Many observers believe that the most important development in the US financial and economic situation was Fitch’s downgrade of the country’s debt rating from its highest level of AAA to AA+ in early August this year, with the agency noting “a steady deterioration in governance standards over the past 20 years,” adding that “repeated political standoffs over the debt limit and last-minute resolutions have eroded confidence in fiscal management.”
The same agency downgraded 10 more US banks a few days later.
Bloomberg says the outlook of the US economy promises to be painful, especially given the political polarization and geopolitical confrontation.
The psychological climate in the country leaves a lot to be desired. This is due to the exacerbation of internal political infighting and the problems of social life.
The recent works of Richard Hanania, a rising star among conservative writers and intellectually engaged people who preach ideas of white supremacy, have become increasingly popular. He said, “We need more police, more prison, and more surveillance of black people.” An entire group of Silicon Valley billionaires and millionaires have showered Hanania with attention and praise for his work. According to New York Times Opinion Columnist Jamelle Bouie, the purpose of this support is simple: “If some groups are simply destined to be at the bottom, there is no question about their disadvantage, isolation and poverty. There is absolutely no question about a society that generates deprivation, isolation and poverty. And there’s nothing you can do, because there’s nothing you can do: these people are the way they are.” The notion of racial hierarchy works to normalize a wide range of inequalities.
The growing divisions between the Republican and Democratic parties are increasingly high on the domestic American agenda.
Even the American media believes that the filing of formal charges in Federal Court against former President Donald Trump on charges of “conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy against the rights of citizens, and obstructing and attempting to obstruct official proceedings,” is a milestone in judicial practice in the United States.
Trump pleaded not guilty and called the situation “a very sad day for America,” and, according to him, “Biden has lost his mind and is an insane disaster leading America to hell.”
Polls show that support for the charges against the former president diverges along party lines: while a majority of Democrats accept them, an overwhelming majority of Republicans reject them. This is another demonstration of the American divide and the profound divisions in American society. Newspapers loyal to Democrats accuse Trump of basically all sorts of wrongdoing, stressing that he has betrayed America.
The Republicans are fighting back in their own way: they have initiated impeachment proceedings against the current president, accusing him of bribery and fraud, and they have also secured the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Hunter Biden. This presents serious difficulties for the current host of the White House.
Many observers believe the 2024 presidential campaign has the promise of being the most contentious and divisive in American history.
The Emirati newspaper Gulf News on August 7 pointed out in this regard that Trump’s accusations have not diminished his popularity, on the contrary, it is growing as his problems increase: meanwhile, if the election were held now, both Trump and Biden would each have 43% of the vote.
In the face of this growing country polarization, internal problems are escalating.
Over the past few years, deaths in the US have been on the rise – among them deaths from despair – a social crisis involving older middle-aged white men, as well as gun violence, drug overdoses, maternal deaths and juvenile deaths. By the year 2000, the New York Times reported that about 400,000 Americans were dying each year; 622,000 – in 2019.
According to an August 11 statement from the US government, the number of people who committed suicide in 2022 in the US reached a record 49,000, up 2.6 percent from the previous year.
In the year 2020, the European Union reported 5,800 overdose deaths, in a population of 440 million, in the same year, the United States with a population of 330 million people reported 68,000, this figure then rose to 80,000 by 2021 and to 107,000 by 2022.
America now has 22 times more gun homicides compared to EU countries.
The US fatality rate in car accidents in 2021 was 4 times higher than in Germany. The Economist reported that more than 5,000 Americans died in workplace accidents the same year, compared to 123 in Britain; and Americans are nearly twice as likely to die in a fire compared to Western Europeans and more than twice as likely to drown as the Dutch.
The United States border with Mexico is over 3,000 kilometers long and several million migrants have accumulated there: the absence of a clear policy on the migration problem threatens to become the greatest mistake in the country’s history, according to the American media.
America’s deteriorating infrastructure is becoming more and more evident: hardly a week goes by without a major railroad disaster. Besides acute social topics that cause intense debates, such as, for example, the ban on abortion, the American press writes about the falling educational standards in the country. The head of the American Library Association states that more than 13% of the adult population cannot read and write above a 3rd grade level, which is an 8-year-old child.
Censorship, meanwhile, is on the rise across the country, with 1,606 publications being challenged by relevant agencies on the grounds of having unacceptable racial or gender claims.
The actions of the US administration in dealing with the aftermath of the Hawaii fire (nearly 100 people dead and several hundred missing) are being criticized in the press as not enough attention is being paid to emergency services, especially against the continuing transfer of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the US administration is trying its best to accuse Russia of violating the international law guidelines, especially in connection with the Ukrainian crisis: a US official said that President Biden had given instructions to collect evidence of Russia’s involvement in war crimes.
Washington’s hypocrisy in this matter is so obvious that even the Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram noted it, which wrote on August 10 of this year: during the first 42 days of the war against Iraq in 1991, American forces dropped 88 thousand tons of bombs and missiles on the country, the equivalent of 7 nuclear bombs of the same size that the US dropped on Hiroshima. Likewise, they fired about 6,000 charges of combined uranium. The main recipient of this destructive force was civilian objects, everything connected with the maintenance of human life and activity: power plants, electrical grids, water treatment plants, telephone exchanges, food processing plants, irrigation facilities, livestock farms, garages, public transportation, railway stations, bridges and highways, oil wells and refineries, gas stations, petrochemical plants, sewage treatment plants, textile factories, universities, colleges, hospitals, clinics, mosques, museums, antiquities, shopping malls, etc.
There were over 20,000 homes destroyed, to say nothing of the Amiriyah shelter where hundreds of civilians, mostly women, children and the elderly, were killed by two American “smart bombs.”
The American policy duplicity becomes blatant against the background of increasing domestic problems of the United States: all attempts to divert attention with unsubstantiated accusations against other countries cause only irritation in the world and Washington’s credibility is rapidly declining.
Veniamin Popov, Director of the “Center for Partnership of Civilizations” in MGIMO (U) MFA of Russia, Candidate of Historical Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”