Fix it, America! Or else…

The lessons of D-Day

A writer suggested, in a heartfelt look at America’s current woes, that foreign voices might have a different perspective on the situation, as well as reporting on conditions in their own lands.

Thanks, Chris!

Lockdown life in Australia

I won’t pretend we got away scot-free, but compared to most other developed countries, Australia is doing well. Seven thousand cases total, a hundred deaths, new cases are a handful per day, and it’s been a fortnight since the last death.

Life is not quite back to normal, but we’re getting there.

Early, co-ordinated action guided by health experts took the sting out of the virus. We closed the borders, imposed lockdowns, provided for those without means, ramped up unemployment benefits, and flattened our curve.

We have contact tracing and reporting measures in place, and any spike in infections will be identified and contained.

Realistically, the enemy is a virus, it is predictable, we can easily out-think it, and it’s just a matter of working together to eliminate it.

We are on track to do just that within the next month. We’ll be looking to open up international travel within a limited bubble of other countries in the same happy position — New Zealand, for example — and hopefully, more as time goes by until a vaccine is available, likely sometime next year.

Looking at America

In stark contrast, the handling of the pandemic in America has been appallingly inept.

Notwithstanding Don Trump claiming victory over the virus (and just about everything else), America has the worst figures in the world, a thousand are dying each day, twenty-five new cases daily, and the totals are way ahead of any other nation.

The virus is live in the American community and is being kept alive by premature easing of restrictions. It is safe to say that Americans are going to be dying from this for months to come, and the economy is going to struggle likewise.

Worse, the effect of both virus and economic crashes has hit the poorest in the community hard. In city after city, Americans are protesting, if not actually rioting. They have justified grievances that are being addressed by the usual means: empty words.

Don Trump is all but imprisoned in his own home, battalions of troops and security units called in to protect him, defences erected, protestors tear-gassed away. It will be bunkers and barbed wire, minefields and mortars next.

Defeating an evil regime

Last year, in 2019, 75 years after the Allied landings in Normandy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel joined the current leaders of those Allied nations in declaring that D-Day had been a “day of liberation” for Germany as well.

It may seem odd, considering that the young men defending those French beaches had been German, and so many lost their lives on that day and in the campaigns to come. But she spoke from the heart, sharing a view that is common amongst her fellow Germans.

She called D-Day a “unique, unprecedented military operation that eventually brought us in Germany the liberation from National Socialism.”

I cannot help but think that today it is America that needs liberating from a tyrannical regime. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are the things America’s founders noted as essential for their new nation.

Life is important, but now well over a hundred thousand Americans have lost their lives from the coronavirus pandemic. That’s about as many American combat deaths in Europe from D-Day on. Remember the battle scenes from Saving Private Ryan? That number of deaths — around a thousand for the two American beaches and the airborne landings — are occurring in America every day.

These virus deaths are over and above the normal run, and may be attributed almost entirely to a failure of leadership.

Liberty: 2 300 000 American citizens are behind bars. That’s more than the peak of the Soviet gulag system. The prison industry is booming. To call America the land of the free is a joke.

The pursuit of happiness is something, I guess, which may never be taken away, but how much of a chance do all those Americans without a job, living from payday to payday, or addicted to drugs really have?

I don’t have figures for unhappy Americans, but we are talking many millions living in poverty, poor health, behind bars, or simply trying to pay off a mountain of debt.

To my mind, America has failed its citizens. By almost every measure, they are worse off than the citizens of other Western nations. Literacy, life expectancy, wealth, housing, human rights, education and on and on and on. America, the richest nation on earth, lags in so many ways.

The current regime — chaotic, unreliable, corrupt, incompetent, and racist — is something that deserves toppling every bit as much as that of Nazi Germany, which used similar slogans. America has stopped short of sending its citizens to extermination camps, but to many millions of Americans, government forces are seen as the enemy: armoured, booted, masked, armed troops looting, killing and maiming with little apparent oversight, egged on from the Commander-in-Chief.

But hey, don’t take my word for it. Police violence has caused riots across the country. Those most concerned are calling for change. Elected officials, senior members of the military and law enforcement are expressing outrage and dismay.

Across the world, America is being heavily criticised.

Does the world step in to liberate America? Given America’s vast military forces, this seems unlikely. Change will have to come from within. America has to liberate itself.

So fix your problems, America. The earlier the better, lest the price grow too high to pay.

Britni

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