“America is now more divided than it’s ever been.” You hear this solemnly repeated by many commentators. It is complete nonsense. America was far more divided in the past, violently, extremely divided, and is probably more peacefully united now than it’s ever been, or at any rate less divided. But it is going through some rather strange times, characterised by foolish ideologies and stupid leadership. President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump make a motley bunch. Climate hysteria, transgenderism and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) make for mad thinking and harmful policies.
On 22 May 1856, in the US senate chamber, Representative Brooks, who supported slavery, attacked Senator Sumner, who opposed it, with a walking stick, smashing him to the ground, wounding him severely, almost killing him. Nothing like this violent attack has happened between American politicians in modern times. It helped to polarise America even more on the subject of slavery, and lead to civil war in April 1861.
More Americans died in the Civil War than in the War of Independence, the First World War, the Second World War and Vietnam combined. It raged for four years, with ferocious bloodshed and seething hatred. Nothing like it has ever happened since.
It must also be said that the white racism against black people on both sides before the Civil War, during it and for decades after it, was far worse than any white racism in America today. Race relations have never been better than now. The fundamental cause of the Civil War was slavery, and the North, led by President Lincoln, fought to end it. But this did not mean that people in the North wanted to emancipate blacks or give them equal rights. Most of them did not. It was thanks to the genius of Lincoln, America’s greatest president, that black people attained rights. And what happened to him?
On 13 July 2024, at a political rally, from a range of 140 metres, Thomas Crooks, tried to assassinate Donald Trump. On 14 April 1865, in a theatre, from a range of one inch, John Wilkes Booth did assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Crooks’s motive might not have been political at all, just an attempt at notoriety. He seems a lonely and disturbed young man. (The motives of Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated President Kennedy in 1963, are not clear either. He did not represent any faction in America.) Booth’s motives were crystal clear. He supported slavery and the Confederacy and hated Lincoln for ending them. He was very much the product of a divided America.
Worst presidents
Joe Biden has been one of the worst presidents in American history. When he took power from Trump in 2021, he inherited a good economy, recovering strongly from Covid. He proceeded to mess it up with massive spending, which led to bad inflation. The clumsy and callous manner of his withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan led to a large loss of lives, American and Afghan, and ended up with the people there falling under the tyranny of the Taliban, who proceeded to oppress women and remove all of the rights that the Americans had given them.
His energy polices, led by the climate alarm nonsense, have been disastrous. He has tried to stop all drilling for oil in a mad attempt at eliminating all fossil fuels. This sent energy prices soaring for American industry and the American people. Biden himself is corrupt and bigoted, with a long political history of doing nothing very much of any use. He seems to have become senile, even though he is only 81, and his fumbling, bewildered debate against Trump last month was painful to watch. The Democrat grandees (Pelosi and co.), after saying how strong, healthy and wonderful he was only a moment before the debate, suddenly decided he must go.
So he went, and will be replaced as Democrat nominee for the presidential election in November, only four months away. This will be decided in August but the way the Democrats are talking now, the overwhelming favourite is the worst candidate they could choose, the existing Vice President, the appalling Kamala Harris. In the 2019 Democrat primaries, Harris was the worst candidate of a not very inspiring bunch. She was dishonest, vague, spiteful and unlikeable. She dropped out soon, getting no support from even her own side.
She boasts about her deprivations as a poor black girl when in fact she had a privileged childhood with both parents, an Indian and a Jamaican, having PhDs. In other words she tries to be yet another rich victim. During the primary debates, Harris boasted about her kind and tolerant service as Attorney General of California, and was immediately attacked by Tulsi Gabbard who pointed out that she was actually reactionary and vindictive, imprisoning too many people for marijuana use and then laughing when asked if she used it herself, and keeping some prisoners on death row too long. Harris made a vicious attack on Biden, accusing him of racism. However, when he eventually won the nomination, he named her as his nominee for vice president.
He did so because she was female and black, and said so openly. She had no other assets at all. She was a pure diversity nominee, very much part of the Democrat ideology that race and sex – sorry, “gender” – trumps merit. She has been an awful VP, delivering nothing good, making bad things worse. Over half of her staff in the Vice President’s office left. She had responsibility for immigration and failed completely.
Border
The southern border of America is a huge political issue. Floods of illegal immigrants come in from Mexico and the rest of Latin America, including drug lords, gangsters and child-traffickers. They are making life dangerous and intolerable for many American citizens, who have to pay for their keep with their hard-earned taxes. Harris was given the job of repairing the border. She did nothing and it is now much worse than when Biden got in.
