How 2020 Globally Exposed the United States of America

So in the middle of a pandemic, Donald Trump is going to host his first rally in months in Tulsa, Oklahoma on the Black American celebratory day Juneteenth----the same city where the Black Wall Street massacre and bombing took place, during a time when the Black Lives Matter is at its absolute peak. This is pure lunacy, and racism at the most extreme levels considering the circumstances and the importance of the venue to Black Americans.

This is also 2020’s United States in America in a nutshell. What has been bubbling within the country for centuries has expanded to become a global conversation as the rest of the world is seeing how this year of epic tragedy has exposed the United States for what it really is: a bully nation that has survived off of abusing other countries and abusing its very own people that had helped build their society for free of charge and with extremely minimal reimbursement.

United States used to be the dominant place where people aspired to relocate to pursue their dreams and aspirations and freedoms not enjoyed in their homeland. Throughout the 1800s, they watched the United States grow exponentially in size while providing a slew of inventions and innovations that would be used globally in the following decades. Even after splitting in half with the civil war, the United States still found themselves on the receiving end of millions of immigrants from poorer and war-battered lands, each providing their contributions that would help shape the new country. New York City was the epicenter of immigration, growing with influxes of French, Irish, Italian, Spanish, and Middle Eastern people and families making their way to the Big Apple. Today in the Bronx over 50 languages are spoken.

The world saw the USA grow under the Gold Rush, the Industrial Revolution, under Reconstruction, under the Roaring 1920s. They saw the seemingly unlimited military and economic power of the United States throughout a global economic collapse and not one but two world wars, limiting their attacks from foreign nations to just Pearl Harbor and a couple incidents. United States were never fully threatened by other foreign powers like what happened pretty much everywhere else in the world not called Antarctica. Their worst moments were usually self-inflicted. The United States’ strength would only grow during the Cold War as their economic stability would sharpen even during their nuclear war fears with their Russian rivals, and this would result in other countries feeling the pressure of the rivalry.

But today long after the Cold War has ended, as the countries that had once been oppressed under devastating warfare and a global rivalry that affected every continent have become beacons of progress and the shining examples of what good countries can look like, we see the United States being exposed more and more as the skeletons of the past have started emerging alongside the darkness from past centuries.

Suddenly every European country and even Communist Cuba has better health care than the United States. Canada has become the country topping global charts on standards of living. Germany, after splitting half post-World War 2, has become the top economic power in Europe. Africa, long-avoided and largely ignored, is the fastest-growing continent in the world with nations like Nigeria, South Africa, and Ghana exploding in economic growth and influence.

The Nordic countries have established modern takes on governments that provide proper essential services to all their citizens. Even countries within range and threats of communism and fascism, like Japan and South Korea, are enjoying many improvements from their rough pasts half a century to a century ago. I feel like not enough credit has been given to Japan, who survived two atomic bombs, massive earthquakes, and an earth-shifting tsunami within the last 100 years to maintain its status as a top-tier country for living and for business. We haven’t seen global wide conflict since the 1940s, and it has allowed dozens of countries to catch up to the top countries that had survived the disasters.

And now here’s the United States in 2020 with a history-altering movement on the streets in the middle of a pandemic that they have completely botched a point that is trending towards a quarter billion losing their lives in the next year.

The United States has been completely exposed. Centuries of oppression, centuries of inequality, centuries of discrimination, centuries of a strict military structure and culture, centuries of manifest destiny culture, and centuries of unchecked power from the ruling classes has prevented the United States from evolving into the next generation of government, from the next generation of the proper way to maintain social and economic structure in ways that benefits everybody. What used to be a top-tier country has become a third-world response to modern-day problems, resulting in performances so poor even nations with a fraction of USA’s resources and wealth has been able to survive the pandemic better and has been able to better serve its people.

Because of generational gaps in a multitude of political, economic, racial, and structural categories, and mixing in with a current administration that has backlogged centuries of racism and fascism we should have stamped out forever ago, the United States’ global rankings have dipped. In health, education, global presence, influence, reputation, environment, and even press freedom our numbers have actually gone significantly down. But none of this was catching traction outside the United States until Covid-19 arrived.

The pandemic exposed the United States’ issues for the entire world to see. There had already been anti-American controversies ranging from treatment of Central America to the now-underreported assassination of Iran’s equivalent of a vice president figure. But now seeing the country with the most money and resources completely buckle the pandemic and allow it to dominate the states far longer than other nations is glaring evidence of the US’s incompetence and recent disorganization.

