Opinion Matrix: Fears grow over the future of America
AMERICA’S current woes caught the attention of many columnists in yesterday’s newspapers.
The Scotsman
Henry Mcleish didn’t hold back in his description of the recent Republican convention.
“A headline in the magazine Vanity Fair suggested the convention was a ‘culture war grievance fest’,” he wrote.
“Trump is the master of tapping into victimhood. This political freakshow, more reminiscent of Stalin’s Soviet Union or Kim Jongun’s North Korean regime, portrayed [Democratic rival] Joe Biden as an enemy of America, accusing him of seeking to rig the election and offering a dark, menacing, dystopian socialist future.”
The convention, according to Mr Mcleish, was about galvanising support for the “cult of the dear leader” and demonising Mr Biden.
He continued: “The convention was, unsurprisingly, light on apologies or remorse or indeed discussion on Trump’s catastrophic handling of the coronavirus pandemic... as deaths are heading towards a staggering 200,000 with nearly six million cases. It is always useful to remember that Trump is not the fictional character in some Orwell or Atwood novel of the future. This is the nightmare of America today.”
Mr Mcleish’s prediction for how this year’s US election will play out is a dark one.
“Trump wants to exploit fear, hate, cultural differences, identity and intolerance and win the election by pitting his largely white minority base against multiracial, majority America,” he wrote.
Mr Mcleish concluded: “Out of his depth, with no scope for improvement, and dragging the country under, the President should reflect on the words of JF Kennedy, who said, ‘only the President represents the national interest’, and ‘upon him alone converge all the needs and aspirations of all parts of the country... all nations of the world’.”
The Guardian
Richard Seymour focused on the rise of vigilantism in the US.
“For the ideologues, law and order in Kenosha is social obedience on the part of those targeted for police violence, and it would be legitimately upheld by a
white paramilitary who guns people down in cold blood for opposing the racist murder of black people,” he wrote.
Mr Seymour continued: “Just as disturbing, for those likely to be on the receiving end of police violence, has been the convergence of police and paramilitaries.
“It is not just that militiamen are hardline supporters of the police who see themselves as augmenting state repression.
“Police themselves have repeatedly condoned and indulged the vigilantes, who have been permitted to roam around with guns out, attacking Black
Lives Matter crowds unimpeded by authorities.”
For Mr Seymour, the trend is part of a wider dystopian development in which the US has become gripped by a “conspiracist bricolage” which “thrives on the collapse of consensus reality, and on the disintegrating authority of older gatekeepers of truth”.
More importantly, he continued, it “milks a fascination with the destruction of one’s enemies and, tacitly, oneself”.
He concluded: “The end times thinking that is sweeping the US, and justifying every new outrage, is the theodicy of groups frightened of losing their power and arming themselves to defend it.”
The Daily Telegraph
Not every paper was negative about the US and President Trump. “The first commercial flight from Israel to the UAE is an extraordinary symbol of the rapprochement between those two countries,” the Telegraph said in its leader comment.
“Not so long ago such a journey would have seemed unthinkable, yet the UAE’S announcement last month that it would become only the third Middle Eastern country to normalise relations with Israel has been relatively underplayed in some quarters.”
It continued: “The Israel-uae deal is very much Mr Trump’s achievement and a key part of the President’s strategy to unite countries in the region around their shared opposition to Iran.
“That this strategy is bearing fruit is an uncomfortable truth both for those who, bizarrely, see Israel as the root cause of regional unrest and for anti-trump partisans, in the US and around the world, who cannot bring themselves to give credit where credit is due.”