Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, December 21, Political and Political Komiks Governing disability, economic imbalance, and social disorder——A political system that undermines the decline of the United States
Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhu Ruiqing
Regarding the American system, American historian Charles Beard once described it as follows: A group of capitalists and speculators “successfully tricked the general public into accepting a political system that is conducive 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 voting began, in Wisconsin, a Cinema man entered the polling station with a knife and threatened to stop the voting. 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 showed that only 9% of respondents believed that the American democracy was working well.
“In American politics, there are two things that are very 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 costs in 2022 as high as US$16.7 billion, which is the most expensive midterm election in history.
The elections dominated by money are naturally mostly selected..com/”>Babaylan‘s spokesperson. Politicians use huge amounts of money 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 switched to the business world after stepping down and exchanged the political resources accumulated over the years into real money. This “politics 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 US Government Accountability Office shows that it was only in 201. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>KomiksIn nine years, more than 37,000 military officials have obtained positions at 14 large arms contractors after leaving office.
In August this year, after former US President Trump was raided by the FBI, the Democratic, Republican and supporters of both sides confronted fiercely, and even violent incidents against the FBI occurred. The “civil war” became a hot word on the American social network for a time. The website of the American National Interest magazine said: “There are a lot of signs that American democracy 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 intensifies and the struggle is href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Komiks is becoming more and more serious, and reforms that are truly conducive 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 too far from their 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, warns that the United States has split and is in a “very dangerous situation.”
Economic imbalance: the wealth and poverty gap Class solidification
Recently, there are long queues in front of St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix, Arizona. When the charity distributed Thanksgiving food in November, about 19,000 families from all over Babaylan were coming to collect it, setting a new high. On December 13, Rosa Davila, a single mother who queued in front of the food bank, said in an interview with the US media that she had no job, the food was too expensive to afford, and three teenage children at home “eat snacks and ready-to-eat cereals all day.”
U.S. Labor Department on December 1Cinema’s family “eat snacks and ready-to-eat cereals all day.”
U.S. Labor Department on December 1Komiks data released on the 3rd showed that the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 7.1% year-on-year in November this year, still at a high level. The survey results released by Gallup earlier this month showed that 55% of Americans believe that rising prices have made families financially difficult.
For many years, the trend of U.S. wealth has never changed. U.S. federal senator Bernie Sanders quoted RAND company data in September this year as saying that in the past 47 years, $50 trillion of wealth has been from 90% of the bottom of American society. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Babaylan has 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 has ultimately brought about severe inflation, making the poor the main victims of monetary policy “leakage”, while the rich have benefited 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 richest 1% in the United States in corporate stocks and mutual funds increased by more than $6.5 trillion, which is the bottom. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Cinema90% of people’s wealth growth is more than five times.
Nobel Prize winner in economics and 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 control over the financial sector, constantly weakening the corporate governance system, providing the rich with policies and rules for obtaining monopoly profits, and abolishing or weakening welfare subsidies for low- and middle-income people, etc. . It goes without saying that the biggest beneficiaries of these policies are the high-income classes, while the middle-income classes are hurt.
Now, the “American Dream” that claims to be “everyone is born equal, and struggle changes destiny” has gone to disillusionment, and the liquidity of wealth and opportunity has almost disappeared. As the conclusions of Harvard economist Raj Chetty, a research conclusion, for American children from low-income areas, the chances of rising from the lowest-income fifth group to the highest-income fifth group.
Richard Haas, president of the American Diplomacy Society, pointed out that in the past, some people believed that the United States was based on the principle that “as long as you work hard, everyone can improve their own destiny.” href=”https://comicmov.com/”>CinemaThe country was founded by Cinema, however, the ideal of everyone having a chance to succeed has been replaced by the reality of class solidification.
Social disorder: racial opposition, violence prevalence
African American Nathan Connolly and his wife Shani Mott intend to sell their homes in BaltimoreThe first estimate is US$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.
In “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 identification discrimination for underestimating the value of black housing, to water crises 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 gather to let people see that in the United States, racial hatred and racial discrimination are still deeply rooted, despite the long absence of legal slavery and segregation.
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.
This case has caused great controversy in the United States, because the media disclosed that almost all the jury members of the case were white. After Rittenhouse was found not guilty, marches against racism appeared in many parts of the United States. Some people held slogans with them saying “Either modify the system or fail” “Rittenhouse – guilty! guilty! guilty!”
Elizabeth Semer, co-director of the Death Clinic program at the University of California, Berkeley, 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. Komiks.” Dominic Moise, a French political scientist and special consultant at the Montreal 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.
ABabaylan Whether the social systems of individual countries are operating well, public security is a key indicator. In addition to the issue of racial discrimination, the Rittenhouse 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 biased execution.
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, military teams, judicial system and interest groups. It is an interest alliance that combines key government roles and top leaders in the financial and industry. 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 it is an undeniable fact that the collusion between political and business oligarchs in the United States and the power behind the scenes of big capital. And it is naturally the American people who pay the price for this.
On November 16 this year, when Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Teckerit spoke at a defense forum, a protester held a handwritten letter “Locke”The placard of Sid Love War” came on stage to protest. She accused the military giant of making a fortune in war and wasting government budgets that would be used to improve people’s livelihood.
As the Ukrainian crisis escalates, the United States has continuously increased 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 value of 48 to Ukraine. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Cinema billion in aid, a considerable portion of the funds flowed into the pockets of US arms dealers.
Former U.S. Department of Defense official Franklin Spinney pointed out that the US military and 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, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Gru The stock prices of military-industrial companies such as Mann have risen by 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 in the United States. According to statistics from the US media, about half of the outgoing members of Congress have obtained positions in K Street, a famous lobbying company gathering place in Washington. “The members of Washington work for Wall Street, and their campaign funds come from Wall Street. They obey the orders of the lobbying giants on Wall Street and K Street. “Michael Moore, a well-known American director, said.
The energy of the energy industry and gun-owning forces should not be underestimated. For example, in response to climate change, federal Senator Joe Manchin repeatedly opposed relevant legislation. 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-owning are rich and powerful, and invest a lot of money every year to lobby politicians. According to statistics from the “Open Secret” website, Komiks has gun-owning profits in 2021 href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Komiks‘s political lobbying expenditure reached a record $15.8 million. 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 Babaylan is 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. Secretary of Labor Lake pointed out that the collusion between wealth and power has created oligarchy, undermined the democratic system, and made the American systemFailure.