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      The Rise and Fall of US Democracy

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      A functioning democracy requires an educated, informed population that understands its role in the processes that define how the democratic nation is governed. Ordinary citizens have two opportunities for actively participating in those processes. They can run for office or help those who are running for office get elected. And they can vote. Most people settle for voting. Actually, in the best of years, only slightly more than the majority of eligible voters actually vote. American democracy has never fired on all its cylinders.

      The failure of half of Americans to participate is surprising because America has sedulously made the effort to educate its future voters. From day one, every schoolchild in the United States learns not only that the form of government they live under is a democracy but also that it is a regime defined by its commitment to freedom. Teachers, seconded by the media and the politicians who appear in the media, relentlessly drill into them the idea that the US is uniquely free, in ways that no other nation can claim. Americans possess unbridled freedom to speak out and to act, even in socially eccentric ways. For some, it even includes the freedom to shoot.

      The 2020 US Election Explained

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      Although democracy and freedom are not synonymous, every schoolchild is taught to believe that they are. This has created a curious phenomenon in US culture: the idea that what they have is less the freedom to speak out, act and influence their community than the freedom from interference by other people — and especially by the government. In other words, many Americans understand that the most fundamental freedom is the freedom to be left alone. Instead of defining the individual’s field of possible action and participation, in their minds, democracy defines the right to avoid all action and participation.

      The Art of Democratic Identity

      Children who enter first grade and learn for the first time that they live in a free country may be left wondering what an unfree country is. A literal-minded 6-year-old — such as this writer who entered first grade during the Cold War — may naively wonder why, in a country that our teacher insisted is free, we have to pay for the things we consume. After all, any child who had ever been to a restaurant, a movie theater or a hotdog stand could sense what Milton Friedman would later affirm: There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

      My teacher’s message, of course, had nothing to do with the price of things. We would learn about price, cost and value later. Like our parents, one day we would have a job, a house and a dog and be saddled with the task of fending for ourselves in a competitive world. We weren’t quite prepared to understand that our teacher’s riffing on the fact that we were a “free country” was, at the time, simply about the fact that another country with nuclear capacity, the Soviet Union, wasn’t free. We children knew nothing about Russia, the Iron Curtain, communism, capitalism and everything else that was talked about on the news, mainly because we watched cartoons on television. Our exposure to Cold War propaganda was only just beginning.

      On that first day of school, we began the task of memorizing the secular prayer that would kickstart the learning process every day of our schooling for the following 12 years: the pledge of allegiance. Its syntax was incomprehensible, but it sounded comfortingly patriotic. The abstract idea of allegiance was too much for our young minds to deal with. But the key words, beginning with “the flag,” offered something concrete and allowed us to begin to understand that our job was to learn to comply with a system we couldn’t yet begin to understand.

      “The flag” had meaning because we could see it in front of us, whereas “the Republic for which it stands” remained a mystery. Even “one nation” failed to make much sense to any of us since we hadn’t yet studied the Civil War — a moment in history when there were briefly two — but clearly one seemed to be the right number of nations to belong to. “Under God” confirmed what most of our parents had already told us, though the idea of who that being was differed from family to family.

      It was the last six words of the pledge that held some meaning and still resonate in people’s minds: “with liberty and justice for all.” That’s when we began to learn what it meant to be a democracy. This became reinforced later, when we began studying the salient facts of history, including the importance of the first three words of the Constitution: “We the people.” The picture of a democratic society where people, on the one hand, are free (both to vote and to be left alone) and, on the other, treated fairly and equally, combined with our belief in the goodness of the complete system, had begun to fall into place.

      Every official text we would subsequently discover, starting with the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that “all men are created equal,” delivered the message that we, the citizens (or at least those who could vote), collectively controlled the form of a government that would protect us from various kinds of evil forces. Among those evil forces were, historically speaking, the European monarchies to the east against whom we revolted, and the rampaging Native Americans to the west.

      The first group, the European kings, defined the enemy in our battle for freedom in the 18th century. The second group, the Indians on horseback, defined the 19th-century enemy. Once those two had been neutralized, all that was left in the 20th century, following our victory over the Germans and Japanese in World War II, was the Soviet Union.

      Things had now become remarkably simple. We were a democracy that thrived thanks to our freedom, and especially the freedom of our markets. The Soviet Union was a communist dictatorship with a five-year plan. We were consumers with the widest possible range of choice who knew we would be left alone to consume whatever we chose. Moreover, they were atheists, and we, despite our freedom to believe or not believe, were “under God.” They had the mission of spreading across the globe their elaborate system of government interference in every aspect of everyone’s lives. In contrast, we knew, as President Woodrow Wilson had clearly established decades earlier, that our mission was to “make the world safe for democracy.”

      Reconciling Democracy and Predestined Greatness

      Unlike the Soviets, we had the power to elect our leaders. They had a single party, the Communist Party. We had two, a consumer’s choice. We understood the principles of democracy. The first of those principles consists of having a constitution with a bill of rights. The second is to have regularly planned elections permitting to choose which of the two parties we wanted to be governed by. Any wonderful and wild idea was possible, so long as one of the two parties embraced that idea.

      Communism, of course, or its twin sister, socialism, represented impossible ideas, not only because they made no sense in a consumer society, but because neither of the parties would embrace such ideas. Nevertheless, some feared that the Democrats might be tempted by socialism or even communism. And so, enterprising politicians committed to the idea of democratic choice invented the House of Un-American Activities, making it clear to political consumers — i.e. voters — that some choices, deemed political heresy, would not be available in the political marketplace. Heresy can, after all, happen in a free country that is also “under God.”

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      Throughout our schooling, our teachers and textbooks led us to assume that the nation’s founders, like Woodrow Wilson more than a century later, had one mission in mind, though with a more local focus: making North America safe for democracy. According to the narrative we received, it was in the name of democracy that the Founding Fathers decided to break away from the despotism of the British monarchy. This created the enduring belief that the founders were visionaries intent on creating what would later become known as the “world’s greatest democracy.”

      It’s a trope US politicians today never tire of repeating. The Democrat, President Harry Truman, may have been the first when he uttered the phrase in 1952, just as the Cold War was picking up steam. He cited America’s “responsibilities as the greatest nation in the history of the world.” Like George W. Bush, Mitt Romney and any Republican, President Donald Trump deems the US to be not only “the single greatest nation in the history of the world” but also “the greatest economy in the history of the world.” In contrast, this year’s Democratic candidate for the presidency, former Vice President Joe Biden, more modestly characterizes it as merely “the greatest nation on earth.” Perhaps he hasn’t studied history as carefully as Truman and Trump have.

      It isn’t clear whether Cassius Clay, before becoming Muhammad Ali — who famously boasted he was “the greatest” — was inspired by patriotic politicians at the time vaunting the economic power and military prowess of the nation or whether today’s politicians who keep insisting on greatness are inspired by Ali. Donald Trump is not the only American to resonate to the idea of greatness. In every domain, Americans seek to determine who is the GOAT, the Greatest of All Time. There must always be a winner, someone who is totally exceptional.

      American exceptionalism is not just an idea. It has become a dogma that leaders must embrace. Violating it or even trying to nuance it can prove disastrous. At a press conference in Europe in April 2009, fielding a question from a Financial Times reporter, newly installed President Barack Obama tried to limit his patriotic hubris when he said, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” This was too much for many Americans, such as Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and Fox News, who saw this as proof that Obama wasn’t a true believer in American exceptionalism. How could he dare to reduce the nation’s prestige to that of has-been countries like the UK and Greece?

      The Historical Truth

      At the nation’s very beginning, the founders sought and fought simply to create a nation that was no longer attached to Britain. It was a first step in the direction of just wanting to be left alone. They grappled first with the idea of how whatever emerged might define itself as a political entity. After that came the question of how it should be governed. Because of the diversity of the colonies, the founders could agree on the idea of dispersed authority, leading to the idea of a federation that could be thought of as a single federal state. They also, and nearly as emphatically, agreed that it was not about democracy.

      In 1814, John Adams, a revolutionary leader and the second president of the United States, famously responded with this curt judgment to one of his critics who berated him for maligning democracy: “Democracy never lasts long.” Lambasting what he referred to as the “ideology” of democracy, Adams expressed his horror at “democratic rage and popular fury” and insisted that democracy “soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.” The chaos of the French Revolution, which they considered an exercise in democracy, had left a bad impression on the minds of the Founding Fathers.

      Alexander Hamilton, who died prematurely in a duel 10 years before Adams drafted his letter to John Tyler (but who miraculously came back to life on Broadway in a rap-based musical comedy exactly two hundred years later) emphatically agreed with Adams: “We are a Republican Government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of Democracy.” Both men had studied ancient history and witnessed the chaos of the French Revolution. Hamilton concluded: “The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.”

