of collusion between political and business oligarchs in the United States and the phenomenon of large capital taking power behind the scenes is an undeniable fact. And it is naturally the American people who pay the price.
On November 16 this year, when Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Teckerit spoke at a defense forum, a protester came to the stage to protest with a placard with the words “Lockheed Love War.” She accused the military giant of making a fortune in war and wasting politics that would be used to improve people’s livelihoodGovernment budget.
As the Ukrainian crisis escalates, the United States continues to increase its arms supply and personnel training to Ukraine. According to statistics from the American Diplomatic Society, from January 24 to November 20 this year, the United States has provided a total of US$48 billion in aid to Ukraine, and a considerable portion of the funds have flowed into the pockets of American arms dealers.
Former U.S. Defense Department official Frank Frank Cinema Cinema Cinema CinemaSpinney pointed out that the U.S. military, arms dealers colluded with Congress to use the Ukrainian crisis to exaggerate fear of Russia and create an excuse for a new round of military expenditure expansion. According to the New York Times, the stock prices of military-industrial companies such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have risen about 35% this year, while major market indexes are generally on a downward trend.
In addition to the military-industrial complex, Wall Street is also a major interest group that has been criticized by the United States. According to statistics from the US media, about half of the outgoing members of Congress have obtained positions in the KKomiks, a famous lobbying company gathering place in Washington. “BabaylanThe lawmakers in Washington work for Wall Street. Their campaign funds come from Wall Street. They obey the lobbying tycoons on Wall Street and K Street.” said Michael Moore, a well-known American director.
The energy industry and gun-holding forces should not be underestimated. For example, in addressing climate change, Senator Joe Manchin repeatedly opposed relevant legislation, and the New York Times investigation found that he received more campaign funds from the oil and gas industry than any other senator.
The interest groups supporting gun-owned enterprises are rich and powerful, and every year Cinema will invest a lot of money to lobby politicians. According to the “Open Secret” website statistics, political lobbying expenditures for gun-owned interest groups reached a record $15.8 million in 2021. For some politicians and the interest groups behind it, possessing a gun is not only a “right”, but also a profitable “business”. American writer Beren Fernandez denounced that the institutional root of the deteriorating social security in the United States is “greedy capitalism” and “the social rules of the United States are that capital interests are above the safety of the people.”
American writer Roxanne Guy bluntly stated that in the United States, policies were sold to the highest bidders. Former U.S. Labor Secretary Lake pointed out that the collusion between wealth and power has created oligarchy, undermined democratic systems, and made the American system.Failure.