Despite what is happening in the US regarding Trump and his reluctance to admit defeat, most Americans will defend their highly held and special form of ‘Democracy’ . It is the last resort of desperation by many to cling onto the wreckage of the former glory of the once Great America. It was Trumps rally ‘to make America Great Again’ that gave him the presidency four years ago. And what a four years of Trump Democracy that turned out to be, Hallelujah. To reiterate, we have at least our Democracy, is now the refrain oft heard from the US. It is starting to sound so jaded and some people look askance when they say that.
When the rapid advance of China is mentioned with the staggering economic growth whereby millions of their citizens have been pulled out of poverty in just a few decades, one often hears, ‘yes but they don’t have a Democracy like we have’. They, in China, jail hundreds of thousands of their own citizens, and what are they doing to their Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz Muslims? Reportedly 80.000 are now ‘re-educated in forced labour camps. Yes, that might well be true but how free is the US of crimes against humanity?
The US’ love of guns is killing 40 000 annually. And nothing gets done about that. It is part of this love of ‘freedom and Democracy’. Let’s not forget that America also has the highest rates of incarcerations (jailing people) in the world, well above that of China! And then the issue of ‘black lives matter’ an issue that has also been going for decades in Australia. And now an inquiry of possible war crimes committed by our Australian soldiers in Afghanistan. Our Prime Minister has offered an apology of the mere possibility of that to the Afghan Government.
In any case, I believe we should try and look into our own necks of the woods before blindly repeating that our ‘democracy’ somehow leaves us of the hook for committing human right abuses. It is not a cure or excuse.