Restoring American Leadership in Our Darkest Hour

Mark Godges 高勉正

May 7th, 2020

Global issues require global solutions, and this is why the United States under a new administration will be uniquely equipped to tackle this crisis in ways that both the Xi and Trump administrations have failed to do. The values of Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law that the United States espouses cannot simply be lip service because when countries fail to protect, then we have a responsibility to protect. The COVID-19 response relates directly to global climate response because it is a test of political courage, and if we cannot be unafraid of conflict with pandemic fascism, then we will never be ready for climate fascism. The issue is neither the pandemic nor climate change nor the poverty which exacerbates those issues, but rather the lack of empathy from policy makers to put the interests of those affected above the interests of lobbyists from companies such as Moderna, Gilead and Roche when it comes to global health, Chevron, Exxon, and Shell when it comes to global climate, and for that matter Lockheed, Northrop, and General Dynamics when it comes to global military arms trafficking and war crimes profiteering. In these ways the COVID-19 response can serve as a prequel to global effects of what we have already seen in isolated areas in responses to deforestation, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, and oil spills: Whether the issue is transnational human rights abuse, global health emergencies, or climate change, global leadership is not a question of having solutions but rather of seizing and maintaining liberal democratic power.

We must act by stepping up to ensure free testing, tracing, vaccinations and treatment first in the United States, and then throughout the world. Ultimately in mapping the politics of responsibility there are 4 components, 2 in recognition of responsibilities and 2 on acting upon each of those responsibilities. The first major element is recognizing American responsibility to defeat enemies foreign and domestic, which means a deep understanding that this is not an issue of solutions — we have those. This is an issue of power and it is an issue caused by a major party of the United States threatening democracy through an oligarchic takeover through a major crisis that models Putin’s Russia. It is our responsibility to prevent this by electing Joe Biden as President of the United States in November and regaining a Democratic United States Senate and House of Representatives as we do so. The second major component is once we regain electoral power, the United States has a responsibility to our liberal allies and occupied peoples within illiberal states around the world, and that responsibility expands rather than diminishes during a pandemic. The second major portion is frankly more simple than the mental acrobatics of recognizing what the problem is. Once we know what the problem is, and we take the power to solve it — the solution is to listen to what our most historically vulnerable communities need both at home and abroad and to not let capitalism get in the way of serving them and mutually empowering each other.

We will not solve the problem until we root out what the problem is: pandemic fascism caused by enemies foreign and domestic in the form of dictators, only to be solved through a Democratic Party electoral takeover in the United States, and expanded deepened ties with our democratic allies both occupied and free, in the global north, south, east and west. Everything will get worse, but if we make sure the congress and White House is Democratic, we have an opportunity to make things better. The worst domino effects of this pandemic will only be blunted if the United States uses its economic and military power to bully corporations and dictators to cave in to our social-democratic alliances. The worst effects of Climate Change, Covid outbreaks/Pandemics, and Famines are all caused by the same group of fortune 500 capitalist pigs. Therefore they all require the same solution: a relentless combination of supporting our Universalist Liberal Allies and supporting occupied peoples within hostile fascist regimes. For the reasons that individuals are not powerful enough and businesses are not responsible enough without democratic institutions that represent the people and regulate capitalism — the sole responsibility of climate change action lies in heads of states and legislatures within the United States, China, and the European Union. This crisis is proving that human rights ideas do not move themselves in institutions of thought, they also need institutions of capital and institutions of violence — both of which the United States is currently, for good and/or bad, the world leader in maintaining. I will now provide a basic future outline which highlights the fact that the only reason some things are seen as impossible is because Steve Bannon and other right wing consultants seek to sacrifice the lives of millions of people in order to uphold the myth of rugged individualism — but truly most policies are completely possible through educated consensus if we actually value a college degree.

Since the United States will be above and beyond China as the major superpower of the world, moving forward, the United States has many major responsibilities which we will no doubt be up for the task of once we seize power from the American Legislative Exchange Council and the good ole boys oligarch golf club. After inauguration day we must use the full constitutional power of the Executive and Legislative Branches of the US Federal Government to obtain 350 million tests from companies through brute force. Because democrats listen to scientists and value the work of Universities and pandemic response teams, we will then work with scientists shortly before immediate distribution to establish a tracing system between all testing machines linked to DNA for everyone who is tested positive or negative through the test results on their machine. We will then rebuild relationships between the executive branch and democratic and more sensible republican governors to rely on and strengthen state local and federal leadership from these same scientific and medical experts. We will use our newly flipped Democratic senate to have the Biden administration pass bills work with allied scientists and labs to develop a quickly reproducible and free vaccine to distribute to everyone who tested negative for Covid and outlaw vaccine monopolization. Unlike Jared Kushner and the Trump Administration, since Biden does not owe autocratic banks money, Biden will immediately implement and expand Defense Production Act in order to have calculated capacity for all coronavirus patients in the United States. In addition to state governments, because we believe in federalism and community more than we believe in American dictatorships and cults of personalities, we will also provide direct communication channel between the Biden Administration and local government leaders — including tribal leaders and leaders in US territories — in order to bypass incompetent governors and minimize fraud, waste, and abuse. Divide and designate US support to each nation based on medical need and institutional need — meaning there are states that are trustworthy and not hostile that need resource support but there may be countries such as Hungary or Brazil who do not need resource support but due to fascist administrations cannot be trusted to take care of all their residents. In this way the Global Response of US Support to Nations can be structured into nation-analysis-matrix as follows:

1. Nation with minimal coronavirus cases or lasting effect = Work with the US as a partner to help the rest of the world.
2. Liberal democratic value-aligned nation with strong medical need = US medical resource support.
3. Hostile/unstable nation with strong medical need = US medical resource and expert oversight support
4. Hostile unstable nation but in denial of issue and untrustworthy due to narcissistic wounds (Brazil, India, China, Russia, North Korea, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Venezuela) = US medical support (starting with and expanding outwards from most targeted vulnerable communities), US expert oversight support, and American troops protecting those providing aid.

There is a blueprint here for solving other international issues in the same way, through strong democratic leadership at home, strong alliances abroad, and domestic and allied support to occupied democracies and vulnerable communities who are being left to die at the hands of these issues. But I believe the true challenge are not these challenges themselves, but rather getting the right people to understand that these problems are not random but are policy failures, and that the people of the world are engaged in a manichean struggle between good and evil, where ideology and morality are intertwined in the visions of an increasingly polarized leadership system and an increasingly unified and angry electorate against the type of leadership that puts the lives of people as a series of debates to be had. We will only move forward on global issues if we realize that the single problem, a problem that is blocking the Green New Deal, a problem that is blocking reduced or eliminated support to war criminals such as Saudi Arabia and others, a problem that is blocking trade deals with fair environmental, labor, and human rights standards, a problem that is blocking unified supply chain blockades for slave labour policies, and a problem that is allowing millions of people to die from a pandemic that was containable — is the greed of right wing politicians around the globe. Unless we realize that this is the cancer that has grown into a malignant tumor upon our society, then the terror has only just begun. We still have hope, so long as we realize that this issue is political, and we elect leaders who are scientists, educators, and organizers as well as people who listen to them.