AhlulBayt News Agency: “O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave. O'er the land of the free. And the home of the brave?” This is what came to my mind in the wake of the various economic, political and social issues surfacing in the United States. And while the American national anthem popped into my head, I wondered whether the US was really the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Imagine America’s timeline from the current time until the past couple of years, since the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the US. Those past 4 years have been quite different from the ones before them.
The American nation had become like its then-president: fat, lazy, narcissistic, untrustworthy, unpredictable, thick as two short planks, selfish, financially bankrupt, morally bankrupt from their double standard business laws and diplomacy, xenophobic, prone to violence, a bully… and the list goes on.
It looked like the end of the American Empire from the outside, thrashing its last. It might have even been considered a rogue state under Trump’s regime as it has unilaterally withdrawn from many global agreements – most notably the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] with Iran – and governing bodies such as the UNESCO and UNHRC.
Though, the US has money to fix its crumbling infrastructure. Yet, have you ever wondered where that money is being spent?
It’s being spent on bailouts for banks and government subsidies for big businesses. It’s being spent on astronomical healthcare costs unseen in the rest of the developed world. It’s being spent on secret labs to develop biological weapons. It's being spent on a military budget that exceeds the combined budget of the next seven highest countries. It’s being spent on weapons sent to the Saudis and their allies to withstand the war it waged on Yemen. It’s being spent on its agents in many countries in the world to wage covert influence campaigns.
The US portrays itself as a peace initiator – that, it wants peace and that one should not colonize another country, but what is it doing in reality? The US is making its colonies all around the world. It has ruined Afghanistan and Iraq, destabilized Syria, meddled with the internal affairs of Lebanon and Ukraine and tried to cause chaos in Iran.
Less than three years into Joe Biden’s presidential term, and the US doesn’t seem to be getting any better, let alone recover from the political and socioeconomic issues that have stricken the globe.
– The US national debt is high. Biden has added a whopping $3.37 trillion to the national debt, sending it to a record high of $31 trillion. An economic model devised by two Bloomberg economists and run based on 13 unspecified financial indicators expected that “The US economy is 100% certain to enter a recession in the next 12 months.”
What’s even worse is that the apparently inevitable downturn might come even sooner than that – the model returned a 73% chance it would hit within 11 months and a 25% chance it would arrive within ten.
– The death rate from COVID-19 is high due to the number of un-vaccinated people. Not to mention, the most recent scandal involving COVID-19 czar Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been accused of allegedly lying under oath about the funding of research at a Wuhan lab in China.
Fauci who plans to retire by the end of the month, led America’s controversial COVID-19 response, which was marked by his flip-flopping on issues such as the efficacy of masks and herd immunity targets. Shortly after Fauci announced that he would step down as Biden’s chief medical adviser and as director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [NIAID], US Senator Rand Paul demanded that the Biden administration preserve documents and messages that could become evidence in a potential probe.
– The death rate due to crimes and the obsession that everyone must have a gun is high, making gun homicides in US cities greater than any other country. Ironically, the US is infamously known for being the land of serial killers.
– American politics always appears to be on the brink of a civil war. The US is just three weeks away from the start of a split Congress, with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives and Democrats controlling the Senate. This is making a lot of Americans very concerned.
– Social issues namely racism is still rife, let alone many other social issues.
By definition, a social issue is a problem that affects many people within a society. Social issues are the source of conflicting opinions on the grounds of what is perceived as morally correct or incorrect personal life or interpersonal social life decisions.
Unemployment, poverty, broken families, racism, same-sex unions, drug abuse, crimes, bullying and many others are social ills. These ills have overwhelmed American societies and the US administration seems to be helpless in dealing with them, and yet it insists on calling itself a first world nation.
In its latest report, the US Census Bureau said that the US has the highest rate of children living in single-parent families in any country in the world and there has been a 7% increase in the number of homeless people.
Relatedly, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has declared a "state of emergency" on Monday, saying homelessness "afflicts more than 40,000 individuals and affects every one of us" throughout the city.
Also, half of the total of all 12-year-old individuals or older have used illegal drugs, where 96,779 have died of drug overdose.