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      The idea of democracy got off to a bad start in the young republic. And yet, most Americans today assume that US democracy was born with the drafting of the US Constitution. Even if the Founding Fathers clearly stated their preference for the idea of a republic ruled by a patrician elite and sought to define the young nation as fundamentally the opposite of a democracy, for generations, Americans have tended to believe that the Constitution embodied and validated democratic principles.

      Obsessed by the attribute of greatness, Americans also continue to believe that the US deserves the title of “the world’s greatest democracy.” This is a notion that has the potential to irritate people who are not American. Last year, Dutch blogger Moshe-Mordechai Van Zuiden, writing for The Times of Israel, bitterly contested the insistence on American greatness. He lists 10 reasons why the US electoral system in no way reflects the ideal or even the messy reality of effective national democracies.

      After excoriating a two-party system offering “only a choice between two people widely despised,” as happened in 2016 and may even be the case in 2020, he makes a more fundamental complaint: “Top Dog Wins is not democracy. It’s a dictatorship of the majority.” All of the 10 points made by this brash Dutchman are well taken. Despite their national pride, more and more Americans are ready to agree.

      The Last Election

      Americans are clearly unaware of the fact that the revered founders believed that if democracy were to take hold, it would lead to the collapse of a fragile nation. The president who successfully marketed the idea of democracy for the first time, changing the course of America’s political culture, was Andrew Jackson, the president Donald Trump most admires (after himself). It was during Jackson’s presidency that Alexis de Tocqueville wrote and published “Democracy in America.” Thanks to the French aristocrat’s writing and Jackson’s deeds, including displacing and sometimes massacring native tribes, the label stuck.

      It subsequently became dogma that the United States not only is a democracy but exemplifies the ideal of what democracy should be. Abraham Lincoln went on to provide the concept of democracy with a permanent advertising slogan when he called it a “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” By the time of Lincoln and the imminent Emancipation Proclamation, the idea of “people” had taken on a much broader meaning than at the time of the drafting of the Constitution.

      As Van Zuiden and others have pointed out, the electoral system in the US was never designed to function as a true democracy. Nevertheless, the belief was solidly instilled that democracy was in the nation’s DNA. It has withstood numerous assaults along the way and only recently begun to reveal some serious flaws that risk undermining Americans’ unquestioning belief in its virtues. For future observers of US history, the illusion of democracy as the basis of government may technically have expired in December 2000 when nine Supreme Court justices, and not the people or even the states, elected George W. Bush as president. At the time and amid such confusion, few had the courage to acknowledge that Bush’s election reflected a permanent change in their perception of democracy.

      The chaos of this year’s election, characterized by the twin evils of a persistent pandemic and the personality of Donald Trump, may well be the election that dispels all remaining illusions. In 2021, a new approach to understanding the relationship between the people and the nation’s institutions will most likely begin to emerge. The rupture with past traditions has been too great for the old dogmas to survive intact.

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      It’s impossible to predict what form that seismic shift in the political culture will take. It now looks more than likely — though prudence is still required — that if democratic processes play out according to recognized rules, Joe Biden will by the 46th president of the United States. But there is no guarantee that democratic processes will play out in any recognizably legitimate way, partly because the COVID-19 pandemic has created a physical barrier to the already troublingly chaotic conduct of traditional elections whose results pass through the archaic Electoral College, and partly because President Donald Trump will be highly motivated to disturb, delay and possibly cancel whatever validated outcome emerges. But further complications and a practically infinite series of complementary risks are lying in the offing. The risk of uncontrollable civil unrest, if not civil war, is real.

      Whatever the official result of the presidential election, whether it becomes known in the immediate aftermath of November 3 or sometime in January, it will be the object of contestation and possibly unpredictable forms of revolt by the citizens themselves. Like any episode of social upheaval, there is a strong chance that it will be quelled.

      Biden’s Dilemma

      But even if quashed and silenced, it certainly will not be resolved. The most favorable scenario for neutralizing the revolt of the Trumpian right would be a landslide victory for Biden, with the Democrats retaking control of the Senate while maintaining and increasing their majority in the House. But even so, the losers will certainly cry foul.

      A resounding majority for Biden and the Democrats would nevertheless buttress what remains of the population’s belief in democracy, legitimizing Biden’s claim to govern the nation. But even in the best of scenarios, a landslide would still leave Biden in a fragile, if not precarious position. Biden has done next to nothing to unite his own party. A Democratic victory will incite the young progressives to contest his legitimate control over an aged and aging party establishment. Gallup reports that “Americans’ frustration with the parties is evident in the 57% of Americans saying a third party is needed.”

      That figure has been stable for at least the past 10 years, but the level of frustration has been magnified by the presence of uninspiring candidates in both parties. As governing structures, both dominant parties have been seriously fragilized in the past two elections, the Republicans by Trump’s successful assault on their traditions and the Democrats by the nearly successful challenge of Bernie Sanders and the party establishment’s resistance to change.

      If elected, Biden will be challenged on the right by the combined force of fanatical believers in Trump as the messiah and hordes of libertarians appalled by the prospect of more “big government.” He will be challenged on the left by the progressives who not only oppose his tepid policies but no longer believe in the integrity of the Democratic Party. If it was just a question of managing the personal rivalries within his party, as it was for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, all might be fine. But with a prolonged pandemic, an out-of-control economic crisis, increasingly lucid and effective racial unrest and a growing anti-establishment sentiment across much of the right and the left, reinstalling the establishment that preceded Trump and restoring faith in its ability to govern will be a task logically beyond the capacity of 78-year-old Biden.

      The End of an Era

      And those issues only begin to define the challenges Biden will be facing. In an essay in The New Criterion earlier this year, James Pierson observed the very real potential for social collapse: “Yet today the United States seems headed in a different direction: toward pluralism without consensus — a nation-state without a national idea — and towards animus among racial, religious, regional, and national groups.” In his article, Pierson deftly summarizes the history of the nation from the convergence of disparate colonies into a “union” and its need for imperial expansion to maintain its unity. Historically speaking, both convergence and expansion are no longer what they used to be.

      Pierson claims that before the Civil War and the victory of the Union forces, the US had not really decided what it was. He asks the question, “what was it: union, republic, or empire — or a combination of all three? Whatever it was, it was not yet a nation.” He claims it only became a nation-state “over a ninety-year period from 1860 to 1950, an era bookended by the Civil War and World War II, two great wars for liberal democracy, with World War I sandwiched in between.”

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      Pierson credits Abraham Lincoln with creating the democracy that eventually came to dominate the world in the 20th century. Although assassinated by John Wilkes Booth before he could begin to implement his plan, Lincoln effectively created a political culture or system of belief that has only begun to fray in the last few decades. Pierson describes Honest Abe’s ideological triumph. “Lincoln envisioned a nation held together by a ‘political religion’ based upon reverence for the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence.” It was a nation “held together by loyalty to political institutions and abstract ideals.’”

      Pierson believes that that stable system began to dissolve after 1950, when what had been clearly a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) culture began to lose its capacity to impose its norms. He concludes, somewhat nostalgically: “It is no longer possible for the United States to go forward as a ‘cultural’ nation in the form by which it developed between 1860 and 1950. Whether or not this is a good thing is beside the point: it has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen.” And then, fatalistically, he adds: “These developments leave the United States without any strong foundations to keep itself together as a political enterprise — in a circumstance when its increasing diversity requires some kind of unifying thread. What will that be? No one now knows.”

      Pierson’s description of cultural decline echoes the thesis of Samuel Huntington’s book, “Who Are We?” It expresses a sentiment that Trump exploited with his slogan “Make American Great Again.” Pierson seems to recognize that a return to the good old WASP order, wished for by Huntington and Trump (and perhaps Pierson himself), is simply not going to happen.

      Joe Biden has promised to provide the thread that will unify the nation. Pierson believes that’s an impossible task. Others, focused on the possibilities of the future rather than a nostalgia for the past, claim it can be done. But Biden, though more conciliatory than Trump, clearly lacks the vision and the personality required to achieve it. And, of course, another Trump victory would only fragment the culture further and faster.

      The obvious conclusion should be that there is little choice for a politician who wishes to survive intact other than to move forward boldly and accept to resolve some serious historical ambiguities and overturn a number of institutions that have created a situation of political sclerosis and accelerated cultural decline. There are plenty of ideas to work with. Some of the younger members of the Democratic Party have demonstrated the kind of energy needed to achieve success. And the population will not be averse to change if they see it is intended to cure the disease and not just temporarily relieve the pain. The opioid crisis has at least taught them that mere pain relief is a dead end.

