By MARY UYEMATSU KAO
According to the Collins Dictionary online, “If bad or wrong things that someone has done in the past have come home to roost, or if their chickens have come home to roost, they are now experiencing the unpleasant effects of these actions.”
Malcolm X prophetically warned us that chickens come home to roost. And now we see it — not only have the chickens come home to roost, but the roost is roosting. The consequences of U.S. exploits around the world, guarded by 800 military installations worldwide, have seen better days, and now the tally is working in reverse. Nations of the world are seeing through the U.S. lies of “democracy.”
This, in a nutshell, can best describe what our country is going through today. It is a bitter pill to swallow, after the years of U.S. propaganda that we’ve swallowed about what a great economic and democratic system we have. But the world has become smarter and the rise of the People’s Republic of China to challenge the “superiority” of the U.S. imperialist system is now staring us in our faces.
Yes, Trump is worse than Biden, but the problems we face as a country have been a result of decades of BIPARTISAN policies, whether Democratic or Republican administrations. The problem is our economic system of capitalism/imperialism, which cannot solve its own problems without wreaking havoc on the world’s people, U.S. citizens included.
The incessant passion to create profit at the expense of what the 0.1% now deems to be antiquated human values, morality, or ethics … we are now embarking on a totalitarian rule of lawlessness.
Back in the days of the Richard Nixon administration, the U.S. stopped backing the U.S. dollar with gold, and has since printed money at will whenever our economy needed a boost. We have now reached a point of unsustainability. We’ve been in hock to China and Japan: U.S. debt is being held up by China’s $815 billion, only second to Japan’s $1.1 trillion. This is still chump change for our current national debt of $36.22 trillion.
BRICS is getting stronger, representing 65% of the world’s economies, just recently welcoming Indonesia. While they do not profess to de-dollarize the world economy, they can protect themselves from the U.S. petro-dollar’s “diplomacy”/terrorism that has been plaguing economies of developing nations, who can never really develop when under the “rules” of the dollar.
The U.S’ image of “superiority” as a “democratic” nation of invincible power has been shattered, starting with the U.S. getting kicked out of Vietnam, followed by a permanent state of war since Sept. 11, 2001. $8 trillion in military expenditures since 9/11 contributed to failed missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are now supporting Israel’s war that has failed to put a dent into Hamas militarily, as the genocide of innocent Palestinian civilian men, women, and children continues.
Our tax dollars have financed the slaughter of some 4.6+ million people since 9/11, while displacing another 38 million people. And let’s not forget the other current failed fiasco in Ukraine. U.S. military foreign policy contributes outrageously to the national debt. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures#:~:text=U.S.%20Budgetary%20Costs%20of%20Post,for%20veterans%20of%20these%20wars
Trump’s flailing tariffs and Musk’s DOGE-chainsaw butchering jobs in health, education, welfare, and much much more are all misguided attempts to keep our national debt from spiraling out of control. Trump’s attempt to “restructure” the U.S. economy and bring back industrial production to our shores is a pipe dream. Are they really going to bring factory production back to the U.S., when wages for U.S. workers are what sent them overseas in the first place?
All these government cuts create more misery for the already wretched U.S. working class, in order to save the profits of the billionaires who were sitting squarely in the front row of Trump’s inauguration.
As immigrants, regardless of gangster activities or innocence, are being deported on domestic airlines in what retired Col. Larry Wilkerson calls a new form of human trafficking — human rights of U.S. residents, international students, and all immigrants are being stricken from the books.
Student activists protesting the genocide in Palestine are being silenced, while colleges and universities are being intimidated to cut all DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs and punish student protesters or lose federal funding for research. Shutting down students’ freedom of speech in the name of anti-semitism — it now seems that the education system is in hock to the Israel lobby.
Immigrants, federal workers, LGBTQ people, women, seniors, children, veterans — who’s next? You should know Asians will soon be in the crosshairs. If and when Trump can get the Ukraine drain out of the war budget, China will be the destined enemy of the American people. There will be more than just “kung-flu” coming at us.
We are now witnessing greater numbers of people “waking up.” The resistance to Trump’s terror on the American people is growing by leaps and bounds. Trump’s strategy of “everything, everywhere, all at once” may be creating a firestorm of mass confusion, but it is also creating massive rebellions.
With all the U.S. billionaires’ money, there is plenty of money to set things right domestically and do the right things globally. Even if they were only taxed their “fair share,” we might have a more sustainable economy.
The tariff war that Trump has unleashed amounts to nothing more than another huge tax on us, the American consumers. Our taxes keep rising to cover the billionaires’ tax cuts. It’s clear who’s running the show.
It is necessary to demonstrate and show our disagreement with what is going on, but is it just to show our government representatives how we feel so they will do the right thing? How did we get to where we are? Haven’t we been relying on our representatives to fight for our interests? Is there anybody thinking beyond reacting to what’s being thrown at us?
Demonstrations show our fellow Americans that we have the power. If we are a real democracy, we should have the power to take an offensive on this assault that’s taking place. With all of the unrest erupting in every pocket of the U.S. citizenry, there is huge potential for a massive third party to organize and represent the interests of all the upsurges of resistance.
A new third party can change the elections from the duopoly’s “lesser of two evils” to the real scoreboard — the billionaire class vs. the majority of the American people.
As they said back in 1775 during the American Revolution, “No taxation without representation.”
Mary Uyematsu Kao is the author/photographer of “Rockin’ the Boat: Flashbacks of the 1970s Asian Movement” and formerly the publications coordinator of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center (1987-2018). She received her MA from UCLA Asian American Studies in 2007. She welcomes comments, questions, and/or criticisms at uyematsu72@gmail.com. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of The Rafu Shimpo.