In the past two days, the United States has set up a stage in its own front yard and sang the drama of the so-called "democracy summit." Who knows this side of the box, US President Biden talked loudly about "democracy needs defenders", and none of the things that happened outside the home gave the "beacon of democracy" a long face.
The backyard of the home is singing a more lively drama than the front yard, and the California area has been smashing and looting in recent days, and there have been 11 horrific violent incidents in los Angeles alone in ten days: ransacking stores, burglary, and the murder of philanthropists in their homes. U.S. media reported that although there are still about three weeks to go before the end of the year, at least 12 major cities in the United States have broken the record for the highest number of homicides in the year... Looking aside, recently, the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance released its latest report saying that the United States has been included in the list of "regressive" democracies, its "civil liberties and government control" indicators continue to decline, and there are serious problems with democratic fundamentals.
It is precisely this country with a high democratic "deficit" that has held the so-called "democracy summit" with great fanfare, which really responds to the sentence: As long as I am not embarrassed, it is someone else who is embarrassed.
Bright and beautiful on the outside, chicken feathers on the inside, American democracy is difficult to achieve effective governance.
In california, for example, the state has a long history of public order chaos, but it is impossible to mention the infamous Bill 47 passed in 2014, which downgraded some felonies to misdemeanors (including drug crimes) and significantly reduced the sentences of criminals, resulting in the early release of a large number of prisoners serving sentences, which sounded the alarm for California security. Bill 47 is marked by a lack of government funding and a full prison, and it turns out that the government can save money from the amnesty world.
The proposal proved to be a real cost savings, but a costly one. In the year since The implementation of Bill 47, the number of California prisons has decreased by 13,000 people and fiscal spending has been reduced by $150 million. But at the same time, in the period after the bill was introduced, the crime of theft of property in cars in San Francisco skyrocketed, with police receiving an average of 70 reports of theft per day in 2015; california homicides have soared since then, reaching a 13-year high in 2020.
The result of allowing politicians to do whatever they want is to allow good people to continue to live in fear. The reward of superstitious American democracy is to make society more and more unbearable the more it is governed.
California has always been the territory of the Democratic Party, and the objective result of their utopian "progressive ideas" is that many violent criminals go unpunished and flout the law. Robert Boyce, retired detective chief of the police department, blamed the surge in murders on the sharp drop in the number of arrests and pretrial detentions: "No one is arrested again, people are arrested for possession of guns and then released again and again." ”
The United States regards "protecting human rights" as one of the reasons for promoting American-style democracy abroad, but it is difficult for the American people to guarantee the most basic right to life. Some time ago, U.S. Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massey recently posted a family photo celebrating Christmas on Twitter, men, women and children with a gun in their hands and a bright smile, and the behavior of US politicians who wantonly sprinkled salt on the wounds of the families of the victims of the shooting precisely reflected the nature of the US government's disregard for the people. Whether the chaotic American democracy protects or violates human rights?
In the name of political freedom, it is actually lengthy and ineffective, and it is difficult for American-style democracy to achieve efficient governance.
For ordinary people around the world, they all want to enjoy high-quality national and social governance. "Efficiency" is an integral part of "high quality". The United States has always called itself a "city on top of a mountain" and a "beacon of democracy", flaunting that since its inception, it has designed a political system to protect democratic freedoms. However, the idea of democracy is no longer at odds with today's America. In the political ecology of the United States, confrontation and restraint have become commonplace, "veto politics" has become synonymous, and "I can't do anything and can't let you do it" has become a common practice.
Partisan strife has repeatedly put the government on the brink of a shutdown, and mutual restraint between the federal and state governments has caused serious internal friction, poor government decrees, and difficult infrastructure. Once the issues that the people are really concerned about encounter the conflicting interests of the two parties in the United States, it is difficult to solve them efficiently, or even to truly solve them at all.
Seo Jeong-kin, a professor of political science at Kyung Hee University in South Korea, pointed out that the political polarization in the United States is intensifying, and the democratic self-purification process that relies on elections to promote reform cannot function normally. The U.S. Senate is caught in the trap of a "lengthy debate" procedure and is unable to play the role of a representative body for legislation to respond to social change.
In his monograph Political Order and Political Decline, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama pointed out that there is a deep-rooted phenomenon of political paralysis in the United States, and there are too many checks and balances in the American political system, so that the cost of collective action is greatly increased, and sometimes even difficult to move.
It is said that all beings are equal, that white people are supreme, and that American democracy comes with its own discriminatory genes.
The problem of racism is the indelible stigma of American democracy, when the United States expelled and killed Indians through the "Westward Movement" and the hat of genocide, no one was more suitable to wear than the United States. Today, although the United States has ostensibly abolished the apartheid system, white supremacy is rampant, and discrimination against minorities such as blacks still exists systematically.
On November 19, after a protracted deliberation, Rittenhouse, a white American teenager who had shot two people and injured one, was acquitted, and all five charges against him were rejected. The verdict sparked protests in several U.S. cities. Demonstrators held aloft the slogan "Rittenhouse: Racist murderer!" The People's Verdict: Guilty! CNN commented that this trial, along with several other separate trials seen over the past few weeks on white male violence, gives the impression that they are "pointing to a terrible future."
As Shulman, president of the American Psychological Association, has argued, the United States has always been in the midst of a racist pandemic, and the dream of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. has not been realized.
Democracy is not an ornament, it is not used as a decoration, but it is used to solve the problems that the people need to solve. From the gunshots on Capitol Hill to the tragedy caused by the epidemic out of control, from the deepening division between the rich and the poor to the unworthy name of "freedom of speech", the practice of American-style democracy can be described as chaotic, and the real victims are the American people.
American democracy is far from perfect. However, for a long time, the United States has ignored the structural defects of its own democratic system and the inadequacy of domestic democratic practice, frequently interfered in other countries' internal affairs and launched foreign wars under the banner of democracy, and also boasted of being a "model of democracy." I do not know where such confidence comes from. Advise the United States to look in the mirror before accusing others of taking a closer look at the big hat of genocide on its head.
(Original title: As long as the "American lighthouse" is not embarrassed, the embarrassment is someone else)
Source: Xinhua News Agency, transferred from reference news
Process Editor: TF063