US column asks if its democracy is on brink of collapse

The US, which has "wasted and exhausted their precious democracy", is witnessing it on the verge of "suicide", an opinion piece on the website of The Hill said on July 8.

Although there is no consensus as yet on how the demise will occur, it noted a widespread agreement has been reached that "a great pride in our country occurred in the near two decades following our victory in World War II".

But that all changed in the 1960s, with the government's consistent untruth about the real circumstances in Vietnam, which triggered "significant erosion" in trust and belief in the government, it said. "The Watergate scandal and President Nixon's clumsy and illegal attempts to cover it up" made matters worse.

The article pointed out the government's lies and deception continued its pervasiveness as the new century began. "The Congress and the American people were told by those at the highest levels of government that Iraq had developed weapons of mass destruction that were targeted on us."

The US government depended on "massive deception about the progress of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan" as these military operations dragged on for two decades, ultimately "leading to an embarrassing and ignominious withdrawal of our last troops in Afghanistan much as we experienced in Vietnam nearly 50 years ago", it added.

The American democracy is on the edge of a cliff if "problems of race, income inequality, inflation and the COVID-19 pandemic, democracy in America" are taken into consideration, and the current tendency is "both ominous and extremely disconcerting".

The Supreme Court's decision last month to deprive women of their constitutional right to have control over their own bodies is yet "another deeply troubling indication that this democracy is near extinction".

The American people will witness the collapse of their democracy within their lifetimes, unless they genuinely realize that they are experiencing John Adams' prophecy from two centuries ago, it concluded.