In a remarkable interview, VP Harris was asked about her plans for the border and if she had been to the border. She said, “We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border.” The interviewer said, “You haven’t been to the border.” She paused, smiled and said, “And I haven’t been to Europe”, and then burst out cackling with laughter. This manic laugh after a lie or an evasion has become her hallmark. Watch the interview here.
Her promises about what she will do as president are enough to make you weep: more destructive climate nonsense that will bring economic ruin, such as getting rid of motor cars; more wretched DEI requirements; probably more transgender laws to make it easier for eight-year-olds to take harmful hormones to stunt permanently their normal sexual development; and more idiotic regulations and job-destroying taxes. How on Earth can the Democrat leaders have allowed her to become their candidate for the presidency? For a long time they fooled themselves (or just lied) that Biden was fit for another four years, and then suddenly, and much too late, decided he wasn’t, and found that they had run out of time to find and prepare a good candidate. Now they’re stuck with a truly awful candidate and are trying hard to pretend she is magnificent.
Of course, big money is pouring in for Harris. The super-rich heavily favour the Democrats and will sponsor any of its candidates. Likewise the mainstream media overwhelmingly support the Democrats and will now be campaigning hard for her – particularly as her opponent will be Donald Trump.
Trump
Trump, loud, vulgar, boastful, vengeful, conceited and naughty sexually, was quite a good president, the best since George Bush Snr. Under him, the economy boomed and there was record low unemployment, including among black people. He brought immigration under control. Unlike his predecessors, he didn’t start any stupid, horrible wars; he was a man of peace. He had good energy policies, encouraging drilling and rejecting the destructive climate nonsense. He pulled America out of the absurd Paris Accord, although unfortunately he was too lazy to study the rather simple climate science that shows that rising CO2 is doing nothing but good.
The Covid pandemic struck towards the end of his presidency and cost him re-election. Knowing nothing about science or medicine (like most politicians), he was taken in by the medical authorities, especially Anthony Fauci, and the giant drug corporations, and gave in to their demands for a disastrous lockdown and mass vaccination by dangerous, untested, ineffective Covid vaccines. This cost lives and harmed the economy. Nonetheless America was recovering well in his last months and would have continued to do so had not Biden come in and mucked things up.
Now Trump is back in the game, as loud and boastful as ever, but rather more disciplined, as he showed in his debate against Biden. His defiant response to the assassination attempt will have won him new support. He promises sensible energy policies again, the strengthening of the border wall against illegal immigrants and the stopping of the flow of deadly drugs, especially fentanyl, into the US, where it kills thousands of people.
My biggest fear is his opposition to the free market. He wants to protect American workers with tariffs against imported goods, which is dangerous for world trade and a healthy global economy. His choice as vice president, J D Vance, seems even worse in this regard, wanting even more protection.
On foreign policy I don’t really know quite where either Trump or Harris stand. Trump says he would end the Russo-Ukrainian War quickly. He is so unpredictable that he might do just that. Putin does not see him as a big supporter of NATO, which is his greatest concern, and Zelensky might be frightened that he would cut off or reduce American military aid to Ukraine. This might them more likely to accept what I think is the only possible peaceful outcome: Russia gets Crimea and parts of the Donbas, and a promise that Ukraine will never join NATO, and Ukraine gets full recognition from Russia and a promise never to start hostilities against it. On Israel, I don’t know. On South Africa, Trump might well be less tolerant than Biden of the ANC’s ceaseless attacks on the USA in every international forum and its strong support for the terrorist group Hamas and regimes such as Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Iran.
Historical sins
The two great historical sins of the USA were the annihilation of the native people (the “Red Indians”) and African slavery. The few remaining natives form a rather sad and outcast community now. This is a tragedy for which I can think of no happy remedy. Slavery caused the greatest ever American schism, ending in a long and bloody war. The North won and slavery ended, but injustice against black people did not. Decades of “reconstruction” were characterised by “Jim Crow” and the systematic discrimination against black people and denial of their full human rights. It took a century for that to end but it has ended now.
Black people in America are now the most prosperous black people (people of recent African descent) in the world, which is why blacks in other countries want to go to America and blacks in America don’t want to leave. But they still have problems, mainly caused by the welfare state and white condescension. In the past, white racists harmed black people; today woke whites do. Instead of studying hard at school, getting a job, getting married and bringing up children with a mother and father, blacks are encouraged by woke whites to feel helpless and sorry for themselves and blame everything on white racism.
By any measure, America is now a less divided, more liberal, more tolerant society than it has ever been. But it has new, irrational and harmful ideologies and some bad leaders. There is no Abraham Lincoln in America now – at least none I can see – but some of the political leaders are quite good, and Trump is not bad. The fact that the woke elite screams so loudly against him – “Trump is an existential threat to democracy!” – would make me more likely to vote for him.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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