What’s Wrong with the USA?

Authors note: after writing this article I received, unsurprisingly, some criticism. I took the longest and perhaps most interesting criticism and wrote another article a few days later, if you have an interest in this and would like to know more, please take a look that the follow up: https://jerry-grey2002.medium.com/response-to-criticism-of-whats-wrong-with-the-usa-a0dd4fe64715

The US is known to commit many crimes in the name of “National Security” but, to deflect from this, inside its own country, it projects its own crimes and problems onto other countries, in particular China. This article lists some reasons why the United States government can’t be a trustworthy ally and needs to look inward rather than project its own crimes and problems outward.

It’s also a useful list to provide to people who embrace the narrative that China and its government are inherently bad because, despite the rhetoric, they aren’t. The information listed is all verifiable. Wikipedia has been used only when the number of statistics would merit too many citations and Wikipedia’s own sources have been verified. Two personal articles, written by the author have been cited: one because it relates to Tiananmen Square in an encompassing way. While the article cited has no references (it was written as a self-exploration exercise rather than for publication), it is all verifiable to the critical reader; the other, which includes a range of citations, demonstrates that military expansion is not part of China’s strategy.

So, here’s some of what the USA is doing wrong…

Americans talk of Tiananmen Square where all the evidence points to just over 200 deaths while their own police kill 1000+ every year.

They speak badly of China’s police as authoritarian, when not one person has been shot or killed by a Chinese police officer in years, in fact, in the last 5 years only 2 people on the mainland have been shot by police, one in 2019 and one in 2018. Both were, at the time, using vehicles intent on killing or injuring other citizens.

They accuse China of being authoritarian when the USA, with 4% of the world’s population holds over 20% of the entire world’s prison population. The USA has 655 people per 100,000 incarcerated, compared to China’s 121/100K. Taiwan has been left out of this figure as the independently managed province has an incarceration rate twice that of the mainland at 241/100K.

They point at China’s shoddy workmanship as their own bridges fall over due to 50 years lack of maintenance and their homes collapse because of poor construction policies.

They accuse China of Intellectual Property (IP) theft when their own science is years behind. At the same time, their FBI advises that US IP theft is not just growing but already a massive problem requiring the formation of a Property Rights Coordination Centre in the USA

They allege China won’t share space technology and science when they are the ones who legislate to stop NASA sharing with China.

They accuse China of propaganda while they budget 300 million dollars a year for negative media reports on China and have proposed a further half billion a year.

They speak of corporate crime in China as if these were exclusive to the country and the fault of poor governance while it was the USA which almost brought the world to its knees, more than once, through corporate crime which for the most part, remain unpunished. And closer inspections reveal US corporations are directly responsible for all, not just some, of the worst corporate crimes in human history. This year even saw two of their own babies die in a tainted milk scandal.

They claim to support a free market economy while they sanction over twenty countries, hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals.

They talk of “inhumane lockdowns” in China, where people are regularly delivered free food and free Covid testing as well as free hospital care if tested Covid positive. All this while the US have watched as more than a million of their own population died, compared to 5,200 in China and the US failure to manage Covid means more than 70 million Americans, half of the known number of people who have had the disease, must come to terms with an uncertain future of complications due to long Covid.

They speak of themselves as being the land of the free and the brave and attempt to highlight human rights abuses of other countries while they lock up thousands of families and separate children from their mothers on their borders. They are known to illegally arrest and imprison suspects without trial, often moving them to “black sites” where they are able to use torture techniques which have been legalised by their government but renamed “enhanced interrogation”.

They accuse China of military proliferation when only one Chinese military site exists overseas and it is used in cooperation with US troops in the same region, Djibouti. While at the same time the US has over 750 bases and 200,000 troops stationed overseas.

They allege China is militarising the South China sea when they have a US “self-defense force” including two of their own, and two other aircraft carriers as well as over 70 other allied ships sailing off or near the coast of China.

Their military, with the exception of the National Guard are unable to operate inside the USA due to the Posse Comitatus Act and when they do act, they act to defend the government against the people. While Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) enjoys massive public support because of the help they provide in times of disaster or other need.

The US accuses China of using forced labour, a claim which remains unproven and has been heavily debunked while using their own incarcerated prisoners as almost unpaid and involuntary employees in a legalised system of slave labour

They speak of freedom of speech whilst locking up lawyers for finding guilt in their oil executives and journalists for showing crimes by their military.

They boast of their liberty and freedoms but have shot and wounded more than 115,000 and killed over 45,000 of each other last year alone with their private guns.

They praise their medical systems but charge so much that 530,000 people declare bankruptcy every year because of the bills.

They have the worlds best universities but common people can’t afford to study there, or incur half a lifetime of high interest debt of up to 13%, compared to US interest rate of 0.5% when they do.

They claim to be the world’s police but have a murder rate of 7/100K with some cities (new Orleans) as high as 35/100K compared to China’s 0.5/100K and Hong Kong’s 0.2/100K.

They claim to bring peace and democracy in a War on Terror but have killed 929,000 people and created 38 million homeless and destitute refugees in the last 20 years.

While 40% of their own country doesn’t have enough food, they spend billions on their own military and send many more billions to Israel and Ukraine as well as several other countries.

They spend billions on drug enforcement every year while the number of drug addictions and drug related deaths increase exponentially — last year over 100,000 people died of drug overdoses and there are 39 million known illegal drug users, more than 1 in 10 people.

They are the richest country in the world with a per capita GDP that is 436% of the world’s average but with a poverty rate of 11.4% and over half a million people living on the street.

1% of the country’s richest people hold 15 times more wealth than the bottom 50% and 10% of them own as much as 90% of all the stocks available in the country as well as 70% of all the money

They claim to be a country of equality but white Americans hold 85% of the wealth while black Americans hold just 4.1%. The other 10% is shared amongst Native Americans, Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans. The number of Black prisoners in the US prison system at 1240/100K is 5 times greater than the proportion of whites. In every state and in every category, whites are imprisoned less than Black and Hispanic/Latino Americans

They have 20 year a war on terror which has killed several major leaders such as, Gaddafi, Hussein and Bin Laden and yet there is strong evidence that all three of these dead enemies were once allies of their own intelligence community.

Would you trust this country?

Criticism of the article can be found here, along with my response to it: https://jerry-grey2002.medium.com/response-to-criticism-of-whats-wrong-with-the-usa-a0dd4fe64715