      The problem is that there will be resistance, though it will not come from the people. They know what they want. A majority wants to see expanded choice and at the very minimum a third party, simply because they no longer trust the two parties that have been running the show. An even clearer majority supports single-payer health insurance. A majority among the younger generations and possibly the entire population expects a serious and thorough response to climate change. But as the actions of past presidents have demonstrated, changing the way of life of a society of consumers appears to be too much to ask of politicians.

      Once the dust has settled from the election — unless that dust becomes radioactive while waiting for definitive results — 2021 is likely to be a year of confused political maneuvering and deep social instability. It will undoubtedly be a period of crisis. In a best case scenario, it will be the type of crisis that enables the nation to focus on a serious project of transformation. Those who see a Biden victory as a chance to return to the former status quo will attempt to manage the crisis, but they will inevitably be disappointed.

      That includes traditional donors, Wall Street, Hollywood and the vast majority of the political class. The two-dimensional chessboard with its 64 squares that they have been playing on for decades has now acquired a third dimension. Their expertise in pushing around the same pieces, according to the same rules on the same traditional chessboard, has lost its validity.

      Fragile Simulacrum

      History has already overtaken the political potential of a fragile simulacrum of a democracy that was never meant to be a democracy. No historian tracing the events as they played out over more than two centuries should be surprised that, while maintaining the illusion of democracy, the system evolved to function essentially as an elaborate, well-armed oligarchy. The oligarchy will use every power it has in its high-tech arsenal, including new forms of apparent generosity, to stabilize those institutions that best resist the seismic forces that have already begun cracking the entire system’s foundations.

      Even if it achieves some form of success and reaches what appears to be a state of relative stability, the world it believes it still controls will be very different and will begin evolving in highly unpredictable ways.

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      Many are predicting collapse. Given the degree to which an individualistic and corporatist culture has undermined most of the principles of human solidarity, collapse may well be the inevitable outcome. But collapse of what? Will it be the supposedly democratic political structures, traditions or ideologies? Will it be the economy? Or, as the coronavirus pandemic has shown, will it be human health, to say nothing of the health of the planet?

      Voters in the November 3 election should be asking themselves not just whom they want to vote for, but a much more immediate question that is nevertheless difficult to answer. What do Biden and his future team think about all the above questions? Are they prepared? What do they seriously think they might do about them as soon as the cracks start appearing, many of which are already visible?

      In the run-up to an election, politicians are unlikely to blurt out the truth, especially if it involves taking on serious problems whose solutions will inevitably cause pain in certain quarters. They will typically try to deal with three somewhat contradictory concerns. Keep the people happy. Reassure the donors. Prepare the next round of unholy alliances just to be certain they will be able to get something done. And then the big question arises: When it comes to taking hold of the reins of power, whom will they accept to disappoint? But the real question is this, whom can they afford to disappoint?

      We are left asking ourselves whether John Adams was right when he wrote that democracy never lasts long. If Biden is elected and serves two terms (reaching the age of 88 at the end of his second term), the kind of democracy the US has created will have lasted exactly two hundred years. John Adams probably would consider that a long time.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The Role of Foreign Policy in the US Election

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      It has become cliché to assert that unless their country is at war, Americans pay scant attention to foreign policy in their presidential elections. On the whole — and assuming a candidate isn’t seen as a warmonger, an accusation made of Republican candidate Barry Goldwater in his loss to incumbent President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 — this has been largely true. A corollary may be that when the US is at war, the incumbent usually wins, (George W. Bush being the most recent example in 2004).

      360° Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

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      The US isn’t technically at war now, though it has military forces deployed to high-threat areas and combat zones in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Those deployed numbers are pretty modest compared to recent years and have been trending downward since the Obama administration.

      So, will foreign policy matter to American voters when they vote in this election cycle? (November 3 is the official voting day, but millions have already begun voting by mail and are expected to continue in increasing numbers as Election Day approaches.)

      Foreign Policy May Matter to Voters But in a Different Way

      We won’t know the answer to that question until after the election when exit polls and surveys can more accurately measure voters’ attitudes and reasons for voting. It is probably true to say, however, that foreign policy won’t be at the top of most Americans’ agendas when they fill out their ballots. More important domestic issues will undoubtedly prevail. Those include the president’s response (or lack of) to the coronavirus outbreak, which has taken the lives of more than 215,000 Americans; the consequent devastating impact of the pandemic on the US economy; health care; racial justice and equality; and climate change.

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      There is another concern of voters and it is unprecedented in modern times. That is the heightened level of Americans’ anxiety over Donald Trump’s crisis-a-day presidency and an uncontrollable addiction to Twitter, which often only serves to exacerbate that anxiety. A return to a less apprehension-provoking presidency would be welcomed by many Americans.

      Part of that anxiety, one could argue, might stem from Trump’s dramatic departure from the foreign policy supported by every US president since Harry Truman following World War II. This was generally characterized as an alliance-based approach in which the US enlisted nations throughout the world in some form of alliance, partnership or understanding. It’s what drove the US to lead the effort to form — or support the formation of — multilateral organizations like the United Nations, NATO, the European Union and a myriad of UN-affiliated or regional organizations, from the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the World Bank to the International Monetary Fund and the Latin American Development Bank. It was also responsible in part for America’s successful emergence from the Cold War.

      Spoiled by Peace?

      This level of stability and security is taken for granted by far too many Americans. The enormous prosperity and development they have enjoyed since the end of World War II were possible because Americans need to worry as much as other nations about threats or invaders from abroad. The Cold War and the prospect of a nuclear Armageddon hung over Americans for decades. But most people understood that their leaders as well as those of the Soviet Union did not want — and most often sought to avoid through diplomacy — such confrontations from which neither would have emerged victorious. Through its far-sighted policy of alliance-based relations, America could also count on the support and partnership of other nations, including most of the world’s most advanced industrial nations.

      Today, Americans need not fear threats from abroad because their nation has maintained a foreign policy intended to ensure their security and promote their welfare. It has been the blessing that has allowed all other blessings of America to flourish virtually without hindrance from abroad.

      President Trump has cast this approach into doubt. Furthermore, he’s been challenged at times to lay out a cogent foreign policy alternative. What may best describe his approach is anti-multilateral and “America First.” That has meant directing harsh criticism at NATO and the EU as well as the UN, the WTO and the World Health Organization.

      Additionally, he has developed an unseemly and uncharacteristic (for American presidents) liking for autocrats, including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un (among others). More shockingly, he has insulted and degraded some of America’s closest friends and allies, including Canada, Mexico, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, Australia and South Korea.

      Americans Support Active International Engagement

      These actions by their president disturb many Americans. How many exactly we can’t be sure of. But the previous alliance-based foreign policy is supported by a significant majority of Americans of nearly all political persuasions. Though far from perfect at times, it has permitted the country to avoid major wars. Even in America’s wars of choice like Vietnam and Iraq, the US could still count on the backing of many of our friends and allies, at least at the outset.

      Recent polling bears this out. Majorities of Americans support their country’s alliances and ties to such stalwart allies such as NATO, Germany, South Korea and Japan. Majorities also believe that maintaining America’s military superiority is important, and they even accept stationing US troops in allied countries. According to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 69% of Americans want the US to play an active role in international affairs but not dominate.

      Americans also believe that international trade, another hallmark of previous US foreign policy, is good for the country and its economy. According to a survey conducted by the Chicago Council, 83% think international trade is good for US companies and nearly 90% believe it is good for the US economy. More than three-quarters support compliance with rulings of the WTO.

      None of this would appear to comport with Trump’s foreign policy. In fact, his approach has flown in the face of what Americans believe, support and want.

      Other decisions affecting America’s standing in the world also weigh on their emotions and sentiments. For example, Trump’s unwillingness to cooperate with other nations to develop and distribute a vaccine for the novel coronavirus and his precipitous announcement to withdraw from the WHO sound out of character, if not ominous, to a nation that has historically led the global fight against viral threats and has been seen as a global leader in medical science.

      These actions detract from the country’s image and reputation in the world and contrast with Americans’ strong penchant for humanitarian action, especially in a crisis. Polling by the Pew Research Center indicates that as badly as foreigners evaluate China’s response to the coronavirus pandemic (61% negative), more people (84%) viewed the response of the US as poor.

      Temperament, Judgment and American Anxiety

      American attitudes about foreign policy are certainly shaped by interests. But interests in the US are as diverse as Americans themselves. So, very often, American values tend to play an outsized role in what citizens think their country’s foreign policy ought to be. Those values revolve around the same values that shape attitudes about their own government — i.e., democracy, freedom, equality, human rights, rule of law, and free and fair elections.