No reason why the United States with its global assortment of resources should be first in Covid cases and Covid deaths. No reason why the United States isn’t first in testing per capita or resources per capita. No reason why the United States is reopening early even as the amount of cases are rising and rising. No reason why the United States is sometimes blocking shipments within its own homeland of essential supplies. No reason why the government downplayed and didn’t act upon the threats months after the pandemic had started in China. No reason why the country couldn’t close all its borders to everyone and become self-sufficient throughout the summer. And most importantly, no reason why there should be such a glaring economic and racial inequality in the pandemic statistics.

The United States could have been epicenter of decision-making and prove what are the proper avenues to pursue to eradicate or at the very least handle pandemics, similar to the Obama Administration’s fight against ebola and wilder cases of the flu during their terms. Incredible what shift in leadership can do to an entire nation in such a short period of time. It has been half a year since the first case was unveiled in the United States, and three months since the country first started shutting down, yet we STILL have parts of the country that are seeing major increases in cases.

Then we have the Black Lives Matter movement and the horrendous reaction coming from the White House and coming from governments and police forces nationwide. After properly handling not-so-peaceful armed protests from those demanding for the country to open again (because of a mix of poor government support and because of racist opinions concerning the actual dangers of Covid-19 affecting minorities more than White Americans), the cops have reacted with vigor and anger towards the nearly-entirely peaceful protests. We’ve seen an extreme uptick in arrests, violence, and warlike tactics from the police since the original marches towards justice and equality began. We have a president inches from declaring war on his own people, threatening the National Guard and military towards any place he deems currently unfit to handle the protesting. This is just the tip of the iceberg of his racism and unforgivable actions and words towards minorities and people supporting minorities.

The world in 2020 has seen the United States face its biggest civil rights movement of all time following the murder of an unarmed black man whose only potential crime was a counterfeit bill he may not have even realized was fake. But he will never get that day in court because he was ruthlessly murdered by a gang of criminals that for centuries have been able to behave above the law while maintaining a system that was originally designed to keep Black Americans from progressing. This wound has existed forever in Black America and American culture, but it took a viral video and current technology allowing the filmed injustice to spread to every corner in the planet. There have been marches even in Japan, even South Korean pop groups have donated millions to the cause. United States used to be the frontrunners throughout most of recent history through the 1990s, now they look like a wartorn country under a dictatorship in need of financial help.

The exposed wounds of USA 2020 has opened up troublesome and uncomfortable subjects ranging from the economic inequality, the big business special backdoor entrances to government help money, the extremely wide gap between the top class and the lowest class and even the middle class, the deathgrip capitalism has on what should be essential public services like health and correctional facilities, the unchecked behaviors of politicians and police, and the constant stream of systematic racism that has stunted growth and positive change that would otherwise be occurring in more established and evolved countries. The problems drowning the United States today are problems that most of the top-tier countries are not experiencing. If not for the wild wealth developed and collected by the United States in the last 100 years, would they even still be considered a top level country and option of where to move to?

The influx of immigrants are mostly refugees nowadays, which means these are people from places even worse off than the United States---but the catch is nearly all of these refugees come from countries damaged severely by the United States actions during the Cold War and their constant efforts of policing the rest of the Americas. South America, Central America and Mexico especially have been hammered by actions and inactions of the States, whether it’s the drug wars and border tension or the Iran-contra controversies during the Reagan Administration. There’s also how the United States tried damaging Venezuela’s oil success with their looting of Iraq, their attack on Chilean elections that led to a brutal dictatorship in the 1970s, and of course the U.S. support of the dictatorship that happened in Argentina. You aren’t seeing that much movement from Europe and most parts of Asia to the United States, the need just doesn’t exist much anymore----that and the current administration is also anti-immigrant.

These issues have been clear as day and very present in the United States, and the debates and pleas and protests have raged for a long time in the home turf. It felt like forever ago that Occupy Wall Street was a thing. But now with George Floyd’s murder compounding on top of an extremely racist and controversial administration crashing and burning during a pandemic, the United States inner conflicts has become global news. Even the Trump Administration global friends have caused chaos in their own lands, whether its Boris in England, Bolsonaro in Brazil, or Narendra Modi in India. The rest of the world no longer sees the United States as an important ally, as China and even Russia has been able to gain some ground on the U.S. in global relations.

We don’t know how long the pandemic is going to continue to plague the United States. We don’t know how long the Black Lives Matter movement is going to last, although with Trump’s absolutely ridiculous decision to host an event in Tulsa considering the date and historical implications means our strongest rally is within reach. We don’t know how long its going to take for the country to undo everything the Trump Administration has negatively done to the United States and the world as a whole. What I do know is that United States is no longer this beacon of hope, this beacon of progress, this beacon of a good life like before.

Will the United States ever return to its former glory and reputation without its horrid foreign policies of the 20th century? Only time will tell if we ever see a United States that can improve and evolve without outside intervention and continuing inner racial inequality. But for now, United States has become a country with first-world wealth and resources, but third-world leadership and problems.