Altered States: how a superpower stopped being great

  • 📰 smh
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 107 sec. here
  • 3 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Quality Score:
  • News: 46%
  • Publisher: 80%

Australia Headlines News

Australia Latest News,Australia Headlines

“So inevitable, yet so completely unforeseen”: the saga of the decline of Trump's America

from the 10-metre flagpole. On a suffocating day, amid tears of joy and relief, a multi-generational crowd of African-Americans bore witness as the battle flag of an army fighting to preserve slavery was furled and packed off to a nearby museum.

Victories had been achieved in two climactic fights, over the hateful iconography of the Confederacy and the rainbow colours of same-sex marriage. Just as emblematic was success in the legal battle over Obamacare, a legislative trophy beyond the grasp of previous presidents Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. With “God, gays and guns” America reeling, the Democrats looked forward to the upcoming presidential race with preening confidence.

Many of us – most of us – had badly misread the zeitgeist. The coming down of the Confederate flag no more marked the defeat of racism than the election of Barack Obama. The Affordable Care Act, rather than being immutable, would soon come under renewed attack. Evangelical Christians, for whom the rainbow flag was a red rag, were newly galvanised. Seemingly we were seeing the victory of racial and LGBTQI+ identity politics, where marginalised groups achieved singular goals.

Trump benefited from the resurging politics of white resentment, a racial division highlighted by the recent Black Lives Matter protests., in the fourth year of Trump’s renegade presidency, and the US faced another season of racial reckoning. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, a video went viral.

For a time we wondered whether this was another Parkland moment, where the massacre in 2018 of 17 students at a high school in Florida produced a cloudburst of activism but failed to change the political weather on gun reform. Yet the anti-racism protests felt more meaningful and profound, and akin to the meteor effect of the #MeToo movement.

Trump staged a melodramatic photo opportunity choreographed with the assistance of federal law enforcement officials, who fired stun grenades and mounted baton charges to disperse a crowd of peaceful protesters from outside the White House. Violently a path was cleared so the president could stride the short distance to a church that had been daubed with Black Lives Matter graffiti, outside which he held aloft his testamental prop, a leather-bound edition of the Bible.

 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.

How can the decline be unforeseen ! Predictable as is US decline

m8888m9999n 💥Universal magical vaccine is not realistic!More works have to be done 💥CCPVirus has high mutation rate 💥CCP not just made COVID19,more🦠 is coming WarRoomPandemic BiologicalWarfare HimalayaSquad

闫丽梦博士继续接受班农采访揭露病毒真相

A bloody fantastic read!

“how can you say to your brother?, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look....a plank is in your own eye”

Finally some acknowledgement

US will decline further if brain retarded slow Joe becomes the president with Kamala it's disastrous. China will all over them.

KyleHarrietha Thanks for retweeting this Kyle! 'As the US became the global epicentre of the pandemic, we saw the world take pity on a nation haemorrhaging influence by the hour.' That's quite the statement! NickBryantNY

Sydney Morning Herald blames President Trump for the carnage caused by a virus unleashed by China. Beyond parody.

America was doing great until the virus hit.

That virus thingy has been kinda significant to the world hasn't it? A wee bit?

Running America like a business, where only $$$$ matters, people are just numbers and debt is an addiction.....was never going to work.

Shame the actual records he has smashed make you look ridiculous here.

Now do China. Our relationship with them will never be the same either.

nytimes Trump is desperate to be recorded as a notable historical figure. He will be. He'll be recorded for all time as the president that called COVID19 a hoax, that deaths would not reach 100,000.

It was inevitable, but not 'completely unseen'. Deconstructionists predicted decades ago the decline of the civilised world, and W B Yeats prophesied it earlier in The Second Coming. It was unravelling before our very eyes, but we were too distracted by global greed to see it.

Hasnt started any wars hasnt killed thousands of people. Yeah so evil...

NickBryantNY was the BBC’s Australia correspondent from 2006 to 2013, and has been the BBC’s New York correspondent ever since. This is an augmented extract from his book, When America Stopped Being Great GoodWeekendMag

the world like covid outbreak inUS is adrift with incompetent leader All he is good at is spitting fake news and making crude denigration

We all like him.

We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 6. in AU

Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

How baby Madeleine was united with her 100yo great-grandmother despite coronavirusBorn more than a century apart, Elisa Severino and her great-granddaughter Madeleine were able to unite with the help of an Adelaide aged care home, much to the delight of the family's four generations. Beautiful. Gorgeous Cute and sad
Source: abcnews - 🏆 5. / 83 Read more »

Australia's tour of England gets green lightGovernment grants special exemption to travel to UK
Source: wwos - 🏆 12. / 68 Read more »

QLD becomes first state to ban gay conversion therapyQueensland has become the first state in Australia to criminalise gay conversion therapy, after state politicians voted to make the “highly destructive and unethical” practice illegal. It’s now illegal for men to refuse **** 👋👋 So are they also going to ban the 'extreme' trans-idiologists who push the narrative that it's discrimination if a 'straight' male refuses to date a 'trans' ? Didn't think so. Hypocritical wankers.
Source: newscomauHQ - 🏆 9. / 77 Read more »

'Mortified': Contact tracers fail to notify COVID-19 close contactA year 12 student at Thornbury High School receives a text telling him he can stop quarantining — but he says he wasn't told by contact tracers to isolate in the first place. Australia is officially more authoritarian than North Korea. What a bunch of disarmed british royal peasant-slaves. Pathetic and complete whackjobs. Losers. Real Headline should read: 'GLOBALISTS PISSED THAT NO ONE IS USING THEIR DRACONIAN APP' The Vic Govn contact tracing and advice to those tested had been the letdown. The number of 'Unknown' and 'Under Investigation' cases show the story. auspol vicpol COVID19Vic
Source: abcnews - 🏆 5. / 83 Read more »

All City of Melbourne parking fines to be suspended during stage four restrictionsRestrictions will still apply to "red sign" parking bays, which include: disability spaces, no stopping areas, tow-away clearways and loading zones. RT : The entire city of Melbourne will be free from parking fines for the remainder of stage four restrictions. 9News So they realised parking patrol isn't an essential service. 🤣I call “bullshit” on this🤣
Source: 9NewsAUS - 🏆 10. / 72 Read more »

Spanish army sets up field hospital as cases spikeSpain's army is setting up a field hospital in Zaragoza as the northern city struggles to stop a new spike in coronavirus cases. 9News
Source: 9NewsAUS - 🏆 10. / 72 Read more »