America: It’s All Over But the Shouting

Author: Deena Stryker

Column: Society

Region: USA in the World

What is curious, as the Trump presidency careens toward a crashing finish, whether by impeachment or resignation (my money is on the latter, as I suggested back in April) is the media’s strange silence concerning the next person to occupy the White House: the fanatically religious Mike Pence, who has stood a little in retreat from the president with fawning gaze since he took office, making himself conspicuous by the absence of any other apparent role.

Pence is abhorred by Democrats and other secular types, while Republicans know he is unlikely to intimidate Trump’s gun-toting followers hell bent on ‘taking back’ their country to colonial times, not to mention the Alt-right determined to purge the land of non-Whites.

As an obedient press continues to blame ‘Russian interference in our (sic) democracy’ for the Trump disaster, the Democrats will endeavor to hold back the belated turn toward socialism of American youth sick of school shootings and college debts to big banks. The fiftieth anniversary of the violent crackdown on protesters at the 1968 Democratic Convention is being rehashed for possible lessons, although the Vietnam War has been replaced by the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, amid talk of outsourcing both to Erik Prince — brother of the current Education Secretary who wants to arm teachers….

For once, the Democrats’ near certainty of taking back the majority in the House of Representatives and even improving their numbers in the Senate do not guarantee power: there are too many unknowns, and, as a former Secretary of Defense is increasingly quoted as saying: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns.”

To evoke another famous saying, this is the time when Americans of good will might successfully come to the aide of the world by turning their country around. But the opportunity is likely to be short-lived.

Deena Stryker is an international expert, author and journalist that has been at the forefront of international politics for over thirty years, exlusively for the online journal “New Eastern Outlook”.

https://journal-neo.org/2018/08/29/america-it-s-all-over-but-the-shouting/