Wake-Up, America!
“It
is a sin to be quiet, when it is your duty to protest.” Abraham Lincoln
After watching the disgraceful Putin-Trump
Helsinki summit/press conference this week and seeing how few Republicans rebuked
the President for his appalling anti-American behavior, I’m wondering what it
will take to awaken American patriotism on that side of the aisle and how did
we ever become so rabidly divided that for so many "leader/party" is now before the country itself?
After living in Russia for the rise of Putinism,
I find the rise of Trumpism eerily similar. Putin’s first major achievements in pushing toward
authoritarianism were undermining the freedom of the press and the rule of law. Trump is following that playbook. The calling of real news fake and fake
news real has already reaped massive rewards for him, the largest being his
election itself. Also, continually
attacking law enforcement and labeling the Mueller investigation a “witch
hunt” has created distrust and confusion that has resonated with many of his
supporters and greatly undermined their ability to process information that conflicts
with their “alternate fact” based beliefs. Instead of dealing with real facts, they just write them off
as fake or partisan and with the GOP controlled congress rubber-stamping
partisan investigations there is nothing pushing them to confront their
dispositions.
Putin quickly took control of Russian media when he was handed the presidency and managed to get the Russian masses to write-off the Western press as fake
news and to only believe Russian state-controlled news. In America, many Republicans now ignore
the most trustworthy, historical news sources and only accept what Fox news or
partisan online news sites like Breitbart feed them. Once you take away peoples’ ability to question their views,
the battle for Truth is lost.
Political dogmatism is the new norm and love of
country doesn’t come into consideration if it goes against the President or his
policies. An old ideology based on
nationalism and fear apparently seems fresh to many Americans who’d fallen
through the cracks or were left behind by the emergence of the new global
economy. While they may be
rightfully angry over their situation and with Washington itself, pushing the
blame solely on Democrats, minorities, and/or foreign trade is not going to
solve any of their problems. In
fact, what is currently unfolding will only make their problems worse.
There is something inherently wrong with a
political party that will ignore its own long held beliefs and the destruction
of our institutions because they are not willing to risk losing power over the
short-term. The current GOP has
done just that. They immediately stopped
being deficit hawks and increased the national debt by $2 trillion over Trump’s
first 14 months in office despite having a strong economy. The GOP has always been the party of
free trade, but they supported pulling out of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership. They also shrugged
off the start of a trade war with our main partners and allowed the
administration to start putting unnecessary and harmful tariffs on a wide
spectrum of needed goods. This will cause inflation and hurt U.S. businesses. Lastly, the party that labeled itself
the law and order and national security party are now content to ignore this
President undermining the rule of law, our democratic institutions and a
foreign adversary manipulating our country with the sole intent to diminish our
standing in the world and our economic and ideological well being. It seems too absurd to be real, but it
is happening- every day.
I believe the economy will become an issue too
big for voters to ignore, but that will only happen once we enter a major economic
crisis, so while change will eventually come, it will likely be too late and
we’ll all be down on our backs, hurting with significantly weakened
institutions. Foreign Direct
Investment was down 32% in the U.S. in 2017 despite a strong economy. That’s an unheard of drop. Tourism is down. Job growth in 2017 was slower than in
2016. The stock market is up
largely due to stock buybacks fueled by the tax cuts that helped only the very top
tier. This is not the way forward
and once we hit the tipping point on consumer and investor confidence, it will
be a steep and painful ride down.
Despite openly going against world order, Russia
has been the biggest geopolitical winner over the last few years and no one is holding
them responsible. They have also taken
the Internet and used it masterfully to work against the Western world and
breed division. On the political
front, Russia’s online propaganda campaigns coupled with massive monetary
support has led to the election of a anti-EU prime minister in Greece, the election
and re-election of the authoritarian government in Hungary, the election of a
former Communist pro-Russia president in the Czech Republic, the rising of
Marine Le Pen in France, and they tipped the scales in both the Brexit vote and
the last U.S. election. They’ve also illegally
annexed Crimea and started
a war in Ukraine. These are
just a few examples and since there've been only limited repercussions; they’re
still at it. Further, an early
obvious fact from the U.S. tariff war with China is that it will hurt American agriculture
largely to the benefit of Russian suppliers who will take our place.
We all need to open our eyes and realize there
is a quiet Cold War still going on and if we do not band together as a people (and
with our allies), we are going to wake-up one day living in a world that is worse than anything we’ve ever imagined and from that chaos no one will see a
better tomorrow or fairer system for a long, long time.
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