      Donald Trump’s affinity for demagogues, populists, illiberal autocrats and out-and-out dictators undercuts those values. And his administration’s failures to defend Hong Kong, stand up for the 1 million persecuted Uighurs in China, condemn Saudi Arabia’s execution of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, or to speak out against the many cases of Saudi human rights abuse against women and bloggers fall short of American values. His administration expresses occasional support for Venezuelans and Nicaraguans opposing the Nicolas Maduro and Daniel Ortega governments, respectively, but only when such support coincides with the Trump administration’s political self-interests in those countries, whose governments the US opposes.

      Nevertheless, it’s probably safe to say that not one of these issues will figure prominently on the minds of many American voters when they cast their ballots for either President Trump or his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. But they do contribute to their heightened anxiety over Trump’s leadership. That anxiety is driven by concerns about his judgment and temperament. Virtually every American is asking how comfortable and confident they feel with one or the other of these men in the White House for the next four years. The candidates’ positions on US foreign policy will directly impact that question.

      For most Americans, the candidate whose temperament and judgment on foreign policy — as well as the many other key domestic issues — gives them the predictability, reliability and comfortability they’ve missed these last four years is the one likely to get their vote.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      America’s Maestro of Death and Destruction

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      Yes, when he was running for president, he did indeed say: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.”

      Then he won — and on November 3 (or thereafter), whether he wins or loses, we’re likely to find out that, when it comes to his base, he was right. He may not have lost a vote. Yes, Donald Trump is indeed a “murderer,” but here’s where his prediction fell desperately short: As president, he’s proved to be anything but a smalltime killer. It wasn’t as if he went out one day on New York City’s Fifth Avenue or even in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and shot a couple of people.

      The Next President Needs to Learn From Past Mistakes

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      Nothing so minimalist for The Donald. Nor is it as if, say, he had plowed “the Beast” (as his presidential Cadillac is known) into a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters, as so many other drivers have done this year. Let’s face it: that’s for his apprentices, not the showman himself. After all, Donald J. Trump has proved to be America’s 21st-century maestro of death and destruction, the P.T. Barnum of, as he put it predictively enough in his inaugural address, “American carnage.” In fact, he’s been a master of carnage in a way no one could then have imagined.

      Back in 2016, he was way off when it came to the scale of what he could accomplish. As it happens, the killing hasn’t just taken place on Fifth Avenue, or even in his (now hated) former hometown, but on avenues, streets, lanes and country roads across America. He was, however, right about one thing: He could kill at will and no one who mattered (to him at least) would hold him responsible, including the attorney general of the United States who has been one of his many handymen of mayhem.

      His is indeed proving to be a murderous regime, but in quite a different form than even he might have anticipated. Still, a carnage-creator he’s been (and, for god knows how long to come, will be) and here’s the remarkable thing: He’s daily been on “Fifth Avenue” killing passersby in a variety of ways. In fact, it’s worth going through his methods of murder, starting (where else?) with the pandemic that’s still ripping a path from hell across this country.

      Death by Disease

      We know from Bob Woodward’s new book that — in his own strange way — in February, Donald Trump evidently grasped the seriousness of COVID-19 and made a conscious decision to “play it down.” There have been all sorts of calculations since then, but by one modest early estimate, beginning to shut down and social distance in this country even a week earlier in March would have saved 36,000 lives (the equivalent of a dozen 9/11s); two weeks earlier and it would have been a striking 54,000 in a country now speeding toward something like 300,000 dead by year’s end.

      Embed from Getty Images

      If the president had moved quickly and reasonably, instead of worrying about his reelection on November 3 or how he looked with a mask on; if he had followed the advice of actual experts; if he had championed masking and social distancing as he’s championed the Confederate flag, military bases named after Confederate generals and the Proud Boys, we would have been living in a different and less wounded country — and that’s only the beginning of his Fifth Avenue behavior.

      After all, no matter what the scientific experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Protection and elsewhere were back then saying about the dangers of gathering in mask-less crowds indoors, it was clear that the president just couldn’t bear a world without fans, without crowds cheering his every convoluted word. That would have been like going on the diet from hell. As a result, he conducted his first major rally in June at the Bank of Oklahoma Center in Tulsa.

      Admittedly, that particular crowd would be nowhere near as big as he and his advisers had expected. Still, perhaps 6,000 fans, largely unmasked and many in close proximity, cheered on their commander-in-chief there. It was visibly a potential pandemic super-spreader of an event, but the commander-in-chief, mask-less himself, couldn’t have cared less. About three weeks later, when Tulsa experienced a striking rise in coronavirus cases (likely linked to that rally) and former presidential candidate and Trump supporter Herman Cain who had attended unmasked died of COVID-19, it didn’t faze the president in the slightest.

      He kept right on holding rallies and giving his patented, wildly cheered rambles in the brambles. As Rolling Stone correspondent Andy Kroll put it after attending one of his outdoor rallies in North Carolina, the president’s “remarks” that day (which ran to 37 pages and 18,000 words) were “practically a novella, albeit a novella that makes Finnegan’s Wake look like See Spot Run!”

      Nothing, certainly not a pandemic, was going to stop Donald J. Trump from sucking up the adoration of his base. Though in the first presidential debate with Joe Biden he claimed that he’s only been holding his rallies outdoors, in September in Nevada — a state whose governor had banned indoor gatherings of more than 50 people — Trump held a typically boisterous, adoring indoor rally of 5,000, largely unmasked, jammed-together Trumpsters. When questioned on the obvious dangers of such a gathering, he classically responded, “I’m on a stage and it’s very far away. And so I’m not at all concerned” — i.e., not at all concerned about (or for) them.

      If that isn’t the COVID-19 equivalent of a bazooka on Fifth Avenue, what is? And it summed up perfectly Trump’s response to the choice of pursuing his own reelection in the way he loves (and seems so desperately to need) or keeping Americans healthy. During these unending pandemic months, he regularly downplayed every danger and most reasonable responses to them, while at one point even tweeting to his followers to “LIBERATE” (possibly in an armed fashion) states that had imposed stay-at-home orders. He needed what he’s long called the “greatest economy in the history of America” back and reopening everything was naturally the way to go.

      Mimicking his boss’s style, Attorney General William Barr would even essentially compare lockdowns to slavery. As he put it, “A national lockdown. Stay-at-home orders. It’s like house arrest. Other than slavery, which is a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.”

      Clearly at the president’s behest, “top White House officials” would, according to The New York Times, pressure “the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this summer to play down the risk of sending children back to school, a strikingly political intervention in one of the most sensitive public health debates of the pandemic.” (As the president would tweet in a similar spirit: “The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November Election, but it is important for the children and families. May cut off funding if not open!”)

      In other words, it didn’t matter who might be endangered — his best fans or the nation’s schoolchildren — when his reelection, his future wellbeing, was at stake. Murder on Fifth Avenue? A nothing by comparison.

      Supreme Assassins?

      And his response to the pandemic only launches us on what should qualify as an all-American killing spree from hell. In the end, it could even prove to be the most modest part of it.

      Embed from Getty Images

      For the rest of that death toll, you might start with health care. It’s already estimated that at least 2.3 million Americans have lost their health insurance in the Trump years (and that figure, according to the US Census Bureau, includes 726,000 children, some of whom may now be headed back to school under pandemic conditions). That, in turn, could prove just a drop in the bucket if his administration’s ongoing assault on Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) finally succeeds. And after November 3, it indeed might if Mitch McConnell is successful in hustling Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court in place of the dead Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who twice upheld the constitutionality of that act). A supposedly “pro-life” Trump version of the Supreme Court — unless the pandemic were to sweep through it — would undoubtedly turn out to be murderous in its own fashion. Think of them as potential “supreme assassins.”

      Barrett, in particular, is known to hold negative views of the ACA, and the court will hear the Trump administration’s case for abolishing that act within a week of Election Day, so you do the math. Wiping it out reportedly means that at least 23 million more Americans would simply lose their health insurance and it could, in the end, leave tens of millions of Americans with “pre-existing medical conditions” in an uninsured hell on earth.

      Death? I guarantee it, on and off Fifth Avenue — and it will have been The Donald’s doing.

      A Murderous Future

      All of the above should be considered nothing more than warm-up exercises for the real deal when it comes to future presidential slaughter. All of it precedes the truly long-term issue of death and destruction that goes by the name of climate change.