According to a survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, while only 10% of US adults said democracy is working "very well" or "extremely" well, 52% adults believed democracy is not working well. The poll also showed nearly 70% are very or somewhat dissatisfied with how "things are going in the United States."
Furthermore, rising prices are causing financial hardship for 55% of US citizens, while 13% say higher prices are causing a severe hardship for their family, according to a poll published by Gallup Analytics Company.
The US is among the highest rate of rape crimes in the world. On average, there are 463,634 victims [age 12 or older] of rape and sexual assault each year in the US, based on RAINN statistics of 2020. Not to mention, the abuse at the women-only Bay Area prison [Dublin, California] blew the lid off the epidemic of sexual abuse plaguing the US Bureau of Prisons, with at least 422 complaints of staff-on-inmate sexual abuse at 122 prisons only in 2020.
Nonetheless, 993 people have been shot to death by the police in the US in 2022, with 139 of the fatalities being African-Americans and 51 individual of Hispanic origins. Thus, the police killing of unarmed African-American George Floyd shows the "true face" of the US and its oppression of the peoples of the world, including its own.
Just when I thought the US couldn’t stoop any lower, here it is today legalizing same-sex unions. As if same-sex unions are approved by religion. The Vatican office responsible for doctrine has said that the Catholic Church does not have the power to bless same-sex unions. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [CDF] has said that it is “impossible” that God “blesses sin”.
Biden signed into law a bill granting federal protections to same-sex unions. The legislation passed the US House of Representatives earlier this month by a vote of 258-169, with significant support from Republicans.
The Americans have been taught that they created civilization and then gave it to the world. This couldn’t be farther from the truth, but that’s what the American education system teaches. This idea is the nascent root of racism: the idea that we – the Americans – created, gave it to you – the rest of the world, so we must be better.
The list of US maladies prolongs. This is not an attempt to degrade America's image since the land of the free is doing that perfectly by itself. I’m just shedding light on these facts.
This is the real face of the US. They say that they are liberals but they follow realist policies to gain more and more power. America represents all that is abnormal and deviated from the norm, but not in the right sense. All hail the land of everything BUT the free!
/129
Imagine America’s timeline from the current time until the past couple of years, since the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the US. Those past 4 years have been quite different from the ones before them.
The American nation had become like its then-president: fat, lazy, narcissistic, untrustworthy, unpredictable, thick as two short planks, selfish, financially bankrupt, morally bankrupt from their double standard business laws and diplomacy, xenophobic, prone to violence, a bully… and the list goes on.
It looked like the end of the American Empire from the outside, thrashing its last. It might have even been considered a rogue state under Trump’s regime as it has unilaterally withdrawn from many global agreements – most notably the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] with Iran – and governing bodies such as the UNESCO and UNHRC.
Though, the US has money to fix its crumbling infrastructure. Yet, have you ever wondered where that money is being spent?
It’s being spent on bailouts for banks and government subsidies for big businesses. It’s being spent on astronomical healthcare costs unseen in the rest of the developed world. It’s being spent on secret labs to develop biological weapons. It's being spent on a military budget that exceeds the combined budget of the next seven highest countries. It’s being spent on weapons sent to the Saudis and their allies to withstand the war it waged on Yemen. It’s being spent on its agents in many countries in the world to wage covert influence campaigns.
The US portrays itself as a peace initiator – that, it wants peace and that one should not colonize another country, but what is it doing in reality? The US is making its colonies all around the world. It has ruined Afghanistan and Iraq, destabilized Syria, meddled with the internal affairs of Lebanon and Ukraine and tried to cause chaos in Iran.
Less than three years into Joe Biden’s presidential term, and the US doesn’t seem to be getting any better, let alone recover from the political and socioeconomic issues that have stricken the globe.
– The US national debt is high. Biden has added a whopping $3.37 trillion to the national debt, sending it to a record high of $31 trillion. An economic model devised by two Bloomberg economists and run based on 13 unspecified financial indicators expected that “The US economy is 100% certain to enter a recession in the next 12 months.”
