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America National Security Writer
What to say about Iraq? Well, nothing much can be said about a puppet regime setup by the United States for the purpose of quelling the protestations of its citizens while the United States using the country as a staging area for a war against Iran.These are just a handful of the types of ¡°blunders¡± that Maalouf is referring to and it may, in the near future, cost the United States its democracy. If leaders can¡¯t take care of their people, and citizens fail to hold their representatives to account, then what¡¯s the point of waving the American flag and being proud of it. Perhaps the most awful sight to see during the Pandemic of 2020 is the abject failure of the American healthcare system. As Maalouf points out, ¡°The tragedy of 2020 has demonstrated that, if applied to strictly, too blindly, the consequences of Thatcherism [Reaganism, deregulation, privatization] could be monstrous, particularly in the domain of healthcare. Years of savage budget cuts in a sector, that, while not productive is literally vital, led to substantial shortages of staff and medical equipment, and this resulted in a cataclysm that has gravely compromised the moral legitimacy of economic liberalism.¡±And yet trying to make basic healthcare a ¡°right¡± in the United States is a Herculean task.United States Constitution Torn AsunderTrump and his undead Republican Party are using the time offered by Trump¡¯s refusal to concede the presidency to willfully undermine American democracy. Rudy Giuliani and 73 million Trump acolytes —both rich and poor, White, Black and Latino—in the United States are setting the stage for autocratic minority rule; or; less politely, a coup. They are taking a page out of every propaganda campaign used by the United States and other warring nations throughout history: Prior to the start of a war, demonize your opponent and make them less-than-human. It makes it easier to kill and defeat them, to make them enemies.According to O¡¯Toole, ¡°The majority, deficient in both patriotism and sanctity, is unworthy. If it seems to have won, that can only be because, being outside the polity, it has subverted the real polity by fraud. To deny its validity is both patriotic and righteous. Voter suppression, gerrymandering, and the use of the Supreme Court to hand electoral victories to the Republicans are no longer dirty tricks. They are patriotic imperatives. They are not last resorts but first principles. The great comfort of this mentality is that, when the majority can be conjured out of existence, so can the whole idea of defeat. The old norm, whereby the beaten party retreats into a period of reflection and considers why it lost, is gone.One half of a two-party system has passed over into a post-democratic state. This reality has to be recognized, and a crucial aspect of that recognition is to accept that the claim Gerald Ford [US President after Richard Nixon resigned] could make in 1974—¡°Our Constitution works¡±—no longer applies. After the long national nightmare of Watergate, America could rub its eyes and awaken to a renewed confidence in its system of checks and balances. But the Trump presidency has been no nightmare. It has been daylight delinquency, its transgressions of democratic values on lurid display in all their corruption and cruelty and deadly incompetence. There may be much we do not yet know, but what is known (and in most cases openly flaunted) is more than enough: the Mueller report, the Ukraine scandal, the flagrant self-dealing, the tax evasion, the children stolen from their parents, the encouragement of neo-Nazis, Trump¡¯s admission that he deliberately played down the seriousness of the coronavirus. There can be no awakening because the Republicans did not sleep through all of this. They saw it all and let it happen. In electoral terms, moreover, it turns out that they were broadly right. There was no revulsion among the party base. The faithful not only witnessed his behavior, they heard Trump say, repeatedly, that he would not accept the result of the vote. They embraced that authoritarianism with renewed enthusiasm. The assault on democracy now has a genuine, highly engaged, democratic movement behind it.¡±The Trump Train—and its undead passengers—has left the station and it is going to be a very powerful force in American politics. Trump will play the role he likes best as a powerbroker controlling his many marionettes throughout the land, raising funds, handpicking candidates to run for congress and polluting the airwaves with demagoguery.Turning the other cheek on this state of affairs is dangerous. President-elect Joe Biden must Exorcise before he can attempt to heal.John Stanton can be reached at jstantonarchangel@gmail.com ![]() US Stuck in the Antarctic Night like the ... The US Empire Strikes Back: Russia Takes the ... Who Really Is the War Criminal? USA Sees Russia¡¯s Operation in Ukraine as ... US President Joe Biden: Representing the Four ... World and Regional Powers Shape the Horn of ... Adventures in American Education Native Americans: The First, Forgotten Slaves Musk¡¯s Spacefaring Civilization Is Pipe Dream Afghanistan: After Action Report Scenario for US & NATO Invasion of Crimea and ... Capitalism Breaks Down and Homogenizes Life, ... Joe Biden¡¯s Shameful Push for War with China, ... Americans Are Artificially Intelligent Goodbye Dr. Seuss: Let¡¯s Erase the Past with ... Post-Pandemic American Society Must Not Return ... What Is the United States of America? A ... Liquid Capitalism: Everyone Drinks It, Swims ... Life During a Trump Second Term: Paramilitary ... 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