      It’s hardly news that Donald Trump long ago rejected global warming as a Chinese “hoax.” And as he withdrew the US from the 2015 Paris Climate Accord and — like the child of the fossil-fueled 1950s that he is — proclaimed a new policy of American energy dominance (“the golden era of American energy is now underway”), he’s never stopped rejecting it.

      He did so again recently on a brief visit to burning California amid a historic wildfire season, where he predicted that it would soon get “cooler.” The only exception: when he suddenly feels in the mood to criticize the Chinese for their release of greenhouse gases. As he said in a speech on September 22 to the UN General Assembly, “China’s carbon emissions are nearly twice what the US has, and it’s rising fast. By contrast, after I withdrew from the one-sided Paris Climate Accord, last year America reduced its carbon emissions by more than any country in the agreement.”

      He and those he’s put in place at the Environmental Protection Agency and elsewhere in his administration have spent his presidency in a remarkably determined fashion trying to destroy the American and global environment. So far, they have rolled back (or are trying to roll back) 100 environmental protections that were in place when he arrived in the Oval Office, including most recently limits on a pesticide that reportedly can stunt brain development in children. Air pollution alone was, according to one study, responsible for 9,700 more deaths in this country in 2018 than in 2016. Above all, at the service of a still-expanding American fossil-fuel industry, he and his crew have done their damnedest to open the way for oil, gas, and coal development in just about any imaginable form.

      In a season in which the West Coast has burned in a previously inconceivable fashion, leaving a historic cloud of smoke in its wake, while fierce storms have flooded the Gulf Coast, Trump has continued, for instance, to focus on opening the Alaskan wilderness to oil drilling.

      In short, he and his administration have, in a rather literal fashion, proved to be pyromaniacs of the first order. They’ve been remarkably intent on ensuring that, in the future, the world will continue to heat in ways certain to unsettle humanity, creating almost unimaginable forms of death and destruction. Despite the fact that Joe Biden called him a “climate arsonist” as the West Coast burned, somehow the potentially murderous nature of his environmental policies has barely sunk in this election season.

      If the legend was true, the Roman emperor Nero fiddled — actually, he was probably playing the cithara — while the capital of his empire, Rome, burned for six days. He didn’t personally set the fire, however. Trump and his crew are, it seems, intent on setting fire not just to Rome, New York or Washington, but to the Alaskan wilderness, the Brazilian rainforest and that giant previously iced in landmass he couldn’t figure out how to purchase: Greenland. He’s helping to ensure that even the oceans will, in their own fashion, be on fire; that storms will grow ever more intense and destructive; that the temperature will rise ever higher; and that the planet will become ever less habitable.

      Meanwhile, intently maskless and socially undistanced, even he (and his wife Melania) contracted COVID-19, officially becoming part of his own American carnage. The White House, Air Force One and the president and his aides became the equivalent of COVID-19 superspreaders, as senators and reporters, among others, also began to come down with the disease. It’s now proving a visible all-American nightmare of the first order. 

      Donald Trump has, of course, hardly been alone when it comes to burning the planet, but it’s certainly eerie that, at this moment, such an arsonist would stand any chance at all of being reelected president of the United States. His urge is visibly not just to be an autocrat, but to commit mass murder nationwide and on a planetary scale deep into the future.

      Murder, he said, and murder it was, and Fifth Avenue was the least of it.

      *[This article was originally published by TomDispatch.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Can Donald Trump Steal a Second Term?

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      US President Donald Trump, who lost the popular vote by more than 3 million in 2016, is trailing his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, in most national polls. It looks like the writing is on the wall for Trump, with his ineptitude and disingenuity laid out for the world to see.

      Trump is a president whose bungled handling of the COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in the death of more than 215,000 Americans. Even after being infected by the virus himself, Trump tweeted on October 5: “I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!”

      360° Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

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      As president, Trump received the best possible treatment anyone infected with the virus could hope for, including access to medication that an average American can only dream of. Trump’s insensitive tweet flies in the face of the lives lost, displaying his utter disconnect from reality and a cruel lack of empathy. This is a president who has a chronic compulsion for defrauding people and lying pathologically about seemingly everything, including his finances. As a recent investigation by The New York Times exposed, Trump not only managed to pay no tax at all in 10 out of the past 15 years, but he is also a consummate loser as a businessman.

      Trump is also the first president in the history of the United States to have been impeached and then seek reelection following an acquittal by the Senate. It is seemingly inconceivable that a tax evader, crook, pathological liar and callous narcissist can succeed in hoodwinking the public for a second time into electing him. Sadly, anyone who dismisses Trump as not reelectable would do so at their own peril.

      Voter Suppression

      President Trump has repeatedly tried to undermine the democratic process in more ways than one cares to count in the lead up to the presidential election on November 3. Without providing any credible evidence, he has claimed that voting by mail is fraught with fraud, sowing seeds of doubt in the election results should his bid for a second term fail. Wary Democrats have reacted to this by encouraging people to cast their vote in person, despite the raging pandemic.

      In an effort to further subvert mail-in voting, Trump trained his guns on the United States Postal Service (USPS), openly admitting that he opposed allocating additional funding. “They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump stated unabashedly in an interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo in August. “If they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.” Despite these attacks, Trump himself voted using a mail-in ballot during the March presidential primaries in his resident state of Florida.

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      One has to marvel at the brazen thoroughness with which he is diminishing the authenticity of the very process that propelled him to his current position. There are only two ways in which people can exercise their franchise: by voting in person or by using an alternate option that is available to them in their local jurisdiction, such as absentee ballots. On the one hand, Trump has discredited the usage of mail-in ballots. He has also appointed Louis DeJoy, a Republican donor, as postmaster general, who has crippled the operations of the USPS. On the other hand, Trump is employing scare tactics to turn people away from in-person voting. His comprehensive approach is aimed at lowering voter turnout, which he believes will be favorable for Republicans.

      In a statement that borders on voter intimidation, Trump stated in an interview with Fox News on August 20 that “We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement, and we’re going to hopefully have U.S. attorneys and we’re going to have everybody, and attorney generals.” Trump was alluding to sending law enforcement officials to voting centers. Federal law prohibits any on-duty law enforcement personnel bearing arms from entering a voting center without the express purpose of casting their own vote. Yet the mere threat of sending police and sheriffs to voting centers, even if only to monitor polls, can terrify marginalized communities and prevent them from turning up to vote.

      Logic Defying Loyalty

      Anyone with an iota of common sense can see the hypocrisy of Trump’s statements. Sadly, there is an intransigent base of followers that he has cultivated who refuse to see him for the charlatan president he really is. Cognitive neuroscientist Bobby Azarian’s article in Psychology Today, entitled “A Complete Psychological Analysis of Trump’s Support,” enumerates more than a dozen elements that energize Trump’s voter base, which include terror management theory and the Dunning-Kruger effect.

      There are several Republican politicians who have stated that they will not be supporting Trump in this election. Nearly everyone on the list is someone who held office as a Republican in the past and is not seeking reelection. Other than Senators Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski, both of whom have not categorically stated who they intend to vote for, most sitting Republican politicians have forsaken their dignity and self-respect in order to do Trump’s bidding.

      Former Nevada Senator Dean Heller brazenly lied in a Fox News interview that the state’s vote-by-mail process will allow people to vote once by mail and once in person. Trump echoed this in September when he seemed to suggest voters should “test” the system by casting their ballot twice.

      Serving as an election officer in my local county, I know for a fact that when a person’s vote-by-mail ballot is received, it is recorded in the system and it is impossible for the same person to vote again without committing fraud under the penalty of perjury. Truth notwithstanding, Trump and Heller have managed to sow seeds of doubt among the gullible, making some of them question the robustness of the country’s democratic election process.

      South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham has been one of the biggest turncoats in his criticism of the president. In 2015, Graham called Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious-bigot.” Today, he is one of Trump’s staunchest cronies. Fighting a tough reelection bid in his home state, Graham shamelessly kowtows to the same person who was the object of his scathing criticism that has made an interesting case study on the fluctuating loyalties of politicians.  

      GOP Machinery

      However disingenuous and self-serving Trump’s actions may be, to win in November, the president needs the help of well-oiled machinery that is unafraid to flout the democratic process, engage in voter suppression and set the stage for a possible showdown in the judiciary system overruling the will of the people. That machinery goes by the name of the GOP.

      In Santa Clara County, California, the Registrar of Voters has made available nearly 100 vote-by-mail drop-off locations spread across the county. In stark contrast, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose ordered just one drop-off box installed in each of the state’s 88 counties, some of which have a population of more than a million. LaRose reluctantly yielded after a judge in Franklin County rescinded his order. LaRose has since agreed to allow individual counties to decide to have more drop-off boxes if they wish to, but he has mandated that the location of those boxes has to be within the premises of the board of elections’ property, doing his best to make it as difficult as possible for people to cast their ballots.  