What’s even worse is that the apparently inevitable downturn might come even sooner than that – the model returned a 73% chance it would hit within 11 months and a 25% chance it would arrive within ten.
– The death rate from COVID-19 is high due to the number of un-vaccinated people. Not to mention, the most recent scandal involving COVID-19 czar Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been accused of allegedly lying under oath about the funding of research at a Wuhan lab in China.
Fauci who plans to retire by the end of the month, led America’s controversial COVID-19 response, which was marked by his flip-flopping on issues such as the efficacy of masks and herd immunity targets. Shortly after Fauci announced that he would step down as Biden’s chief medical adviser and as director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [NIAID], US Senator Rand Paul demanded that the Biden administration preserve documents and messages that could become evidence in a potential probe.
– The death rate due to crimes and the obsession that everyone must have a gun is high, making gun homicides in US cities greater than any other country. Ironically, the US is infamously known for being the land of serial killers.
– American politics always appears to be on the brink of a civil war. The US is just three weeks away from the start of a split Congress, with Republicans controlling the House of Representatives and Democrats controlling the Senate. This is making a lot of Americans very concerned.
– Social issues namely racism is still rife, let alone many other social issues.
By definition, a social issue is a problem that affects many people within a society. Social issues are the source of conflicting opinions on the grounds of what is perceived as morally correct or incorrect personal life or interpersonal social life decisions.
Unemployment, poverty, broken families, racism, same-sex unions, drug abuse, crimes, bullying and many others are social ills. These ills have overwhelmed American societies and the US administration seems to be helpless in dealing with them, and yet it insists on calling itself a first world nation.
In its latest report, the US Census Bureau said that the US has the highest rate of children living in single-parent families in any country in the world and there has been a 7% increase in the number of homeless people.
Relatedly, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has declared a "state of emergency" on Monday, saying homelessness "afflicts more than 40,000 individuals and affects every one of us" throughout the city.
Also, half of the total of all 12-year-old individuals or older have used illegal drugs, where 96,779 have died of drug overdose.
According to a survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, while only 10% of US adults said democracy is working "very well" or "extremely" well, 52% adults believed democracy is not working well. The poll also showed nearly 70% are very or somewhat dissatisfied with how "things are going in the United States."
Furthermore, rising prices are causing financial hardship for 55% of US citizens, while 13% say higher prices are causing a severe hardship for their family, according to a poll published by Gallup Analytics Company.
The US is among the highest rate of rape crimes in the world. On average, there are 463,634 victims [age 12 or older] of rape and sexual assault each year in the US, based on RAINN statistics of 2020. Not to mention, the abuse at the women-only Bay Area prison [Dublin, California] blew the lid off the epidemic of sexual abuse plaguing the US Bureau of Prisons, with at least 422 complaints of staff-on-inmate sexual abuse at 122 prisons only in 2020.
Nonetheless, 993 people have been shot to death by the police in the US in 2022, with 139 of the fatalities being African-Americans and 51 individual of Hispanic origins. Thus, the police killing of unarmed African-American George Floyd shows the "true face" of the US and its oppression of the peoples of the world, including its own.
Just when I thought the US couldn’t stoop any lower, here it is today legalizing same-sex unions. As if same-sex unions are approved by religion. The Vatican office responsible for doctrine has said that the Catholic Church does not have the power to bless same-sex unions. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [CDF] has said that it is “impossible” that God “blesses sin”.
Biden signed into law a bill granting federal protections to same-sex unions. The legislation passed the US House of Representatives earlier this month by a vote of 258-169, with significant support from Republicans.
The Americans have been taught that they created civilization and then gave it to the world. This couldn’t be farther from the truth, but that’s what the American education system teaches. This idea is the nascent root of racism: the idea that we – the Americans – created, gave it to you – the rest of the world, so we must be better.
The list of US maladies prolongs. This is not an attempt to degrade America's image since the land of the free is doing that perfectly by itself. I’m just shedding light on these facts.
This is the real face of the US. They say that they are liberals but they follow realist policies to gain more and more power. America represents all that is abnormal and deviated from the norm, but not in the right sense. All hail the land of everything BUT the free!
/129