Why the collective meltdown amongst non-Americans?

Published by The National, November 12th, 2024.

I don’t understand the meltdown many non-Americans seem to be having at the US presidential election results. I’ve read that this is a ‘dark day for America but also for the rest of the world’, blah, blah, blah.

Is it? The rest of the world won’t be affected by US domestic policy, so perhaps they’re referring to US foreign policy, which, admittedly, does affect them.

But, seriously, how much worse can it get? The past four years of Biden/Harris foreign policy, run by a bunch of lunatic neocons like Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland,

have yielded:

-       A devastating proxy war with Russia in Ukraine (whose corruption was well known), that the west is losing at a huge cost. Over 600,000 Ukrainians are dead, more than a million are wounded, and Ukraine is destroyed. America’s goal was to weaken Russia and the EU, which it feared was becoming too reliant on cheap Russian gas. Russia is stronger than ever but the EU is an economic basket case. This failed effort has cost the US nearly $200 billion but has gifted billions to the Military Industrial Complex.   

-       The economic sabotage of the German/EU economy by the CIA’s blowing up the Nordstream gas pipeline - with the German government’s acquiescence. Western sanctions on Russia have deprived Europe, especially the UK, of cheap Russian gas, causing fuel bills to soar.

-       A genocide in Gaza committed by an out-of-control Zionist Israeli regime which is financed and armed by the US, UK and EU, that has by now, murdered over 200,000 and traumatised and displaced over 2 million Palestinians.

On top of that in the “collective west” we’ve had:

-       Aggressive and widespread censorship and persecution of those who express opinions that differ from government narratives.

-       The concealment of the lab origins of SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, and the imposition of government mandates for a vaccine that didn’t undergo sufficient safety trials and has harmed millions, but has enriched Big Pharma.

-       The active promotion of transgender ideology, so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ for minors, that has systematically butchered and mutilated children, but made billions for the Medical Industrial Complex and Big Pharma.

Throughout, we’ve had a US president who has been suffering from dementia.

And we’ve had a coterie of European leaders of such poor quality that they’ve allowed the US to lead them by the nose into a cul de sac where they are now well and truly stuck.

The reality is that the American people (and the same holds true for the people in the UK) - have been short-changed for decades by both political parties.

I have no illusions about Donald Trump. I don’t think he’ll make a huge difference to the litany of foreign policy problems above because the same billionaires and special interests (like AIPAC) are funding him that funded Biden. But will he really be that much worse? Like it or not, Trump didn’t start any new wars during his last tenure as president.

What Americans long to see are solutions to the many terrible problems they face:

-       No national health service. Medical expenses are the chief cause of personal bankruptcy.

-       80,000 a year die from opioid overdoses.

-       Over 50,000 a year die from gun violence.

-       Homelessness is increasing 6% a year.

-       Child poverty has more than doubled since 2021.

-       Inequality is the highest of all G7 nations.

-       Nearly half the water supply is contaminated with forever chemicals.  

-       11 out of 17 infrastructure categories received a grade of D.

-       Life expectancy has fallen to 76.4 years, the shortest in more than 2 decades, more than 3 years below that of the UK and the lowest among peer countries. 

-       60-90% of the standard American diet contains highly processed food. 

-       1.8 million Americans are incarcerated in the prison industrial complex, the largest number of prisoners worldwide. 

-       66% of all adults are on prescription drugs and nearly half the population suffers from at least one chronic disease and the number is growing.

Meanwhile, the US spends $877 billion a year on its military, the most of any nation on earth; and that doesn’t include the billions more for the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the Gaza genocide.

We need to turn the page on this appalling record. The last four years have been awful but the US has been going downhill since at least 1980.

If the American government can finally begin to focus on its own problems for a change and stop its warmongering, bullying and constant interference in the affairs of other nations, perhaps the European poodles will follow suit and start to look after their own people.

The first American President, George Washington, in his Farewell Address, had some advice for America (and any nation that wishes its people to prosper):

Avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which under any form of government are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. Your Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other…. Observe good faith and justice towards all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all; religion and morality enjoin this conduct, and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it?

I hope we have the wisdom to heed his words today. But I’m probably being naïve.

https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/11/05/blackrock-doesnt-matter-us-election-trump-kamala-harris/