America is on the verge of collapse
Coronavirus is an excellent provocateur. Better than Trump.
Nations like any family or business decay because of internal conflicts.
Conflicts tear any union apart sooner or later and now it seems the full set of necessary conflicts is ready for the collapse of the US. This will not happen tomorrow, of course. The day after. Coronavirus on the outside and Trump on the inside are bringing this day closer.
1. Almost any country in the world has a major conflict - between the people and elite. The heart of the problem is an uneven distribution of material wealth in almost each (socialist or capitalist) country.
In the US, for example, the aristocracy - the wealthiest 1% of the Americans - owned about $35 trillion as of the second quarter of 2019 while the entire US middle class (50-90% of population) held around the same - $36.9 trillion.
2. There is also deep and long fundamental conflict in the US between the two elites - Democrats and Republicans. 86% of Americans noticed that. Representatives of both elite parties cannot stand each other although they serve the same country and must maintain its unity.
3. Coronavirus has exposed yet recently another conflict between the US federal and regional elites when President Trump shifted the fight against coronavirus to state governors, suggesting them to try getting the needed medical equipment themselves. A good subtitle in The Guardian's article about that was "A total vacuum of federal leadership".
On the other hand, Trump needs to be re-elected for the second term. The economic success must be demonstrated for that, so the quarantine has to be removed and the economy restored. Thus on April 13, 2020 Mr. Trump said that the president of the country had an absolute power to cancel the quarantine. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned the president not to act like a "king" and explicitly stated that he might oppose the Trump administration's decision. In response, Mr. Trump accused the governor of "seeking independence".
Then the president apparently understood that Cuomo's independence might be not a bad idea. Two days later the president's administration confined itself to 3-phase guidelines on how to reopen the states, leaving the implementation and timing up to the state governors. In that way President Trump takes on the role of observer and judge who is not responsible for coronavirus problems in the future. By the way, Putin did the same earlier in Russia. Mediocrities always share the failures and appropriate the victories.
4. Сoronavirus and President Trump together have provoked one more potentially most explosive conflict - between the people and their governments in some states.
The rulers of the US and other countries face the almost unsolvable problem with the emergence of coronavirus pandemic. Quarantine is necessary to protect the citizens from the illness, but it means they do not work and cannot feed themselves and their governments. In addition, it is not clear when the quarantine can be stopped and yet the federal stimulus checks with Trump's signature on them don't help much. That's why some people in different states (especially Michigan, Virginia, Minnesota) chose to die from coronavirus rather than from a hunger and protested the lockdown. Trump wanted to take advantage of that displeasure and called in Twitter "to liberate" those states, having not specified from whom or what though. Thus in Michigan Gov. Whitmer's "stay home" order protest turned into Trump celebration with Confederate flags and guns.
The conflict No.4 may quickly ignite the three other conflicts and all of them together will inevitably lead America to breaking up into groups of independent states hopefully without a civil war.
President Trump is driving a wedge between the Americans by dividing them into "good" (his supporters) and "bad" (his opponents) parts. This is maybe the only thing he does really well, having no idea of what his ambitions and spontaneous policy may bring though. Mr. Trump doesn't understand that he may end up becoming a president without a country, like it happened to Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991 right before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Only people of the US can stop those conflicts, but the Americans are very busy with their survival and daily making money, so they habitually follow "their" part of the elite, slightly conflicting (so far) with other "followers" and thus undermining the unity of their country.
It seems even a strong crisis cannot urge America to try to understand what is going on and what is ahead.
P.S. Dear Reader! I am very much interested in your opinion on the subject of this article. Please, write a comment or ask a question if you want to clarify something.
Yours,
Igor Chykalov
Nations like any family or business decay because of internal conflicts.
Conflicts tear any union apart sooner or later and now it seems the full set of necessary conflicts is ready for the collapse of the US. This will not happen tomorrow, of course. The day after. Coronavirus on the outside and Trump on the inside are bringing this day closer.
1. Almost any country in the world has a major conflict - between the people and elite. The heart of the problem is an uneven distribution of material wealth in almost each (socialist or capitalist) country.
In the US, for example, the aristocracy - the wealthiest 1% of the Americans - owned about $35 trillion as of the second quarter of 2019 while the entire US middle class (50-90% of population) held around the same - $36.9 trillion.
2. There is also deep and long fundamental conflict in the US between the two elites - Democrats and Republicans. 86% of Americans noticed that. Representatives of both elite parties cannot stand each other although they serve the same country and must maintain its unity.
3. Coronavirus has exposed yet recently another conflict between the US federal and regional elites when President Trump shifted the fight against coronavirus to state governors, suggesting them to try getting the needed medical equipment themselves. A good subtitle in The Guardian's article about that was "A total vacuum of federal leadership".
On the other hand, Trump needs to be re-elected for the second term. The economic success must be demonstrated for that, so the quarantine has to be removed and the economy restored. Thus on April 13, 2020 Mr. Trump said that the president of the country had an absolute power to cancel the quarantine. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned the president not to act like a "king" and explicitly stated that he might oppose the Trump administration's decision. In response, Mr. Trump accused the governor of "seeking independence".
Then the president apparently understood that Cuomo's independence might be not a bad idea. Two days later the president's administration confined itself to 3-phase guidelines on how to reopen the states, leaving the implementation and timing up to the state governors. In that way President Trump takes on the role of observer and judge who is not responsible for coronavirus problems in the future. By the way, Putin did the same earlier in Russia. Mediocrities always share the failures and appropriate the victories.
..........
4. Сoronavirus and President Trump together have provoked one more potentially most explosive conflict - between the people and their governments in some states.
The rulers of the US and other countries face the almost unsolvable problem with the emergence of coronavirus pandemic. Quarantine is necessary to protect the citizens from the illness, but it means they do not work and cannot feed themselves and their governments. In addition, it is not clear when the quarantine can be stopped and yet the federal stimulus checks with Trump's signature on them don't help much. That's why some people in different states (especially Michigan, Virginia, Minnesota) chose to die from coronavirus rather than from a hunger and protested the lockdown. Trump wanted to take advantage of that displeasure and called in Twitter "to liberate" those states, having not specified from whom or what though. Thus in Michigan Gov. Whitmer's "stay home" order protest turned into Trump celebration with Confederate flags and guns.
The conflict No.4 may quickly ignite the three other conflicts and all of them together will inevitably lead America to breaking up into groups of independent states hopefully without a civil war.
President Trump is driving a wedge between the Americans by dividing them into "good" (his supporters) and "bad" (his opponents) parts. This is maybe the only thing he does really well, having no idea of what his ambitions and spontaneous policy may bring though. Mr. Trump doesn't understand that he may end up becoming a president without a country, like it happened to Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991 right before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
..........
Only people of the US can stop those conflicts, but the Americans are very busy with their survival and daily making money, so they habitually follow "their" part of the elite, slightly conflicting (so far) with other "followers" and thus undermining the unity of their country.
It seems even a strong crisis cannot urge America to try to understand what is going on and what is ahead.
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P.S. Dear Reader! I am very much interested in your opinion on the subject of this article. Please, write a comment or ask a question if you want to clarify something.
Yours,
Igor Chykalov
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