American nightmares

If we are really honest, we’ve been watching the decline of the West for decades.

We, the West, sat on our laurels, and our worldview was not that of informed people.

We learned the world that existed the year our teachers were born.

I remember our teacher laughing in 1984 when we talked about superpowers, when we suggested that China had the potential to become one. It had the population, but perhaps not the technology or the ambition. China was still a communist country in 1984, and perhaps our teacher was right to laugh at us.

But since then, China and much of Asia have come out of poverty. About 1 billion Asians have been lifted out of poverty over the last 20 years or so.

Life expectancy has risen, technology has developed, medicine has improved, education has expanded, and the standard of living has increased.

In China in 1978, very few people were doctoral candidates; now China has more doctors than most other places. They even introduced a doctorate for practical products, a practical PhD.

China and India seem to be outpacing the world. America is still the sprawling blob it has always been, but we see the leaves turning colour, just as the British Empire did after the world wars.

America has lost wars since Vietnam. You could even argue that the USA hasn’t won anything since World War II, and the emperor’s new clothes are invisible.

America went from a president who could not tell a lie to one who could not tell the truth. If I were to list all of Trump’s alleged or even proven antics, I would be here a very long time.

We saw the return of the Colosseum to the White House gardens, with a fight on Trump’s birthday that left some participants bloodied and broken. Feed the crowd blood to keep them calm — it is as old as the Roman Empire.

CREW, a great source of information (citizensforethics.org), produced a mind-boggling table here (president-trump’s staggering record of uncharged crimes) which lists the problems but stops in 2023.

PBS has a video (watch) listing Trump’s impeachable problems, including treason.

Steven Cohen, the 9th District Congressman for Tennessee, is keeping a list at cohen.house.gov/TrumpAdminTracker.

But nothing seems to happen. Trump seems Teflon-coated.