US middle class shrinks, minorities suffer
In witnessing the current US protests that have escalated to include widespread looting, violent destruction of property and physical assaults on citizens, we must consider more accurately what is it we are really looking at? What are the drivers that have come together as both short and long term catalysts to the changes we are witnessing?
Nine years ago in 2011, my first book was published. It is an inspirational memoir titled “Catalysts to Change” with the book’s message rooted in a stimulating philosophical question: “What do a Dying Mother, the Renaissance of Europe and the Birth of Jazz Music Have in Common?”
As I fast forward these nine years to 2020, I accept the truth that I was incapable of predicting so much of what has happened and I find myself now asking,
“What do the death of George Floyd and the decline of America have in common?”
Well, the demands of peaceful protesters on the surface are clearly about a repeated long history of police brutality. Black Americans are rightfully aggrieved with yet another black man senselessly murdered in cold blood. So genuine is this offense that the rest of the country has gathered up in solidarity to protest peacefully for what is right. However, underneath this righteous crusade we find the violation of one of life’s most proper rules, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
President Trump is a populist and aggressive president, even if sometimes he offers proper presidential messages to the citizens and to the world. For example, it is easy for many to agree that a strong country needs a strong border and other laws to protect its society and its sovereignty.
Pure, open border fanatical globalists might disagree, but the majority agrees. Unfortunately, in Trump’s unique efforts to “drain the swamp”, he also runs his mouth in a Twitter feed that is often no better than a gossipy soap opera drama. It is surely not worthy of the president of the country, of any country.
We must see past these weaknesses at this very moment to understand though that President Trump is correct: that two wrongs don’t make a right, that individual responsibility to society is part of your civic duty as a citizen no matter what. In other words, he is 100 percent right that looting, that violence, destruction of property, assault of other citizens; each of these is a crime in and of itself without justification, without relation to the crime of George Floyd’s death.
More so, such criminal actions amid rioting do not honor the meaning and value in the black community, in the entire country, of Floyd’s unfortunate, outrageous death.
The looting and other violence show us the deeper currents and catalysts to this state of affairs; there is a much deeper socioeconomic deterioration which has plagued the US particularly since the post Reagan mid-1990s. The vast majority of police in America are dedicated to serving and protecting every American citizen regardless of ethnicity or skin color. So let’s not allow a few bad apples to cause an incorrect rush to judgment of America’s dedicated law enforcement officers.
In looking at the broader drivers underpinning this societal explosion is the far broader and serious problem that is the long-term and steadily increasing deterioration of the middle class, the increasing wealth gap, the inability for a lower middle income family to obtain reasonable healthcare. The COVID-19 epidemic has laid it bare, and with devastating results; all of which have been very clear and evident trends in America for the past 20 years, when we have watched one middle class society steadily deteriorate.
This is happening for the overarching reason that the US has steadily and definitively lost its primacy over the past 10 years as the world’s superpower and as the world’s respected leader. There is no joy in writing about this, there should be no mockery. The rules of engagement apply to each and every one of us. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
The author is author, advisor & CEO of M Communications Group, and senior fellow with the Center for China & Globalization. He has lived in China for 21 years. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn