What is the matter with America?
The line between the so-called American Dream and the American Night-mare is extremely thin.
Almost five months before the US presidential election, this country is drowned in chaos. Looting and violent demonstrations spread across America's streets. The coronavirus pandemic continues its ravaging advance and the administration has been unable to contain it. The economy slithered into the deepest recession and the unemployment rate climbed to the all-time high over nearly a century. US President Donald Trump has en-tered a fierce conflicts with China, with the World Health Organization (WHO) and with social platforms. America enjoys no peace and tranquility both inside and outside the country.
| A man poses for photos in front of a fire at an AutoZone store in Minneapolis. Photo: AP |
It is because the coming presidential election and the campaigns for it are transforming America into a steam boiler which could at any time explode. It is because Trump has no qualms about forcing America to pay any social, domestic and foreign political prices so that he could be reelected this fall. And it is because of a lacerating sickness originated from within the political and social system as well as the culture of the US for centuries. It is the unbridgeable gap in America's society between the rich and the poor, between the white and the people of color, between Americans and immigrants. In the time of the pan-demic, all symptoms of this sickness have flared up more violently than ever before. The murder of the African American George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis was only the last straw that breaks the camel's back and the inferno is already pre-programmed.
This division is systemic and structural in America. All US presidents before Donald Trump knew it but chose to overlook it or were incapable of finding proper solutions to it. Trump not only cares very little about freeing America from this sickness but rather tries his utmost to take advantage of it to secure the support from his traditional and loyal voters for the upcoming presidential election.
America's real matter is obviously the fact that it has two faces. On one side, America is one of the richest, wealthiest and most developed countries; an economic, technological and military powerhouse in the world. But on the other side at the same time, there is in America this brutal inequality and social split which nowhere in the world could be found. That is just why the line between the so-called American Dream and the American Night-mare is extremely thin.