      It is worth remembering that, in 2004, the partisan actions of Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell may very well have played the decisive factor in George W. Bush getting reelected. Ohio continues to be a battleground state in 2020, and the actions of LaRose are dangerously reminiscent of what happened 16 years ago.

      In Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott has managed to succeed where LaRose fell short. Abbott has issued a proclamation limiting the number of drop-off locations to just one per county. Elections are already underway even as the legal wrangling over Abbott’s decision is likely to ensue. Concerned by the changing demographics of the voting population in his state, Abbott’s actions show how scared Republicans are and the extent to which they will go to subvert democracy.

      Setting the Stage for a Grand Finale

      Should he lose, Trump has categorically refused to commit to an orderly and peaceful transfer of power to his Democratic opponent. The president believes that this election will be decided by the Supreme Court, not the people of America.

      The sudden demise of the liberal Supreme Court icon, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has provided Trump and the Republicans a fortuitous opportunity to shift the ideology of the court to decidedly conservative. No doubt, Democrats will do everything within their power to appeal to the logic and conscience of Republican senators to stop the confirmation of Trump’s nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, to replace Ginsburg just weeks before the presidential election. Unfortunately, both logic and conscience are in dangerously short supply, if not downright nonexistent, among Republican politicians in a Trumpian world.

      Can America see a blue wave of unprecedented proportion, awarding the White House to Joe Biden and flipping the Senate majority to the Democrats? Or will the machinations of Donald Trump and his coterie preclude such an occurrence from coming to pass? Whatever happens, if Trump fails to get the result he desperately craves, we should not be surprised to see more flagrant acts aimed at subverting democracy unfold before us.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      The 2020 US Election Explained

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      With elections due on November 3, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has busted a plot against Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer. An armed militia allegedly planned to abduct and overthrow her. Whitmer had ordered stringent lockdown measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus that many Michiganders opposed and that the state’s Supreme Court recently ruled against.

      Scroll down to read more in this 360° series

      Trouble has been brewing in Michigan for a while. In May, armed protesters stormed the state capitol building. Such anger has been rising in much of the United States along regional, race and class divides. This year, a spate of police killings ignited outrage and Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests erupted. On June 6, half a million people turned out in nearly 550 places across the US. According to some analysts, the US is at its most divided since the 1861-65 Civil War.

      Such is the rancor in the country that President Donald Trump has refused to participate in a virtual town hall debate, accusing the bipartisan debate commission of bias. In the first debate, Trump and his challenger Joe Biden traded insults, causing many to term it the ugliest such spectacle since televised presidential debates kicked off in 1960. This has grave implications for the elections and American democracy itself.

      The Story of the 2020 US Election

      The US is a young country with an old democracy. On April 6, 1789, George Washington was unanimously elected president. This was three months before a mob in Paris stormed the Bastille on July 14, kicking off the French Revolution.

      In contrast to the French who now have a fifth republic, Americans have stuck with their first one. The US Constitution is venerated in the same way as the Bible and has been amended a mere 27 times since 1787. The last amendment is of 1992 vintage and neither Republicans nor Democrats are proposing further changes. Despite the Civil War, the American republic, its democratic experiment and its Constitution have endured to this day.

      Embed from Getty Images

      American democracy follows a quadrennial cycle. Every four years, Americans go to the polls to elect the president and vice president. At the same time, they also vote in 435 members of the House of Representatives, the lower house of the US Congress that controls the purse, for two-year terms. Voters also get to pick around a third of the seats in the Senate, the upper house that confirms appointments — including those to the US Supreme Court — for six-year terms.

      This year, 35 Senate seats are in play at a time when Trump has nominated Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In the US, judges are appointed for life. Barrett is a conservative Catholic while Ginsburg was a liberal icon. The 48-year-old Barrett would give conservatives a 6 to 3 advantage vis-à-vis liberals in the Supreme Court. It could potentially lead to an overturning of the landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion.

      Elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate are relatively straightforward. All American citizens above the age of 18 can vote for representatives of their congressional districts in a first-past-the-post system. They also vote for two senators to represent the state they live in. When it comes to electing a president, the Electoral College comes into play. A total of 538 Electoral College votes are distributed among 50 states. Americans vote for presidential candidates in their states. The candidate who wins the majority in a state gets the Electoral College votes assigned to that state.

      To become president, a candidate must win 270 or more Electoral College votes. Most of the time, the winning candidate has won both the popular and the electoral college votes. However, this does not always hold true. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote but won only 266 Electoral College votes, while George W. Bush won 271. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but she only won 227 Electoral College votes in contrast to Trump’s 304 because she lost key states by narrow margins. Currently, Biden and the Democrats lead in most opinion polls, but they have not entirely been accurate in the past.

      The US has a two-party system with no space for a third party. The Republican Party is conservative. Historically, it stands for smaller government, lower taxes and stronger national security. Called the Grand Old Party (GOP), it opposes abortion, supports gun rights and wants to limit immigration. The GOP has strong support in the more rural parts of the country such as the South, Southwest and Midwest. The Democratic Party is the liberal political party. Traditionally, it supports greater governmental intervention, higher taxes and more social justice. Democrats support abortion, oppose gun rights and take a more lenient view of immigration. Their power base lies in urban areas that are largely in the Northeast and the West Coast.

      Currently, while the Republicans control the Senate and the White House, the Democrats control the House of Representatives. The Democrat-controlled House and the Trump White House have clashed repeatedly over a new stimulus package to a coronavirus-ravaged economy. Prima facie, such partisanship and brinkmanship is not new. This is a recurring feature in American politics. Yet this time it is truly different.

      Trump’s election in 2016 was a seismic moment. He was the unlikeliest of candidates who emerged on top in the Republican primaries. During his presidential campaign, he survived many a faux pas and a scandal. In the process, both the Bush and Clinton dynasties bit the dust. Trump won power as a populist and has governed as one.

      President Trump has ushered in an era of protectionism, slapping tariffs on many countries, especially China. He has weakened institutions that the US itself created after World War II by threatening to pull out of the World Trade Organization and not paying remaining dues to the World Health Organization after withdrawing the US from it. Early in his presidency, Trump walked away from the 2015 Paris Climate Accord and jettisoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership that underpinned former President Barack Obama’s Asia Pivot.

      Why Does the 2020 US Election Matter?

      The US election matters not only nationally but also globally. First, Americans are choosing between two poorly-defined but distinctly alternative visions. Donald Trump champions populist nationalism, while Joe Biden supports the post-World War II order. The former will push protectionism and unilateralism further, while the latter will roll back some if not all of Trump’s measures. Under Biden, there will be freer trade and more US support for international institutions. The election result will change the world.

      Second, Americans are deciding between two starkly different ways of handling the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has emerged out of hospital after contracting COVID-19 — the disease caused by the novel coronavirus — to greet his supporters from the White House balcony, take off his face mask and declare that the country must get back to business. Biden believes in prudence, wears his mask and proposes following public health guidelines advocating social distancing, limited economic activity and lockdowns in case of spiking infections. Unsurprisingly, the Pew Research Center puts the economy and health care as the voters’ top concerns. The election might reflect the tradeoff that voters are willing to make between the two.

      Third, questions about the election’s legitimacy sound louder than at any other time since the Civil War. BLM marches and militia activity are symptoms of a deeper malaise. The US is deeply divided and trust in institutions is running low. At such a time, postal ballots could play a big role in deciding the election. All states provide for voting by post but rules differ widely. The final result could take days or even weeks. Trump has already cast doubts as to the legitimacy of postal ballots and there are real fears about a peaceful transfer of power.

      Fourth, law enforcement and criminal justice seem to be key issues for this election. Many voters fear mass protests in many cities. Others believe that the criminal justice system is unjust and victimizes black people, especially young black men. Both rallies in support of law enforcement officials and for defunding the police are taking place across the US. The election will decide the direction of law enforcement and criminal justice in the country.

      Finally, the result of the election has immediate global ramifications because Pax Americana is fraying. Like Rome, the US can go to war as was the case with Vietnam and Iraq. Yet like its ancient counterpart, it has been the global guarantor of relative peace. With the US withdrawing from the world stage, countries like Russia, China and Turkey are stepping in to fill the void. Furthermore, what Joseph S. Nye Jr. calls America’s “soft power” seems to be waning.

