US government propaganda has always done its best to convey to Americans and residents of other countries the idea that it is the richest country in the world with an advanced industry, economy and significant, well-equipped armed forces.
However, with each new day, more and more residents of the United States and many other countries are becoming disenchanted with this idea and realizing, as in Andersen’s famous fairy tale, that “the Emperor has no clothes”!
Yes, the country has accumulated enormous wealth. However, most of it is concentrated in a very small number of families: in the United States, out of 234 million people, there are around 400 super-rich families. Federal stats suggest that 40% of the country’s entire wealth belongs to under 1%. All the while the country has more than 35 million low income people, 11 thousand children die from malnutrition every year, and a huge part of the population does not have health insurance.
Even before the pandemic, the number of people in the United States who could not afford basic energy supplies was the largest among the world’s top 63 income level countries. At this point, those numbers have already gotten worse. For example, before the pandemic, Minnesota was one of the most food-rich states, whereas now, according to American media, every eighth inhabitant is suffering hunger. Overall, hunger in rural America is not a new thing, especially in communities in the South, where they experienced severe hunger before the pandemic. However, the current massive spike in this issue in places like Minnesota is simply depressing and explains why Trump began to lose support in rural areas, where the viral infection is also spreading fast enough. A recent Gallup poll shows that his support rating in rural areas hit rock bottom this summer, forcing Trump to visit the top food producers in the US – Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. At the same time, statistics for the United States show that blacks and Hispanics are more than 2 times more likely to struggle with hunger than whites, according to Bloomberg.
“By the end of 2020, 54 million people in the United States could have a hard time making ends meat,” wrote Slate.fr. But hunger is not the only serious scourge for the United States, as employment, housing, inequality, and health care also add to the pool of American society’s current woes. At a time when the unemployment rate is still very high (8.4% according to the latest report from the statistical office of the Department of Labor), when tens of millions of families are at risk of eviction and when more than 5 million people have lost their health insurance after becoming unemployed, the country is now facing the worst crisis in nearly a century.
So it comes as no surprise that every ninth American seriously considers suicide today, while among young people the number is rising to one in four.
The US crisis is also reflected in the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic – almost 200 thousand deaths, according to Worldometers.info, which is hard to swallow for a country trying to pass itself off to the world as the most advanced and developed in all respects. That’s already half as many losses as they had in World War II!
However, instead of dealing with internal problems, including that very fight against the coronavirus pandemic, the current Washington elite and its lackey propaganda and media resources have thrown all their energy into a senseless denigration of the successes of Russia and China, which have already created a vaccine against COVID-19. All this while US residents continue to die from this disease… Which is why Washington’s reassurances about the alleged appearance of a so-called “American vaccine” are no longer believed not only by Democratic candidate for US vice-president Kamala Harris, who urges caution, but also numerous US experts. As a result, certain American pharmaceutical manufacturers have already approached Moscow with a proposal to create a partnership for the production of the Russian Sputnik V (Gam-Covid-Vac) vaccine.
Overall, the situation with Washington’s attempts to make loud statements to save face after its obvious losses is becoming quite common, but it does not bring success. For example, quite recently, Washington’s propaganda machine rushed, in its usual anti-Russian frenzy, to accuse Moscow of spying on stealing American secrets of hypersonic weapons, but Russia has long made demonstrations to everyone, while the United States has not even began production yet. So who stole what from who?
Or here’s another example – the statement of the American president published recently by the White House, that, having spent $ 2.5 trillion on the armed forces over the past three to three and a half years, the United States now has “[weapons] systems that nobody knows about.” The Popular Mechanics American magazine ventured the suggestion what President Donald Trump likely meant when talking about the “new weapon”, that neither Russia or China know about. According to the publication, this is probably “a modified W76 warhead called W76-2, with a low volume explosion.” However, this weapon is by no means new, since back in 2018 it was reported that the US Navy began work on the creation of a low-yield nuclear weapon W76-2 based on the W76-1, by removing thermonuclear fuel (uranium, lithium and deuterium). As a result, only the plutonium trigger will remain, and the energy yield of the new weapon will decrease from 100 to 5-6 kilotons in TNT equivalent.
In reality, you cannot exclude the Pentagon spending $ 2.5 trillion in the last 3 years, which President Trump pointed out, on building top-of-the-line slingshots for picking off not only birds, but Russians and Chinese cruise missiles as well. At least such weapons were recently reported by Breaking Defense when covering a US Air Force exercises that took place on September 3 at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. In particular, it was noted that the US Air Force, once again simulating a military conflict with Russia, demonstrated an adapted M109 Paladin-based 155mm howitzer, which allegedly shot down a BQM-167 Skeeter air target imitating a Russian cruise missile. So yeah, it’s really hunting birds with a cannon that costs $ 2.5 trillion!
Vladimir Danilov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
