The American experiment
To the Editor:
At a recent Tuolumne County Board meeting resembling a Fellini movie, unmasked anti-vaxers gave me COVID. In what universe does “freedom” encompass the right to expose others to a deadly disease?
The Week magazine, quoting Fareed Zakaria, observed “there are now two Americas. One is urban, educated, multicultural, secular and socially liberal, `with values that would fit comfortably with Northern European Protestant countries like the UK or Sweden.' The other is largely rural, religious, traditional and less educated, with values similar to those in `Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.' ”
Disturbingly, today's “conservative” Supreme Court majority (with two sex offenders and a handmaiden) render that last reference frighteningly credible.
The accelerating secularization of America, following Europe's, is significant. Notwithstanding Pope Frances and other enlightened, liberal clergy, America's youth is not attracted, but repelled by dominant “American Conservative Christianity” very far removed from Jesus's benevolent, and yes, liberal teachings.
Backlash, the fear of replacement and loss of status to invading hoards, has been cynically and cleverly exploited by the Right for four decades. The reality that first generation immigrants account for much of America's entrepreneurial prosperity, and that Latino farm workers put food on our tables, is not emphasized on Fox News.
Autocrats from Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and Pinochet to Putin, Urban and Trump, all need a scapegoat. Muslims and Latinos now replace Irish and Italians, even Jews, as the “Untermenschen.” Religion is always exploited. Even Putin embraces his church. Mussolini's definition of fascism: the perfect collaboration of government, industry and the church.
Unconstrained by the defined national purpose of earlier empires, America's globalist corporations pursue profit without shame. Cruel focus on shareholder value supplants America's national interests, or that of the American people.
The question becomes: Will the noble American Experiment end when a ruthless corporatist GOP imposes an oppressive, authoritarian and theocratic plutocracy?
Paolo Maffei
Sonora