      Some surmise that American superpowerdom is unchallengeable. The US has the space program, the air superiority, the deepwater navy, the cutting-edge technology, leading universities, unrivaled innovation, seductive pop culture, cheap gas, bountiful resources and a relatively youthful population to be top dog. Others see the US as Rome in decline, plagued by corruption, division and discord. The 2020 US election might reveal which of these two views might be closer to the truth, with profound consequences for the history of the world.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      A Year On, the Clean India Mission Falls Short

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      Research amidst the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the virus is transmitted through wastewater. This makes it crucial to revisit the goals of India’s ambitious Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Mission, or SBM) that came to a close almost exactly a year ago. While there were substantial improvements made in toilet coverage, a lack of data clarity muddies an understanding of exactly how large these improvements were across the country. According to government estimates, national sanitation coverage was 51% in 2014 when SBM began and reached 78% in 2018, less than a year prior to the end of the program. While this certainly shows progress — the national average was just under 26% in 1999 — no one would think to take these numbers and simply round up to 100%.  

      But at the close of the SBM last fall, this is exactly what Prime Minister Narendra Modi did. Speaking to a crowd, Modi proclaimed that India was now completely open defecation free (ODF), with sanitation coverage reported by the SBM portal as 100% in rural areas and, inexplicably, 105% in urban areas. From the start of the 2014 campaign, the central government maintained that in just five short years, India would be ODF. Despite the gains made, a singular focus on meeting steep targets in a very short amount of time seems to have put Modi in a tight spot by the time October 2019 rolled around. 

      Caste Politics Overshadow Sanitation Issues in India

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      The gaps have been, at times, glaring. News reports from established outlets all over the country reported open defecation in areas that were already recorded as ODF. A 2018 study by the Rice Institute estimated an open defecation rate of 44%, meaning nearly half of the sampled population was still engaging in the practice hardly a year before SBM ended. In urban areas the picture looks a bit better: 95% of urban households access an improved toilet. But this includes community toilets, which may be used by hundreds of other families and are often plagued with maintenance, hygiene and safety issues. Furthermore, one survey from 18 states identified over 48,000 manual scavengers still cleaning “dry” toilets which do not discharge into sewer lines.

      Social Pressure-Cooker

      What explains these inconsistencies? The use of shame-based tactics to stop open defecation, alongside a rush to meet ODF goals, have built up a pressure-cooker environment. The SBM has continued prior national efforts that deemphasized technical solutions and focused heavily on strategies to encourage behavior change at the local level. One such strategy is Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), which hinges on “triggering” disgust and extreme emotions among community members to spur the abandonment of open defecation. Despite some concerns about shame-based approaches, the SBM continued with the CLTS Foundation and others as implementation partners.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But open defecation is an issue that needs more than short-term emotional reactions. The longstanding practice is mired in cultural tradition, casteist taboos and environmental factors, among others. Some reasons people give for it is that they do not wish to empty a pit themselves, that it is considered more hygienic to defecate further away from the home — certainly reasonable considering how few poor Indian homes have running water — or that community toilets are dirty and unsafe, so squatting in a quiet area nearby is actually preferable.

      In the SBM environment, people who have not built a toilet, for whatever reason, are highly likely to experience retaliation for continuing to defecate in the open. Because Indian culture is quite collective — the actions of one person are seen to have radiating effects on the family and community — sometimes social pressure can play a role in nudging behavior change. However, this is a slippery slope. In India’s highly unequal society, characterized by stark gender and caste-based hierarchies amidst a wide array of languages and ethnicities, such strategies have the potential to be misused, with large social costs.

      There is ample evidence to show this. In June 2017, Zafar Hussein, a local community leader agitating against the eviction of his settlement in Rajasthan, was allegedly beaten to death by local officials for trying to stop officials from taking photographs of women defecating in the open. His death was reported by multiple outlets. In other areas of Maharashtra, people have been followed by a loud band, jailed or fined for defecating in the open.

      Walls of shame have been instituted by local village councils onto which the names and photographs of people defecating openly are be pasted. These individuals were often removed from eligibility for local government programs. The previously mentioned Rice Institute study also recorded coercion and threats of the loss of government rations as a way to bring down open defecation rates. Notably, the study found that Dalits and Adivasis were the most likely to face such behaviors. India’s Health Ministry has publicly denounced the results of the Rice survey. But in September last year, weeks before Modi’s ODF declaration, two young Dalit children were beaten to death in their village in Madhya Pradesh for defecating in the open.

      Numbers, Strategies and Health Equity

      These debates over sanitation data are not merely academic exercises. They have real, material impacts on people. In some ways, the above tragedies are not surprising. If a hasty approach is taken toward declaring areas ODF, it follows that any activity hinting that this claim is not matched by reality will be quashed. Despite this, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation bestowed the Global Goalkeeper Award upon Modi last year. It is surprising that one of the largest, most influential health organizations in the world, committed to facts and data, accepted without question the Indian prime minister’s claims, failing to consider all the evidence to the contrary.

      So what is the solution? Certainly, the answer is not to give up on sanitation programming as the need remains great. There are several organizations on the ground that have successfully integrated mobilization with communities, technical expertise and a sustained presence through which people are not merely pressured to stop a practice but meaningfully guided toward an alternative and given the facts and tools to integrate that alternative into their lives.

      However, this takes a more long-term presence, a less single-minded focus on quick targets, a commitment toward waste management infrastructure besides just toilets, and a willingness to meet people where they are. Further, the same people who have fallen through the gaps in the SBM are those with a lot to lose during the current pandemic: the rural poor, slum-dwellers, sanitation workers, manual laborers and migrants. Brutal crackdowns against those who kept working amidst India’s COVID-19 lockdown illustrate that retaliation cannot continue to be a solution when reality does not match the official word. Amidst the pandemic, sanitation infrastructure and the transparency of data surrounding it are necessities that cannot afford to wait.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Donald Trump, COVID-19 and America’s Love of Conspiracy

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      US President Donald Trump and his wife Melania tested positive for COVID-19 on the evening of Thursday, October 1. In retrospect, the diagnosis should not have become as a complete surprise. For months, Trump and most of his entourage ignored the advice of public health specialists, in his own administration, to wear masks in public settings and maintain social distance between the president, his key advisers and other White House personnel.

      QAnon: A Conspiracy for Our Time

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      Despite warnings from infectious disease specialists inside and outside the administration, Trump persisted to hold public rallies, often in confined indoor settings, as part of his reelection campaign. These events appeared to gratify the president’s need for attention and unqualified adoration, irrespective of their partisan political benefits. Based on this behavior, extended over the course of the pandemic, it was almost inevitable that the infection caught up with Trump.

      Alternative Facts

      This interpretation seems perfectly reasonable. But it is unlikely to satisfy voices on the far right of the American political spectrum despite the House of Representatives’ bipartisan vote on October 2 to condemn the QAnon conspiracy. It requires some speculation, but not all that much, to expect QAnon believers and such deranged media figures as Alex Jones to produce a set of “alternative facts.” 

      These “facts” are likely to involve the discovery of still another “deep state” conspiracy within the federal government. According to such a conspiratorial view, Trump’s attempts to achieve his “pro-American” white nationalist objective are being sabotaged by a secret conspiracy formed among federal bureaucrats to thwart his policy goals. “Deep state” conspirators will stop at nothing to bring down Trump and his “conservative” administration. We should not be surprised if, over the remaining weeks leading to the November 3 presidential election, various versions of such a “deep state” conspiracy appear across the internet. It remains to be seen how much will be taken up by Fox News and other outlets.

      Multiple “deep state” conspiracy assertions and interpretations have surfaced in American political life over the decades. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the journalist John T. Flynn and other right-wing isolationists, including “Colonel” Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, claimed that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had deliberately goaded the Japanese into attacking the United States to make gullible Americans abandon their “America First” ideals and support the country’s entry into the war against the Axis powers.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Flynn and others believed that Roosevelt knew of the Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor but deliberately did not alert US commanders in Hawaii, Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter Short, so that the attack could proceed with maximum effect. According to this scenario, the blood of the sailors on the USS Arizona was on Roosevelt’s hands.

      During President Dwight Eisenhower’s second term, when fears of communism became a national obsession, Robert Welch, a retired Massachusetts candy manufacturer, formed the John Birch Society. (Birch was an American missionary in China who had been killed by Mao’s Communists in 1946.)  Welch went on to publish a widely publicized “Blue Book,” which, among other things, included a list of domestic “communists” and communist sympathizers who were scheming to bring down America. The president’s brother, Dr. Milton Eisenhower, then the chancellor of the University of Minnesota, was allegedly his superior in the communist conspiracy. The president himself was simply a dupe instrumentalized by powers that be inside the communist movement.

      The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in November 1963 yielded a bonanza of conspiracy theories. The assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, had defected to the Soviet Union, returned to the US and became a member of the “Fair Play for Cuba” committee while living in New Orleans. Those who espoused this conspiratorial interpretation claimed either the USSR — the assassination occurred after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — or Fidel Castro, who had been targeted for assassination by the CIA, were behind the murder.

      Left-Wing Conspiracies

      At the time, competing left-wing conspiracy theories flourished as well, according to which Kennedy had been the victim of right-wing generals and businessmen who wanted the United States to abandon plans for a peaceful end to the Cold War. Film director and Vietnam War veteran Oliver Stone made a movie depicting the dynamics of this conspiracy, featuring an imaginary New Orleans district attorney uncovering the “truth.”

      The New World Order (NWO) conspiracy arose at the end of the Cold War. Following the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991 by an international coalition led by the United States, President George H. W. Bush referred to the emergence of a new world order dominated by America as the world’s only “hyper-power.” His celebration of American dominance was understood by members of various active well-armed “patriot” groups around the country as the government’s attempt to compromise American sovereignty.

      Bush’s aim, according to this conspiracy, was to turn the United States over to the United Nations and other dark international evil-doers. In parts of the West and Midwest, NWO believers spotted black helicopters hovering above farms and ranches. Others detected the movement of black trains carrying Chinese communist troops to obscure destinations. Suspicions were aroused in the Northwest that detachments of China’s People’s Liberation Army were massing on the Canadian border, preparing to invade the US. Reverend Pat Robertson, a prominent televangelist, even wrote a book entitled “The New World Order,” warning  of the NWO threat and encouraging  followers to be prepared.

      If Donald Trump’s COVID-19 infection is blamed on the “deep state,” it will surely become part of a line of right-wing conspiracies involving American presidents, either as victims or, in the case of Roosevelt, perpetrators.  

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Emmanuel Macron, France’s Islamophobe-in-Chief

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      France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, may be unique on today’s world stage in an era marked by the rise of populism. He came to power in 2017 as a centrist maverick. He had no established party, ideology or tradition to guide him or fight for his future agenda. And yet, in the midst of that uncertainty, the rules of France’s Fifth Republic’s presidential regime gave him a stable position to govern from for a full five years. It was an enviable position. The media could not accuse the centrist Macron of the political sin of the age: populist extremism.

      In 2016, following Brexit and Donald Trump’s election in the US, populist extremism appeared to have overtaken the English-speaking world. It was rapidly spreading across Europe and elsewhere. The most obvious populists are branded right-wing. They demonstrate a taste for nationalism, authoritarianism and majoritarianism. They include Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Boris Johnson, Rodrigo Duterte, Narendra Modi and Viktor Orban. The left-wing populists appear as reformers and even revolutionaries, ready to upset the status quo and alienate any number of vested interests. They include Bernie Sanders, Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

      In 2017, Macron miraculously parted the waters of the French political Red Sea when he managed to split the political spectrum down the middle, neutralizing the traditional ruling parties on the right and left. As a centrist, he claimed to be capable of embracing the diversity of the nation. During his electoral campaign, he reached out to Barack Obama, who publicly supported him. This bolstered the image of Macron as an open-minded, globalizing liberal. The former Rothschild banker also had his neoliberal credentials, affirming his identification with the mainstream values of the existing economic superstructure, the traditional enemy of both right-wing and left-wing populists.

      Emmanuel Macron’s Campaign to Stifle Debate in France

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      So why is Macron now embracing Islamophobia, the policy most clearly associated with right-wing populism? Can it be that the centrist Macron, who has built the strongest part of his reputation on the anti-nationalistic idea of strengthening the European Union, is at heart a populist? 

      Writing in The Conversation, Charles Barthold and Marin Fougère describe what may be called the populist method of French president: “Macron crafts his speeches to cater to the emotions and demands of the public, be it through ramping up the rhetoric on climate change or pushing for further European Union integration — whether or not he actually has the policies to match his words.” He shares with pure populists a deep sense of electoral opportunism. He simply lacks the fanatically loyal base that they cultivate and seek to excite.

      With the trial of the authors of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack in the news, Macron has decided to use his pulpit to instruct the nation about the largely discredited thesis Samuel Huntington famously launched in 1993: the clash of civilizations. In what sounds like a call to arms, Macron says “we must attack radical Islamism.” He offers this deliberately vague but hugely provocative historical judgment: “Islam is a religion experiencing a crisis today, everywhere in the world.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Experiencing a crisis:

      The usual diagnosis made by those undergoing a crisis against those whom they seek to use as a scapegoat to explain their own crisis.

      Contextual Note

      Macron attempts to clarify the nature of the crisis when he explains that it concerns “tensions between fundamentalisms.” What does he mean? Is he referring to the rivalry between Sunnis and Shia? Are the “religious and political projects” he mentions those of the governments of Saudi Arabia and Iran? He never clarifies this. His aim is less to elucidate historical trends than to exploit a sense of fear.

      The full text of Macron’s speech reveals his intentions. He introduces his remarks on the crisis of Islam by proudly pointing to his own “humility.” He admits he is not a specialist. In other words, what he is about to say has no scientific authority. Instead, he generously offers “to share his understanding of things as he sees them.” After all, who needs experts when everyone knows that what counts are the subjective feelings of a leader? The method resembles Donald Trump’s, who routinely excoriates experts as frauds. The gentler and subtler Macron uses the prestige of his office to simply leave the experts on the sidelines.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Macron follows this up with a laughably incoherent allusion to a nation he calls “our friend, Tunisia.” He explains that “Thirty years ago, the situation was radically different in the application of this religion, the way of living it, and the tensions that we live in our society are present in this one which is undoubtedly one of the most educated, developed in the region.” Is he more surprised by the fact that some things change over time or that some educated people may not think and act in the same way he does? Both can be attributed to a special form of French, and Macronian, hubris.

      Macron resorts to the method of sounding logical when he announces: “There is therefore a crisis of Islam.” “Therefore” implies that the evidence he has presented concerning Tunisia is conclusive. The debate is over. He has made his case. That enables him to lament a “reinvented jihad” which he oddly defines as “the destruction of the other.” He then describes the litany of horrors routinely cited by Islamophobes across the globe. He even obeys the command enjoined by hosts of Fox News or Bill Maher to “say the words” and identify the evil: “We must name it.” Naming is blaming, and clearly Islam is to blame, a message he expects the non-Muslim voting majority of France to appreciate.

      Macron clearly believes Islamophobia is a winning strategy. But France, unlike the United States, is a nation that also appreciates intellectual nuance. And so the president goes on to admit, in a way that Trump would never be tempted to do, that his nation bears some of the blame for today’s evils by allowing ghettoes to be created and failing to realize mixité, a French word for integration. He even refers to the failure of France to come to terms with the trauma of its colonial past, while at the same time demonstrating his own obvious failure to do so.  

      Historical Note

      Macron’s party, La République en Marche! (Republic on the Move, or EM!), is an example of what the French call bricolage, meaning basically cobbling things together and hoping they work. The fact that his party is still more or less intact says less about Macron’s political skills than it does about the sclerosis of the Fifth Republic’s political institutions and the dominant, if not regal role of the president.

      From the start, EM! was a dog’s dinner. Now it is at risk of spilling out of the bowl at any moment. That may explain why Macron occasionally feels the need for a populist fix, and Islamophobia is the only reliable fix for a centrist. For decades the Le Pens, both father and daughter, have deftly exploited the growing anti-immigrant sentiment of the working class. Thanks to that strategy, Le Pen’s National Rally (formerly National Front) managed to capture what was once the Communist Party’s working-class constituency after it had fallen into irrelevance.

      The difference between Macron’s electorally convenient Islamophobia and Marine Le Pen’s becomes clear in his discourse. He wants Muslims to integrate, to become ordinary French people, whereas Le Pen — like Trump in reference to certain young, darker-skinned legislators — simply wants them to “go home.” Presumably, Macron and Le Pen would be satisfied if the Muslims simply stayed out of sight. But that would pose another problem. It would remove the convenient distraction of blaming another culture for the failures of one’s own.  

      France and other European nations share with the United States an underlying problem rooted in their history. Just as the US has never managed to come to grips with its slaveholding past, former European colonial empires have never worked out how to deal not just with their own colonial history. To some extent, this reflects and incapacity to deal with history itself, whose reality they prefer to deny. This is especially true of France, a nation that, like the US, believes its own political culture of human rights and the championing of freedom represents universal norms. Both the French and the Americans should ask themselves this question: Who is experiencing the deepest crisis today? The answer should be obvious.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More