It’s Time to Invade

I want to talk about this large country. They are very important, a truly global player. They sport a powerful military and plenty of natural resources.  They have a great geographic position and have been apart of some important international institutions in the past. But new leadership has taken this country is a frightening direction. Many of the problems within this country are not new but recent changes in leadership have exacerbated these problems and the new leaders have shown little desire to solve any of the pressing problems within their own borders.

The Economy

Economically, their economy is large but the wealth of the country is not shared and flows mostly into the pockets of the wealthy who don’t pay taxes. There are vast areas that are economically depressed. These areas lack jobs, education and economic opportunities. Wages are often kept low for a variety of jobs and education is unequal and the system is highly Balkanized through local control with no oversight. This country has let its corporations maintain and oligarchal control over the economy and many members of the corporate aristocracy are also involved in government in an almost revolving-door like system where the people who have run the businesses being regulated end up working in government leaving large loopholes for corporations to exploit. This has caused the national government to provide ever-larger loans to these corporatons at the the expense of the regular tax payer.

Leadership

Their leader is a bit unhinged and has often flaunted the international community and isn’t a fair negotiator. He pulls out of trade deals and other kinds of international agreements almost without warning. Leaders within his government often attempt to involve the country in new and disastrous wars overseas that are expensive and have little basis for conflict. Some have noted that these wars may simply be distractions from domestic problems.

He often uses populist rhetoric to decide policies and often communicates directly with his people through popular communication means rather than through the media who might critique his policies or to ask questions about what is going on. Unlike his predecessors, he no longer holds press conferences and has fired his press staff. Regular press briefings where the media can ask questions no longer occur in this country.  

The leadership is not held accountable by normal government processes and requires that members of its government pledge loyalty to to the leader and if they are critical they are often fired. The leadership has also taken measures to pack the courts with people who will agree with them ensuring that their agenda goes unchallenged.

Apartheid

The society is essentially apartheid as there are minority groups that fear the police. They have used public policies to force people to live in certain parts of major cities. Although the policies have been repealed, no efforts have been made to make housing more equitable for people. Due to the over-arching forces, often the wealthy are prioritized for housing over the poor causing poor people in their society, housing distress. Some publications have noted that there is a housing crisis in this country.

Lower class and ethnic minorities often have their rights impugned and prisons are often packed with ethnic minorities. They are arrested at a higher rate and imprisoned for longer than the dominant ethnicity in the country and in many cases the police state of this country treats ethnic minorities are far worse than other people in the society by shooting them without cause and using extreme force. The country has a long history of this and the national government has not taken steps to stop it. This plays in their liberal use of their police state.

Police State

The people of this country often live in fear of the police. The police often do not clearly mark their cars and often look for crimes that have been committed and arrest people unnecessarily. Rather than seeking out the help of the police, people often avoid it due to corruption.

The police state fails to properly control violence as well. This country often suffers from mass shootings and violent incidences that kill over 10,000 people per year simply for being in public spaces like churches, synagogues, music festivals, and even political protests. Many people use the lax laws around gun ownership to own a variety of guns and the country participates in a sort of “gun culture.” The police do very little to stop this and the national government has not take steps to stop the violence.

The police are militarized and regularly raid private homes. The police can go into a home if they claim they hear someone in distress without any sort of due process of law. As an extension of this police system, the citizens are surveilled regularly without their consent. The government never reveals what this data is used for or where it is stored. When people have leaked about this surveillance the activists have been imprisoned.

Prisons

This nation has an impressive prison population, the biggest in the world in fact. 1.4 million of its citizens are in prison and the bulk of these prisons come from ethnic minorities within its borders. They have used various laws to extend longer sentences to prisoners and simply lock people up. What is worse is that often the prisons are owned by private corporations who require the state to keep the prisons filled however possible. This creates a culture of mass incarceration within its borders.

Immigration

This country regularly restricts immigration and uses government agencies to round up immigrants. Those who can’t prove their citizenship are detained until they can relying on outsiders to help them. These raids often happen at workplaces or in the night. No preference is given and often children are left without parents. Families must prepare for the eventually that they will be deported. Rather than accommodate or provide pathways to citizenship for certain immigrants, this nation has chosen to take a hard line on the subject. It has been reported that the nation has had a broken immigration policy for many years and nothing is done at the top to fix the policy or make it easy and convenient for people to immigrate to the country or build a life there. The nation at once time welcomed immigrants but now, due to ethnic tensions, have decided to end this policy.

Public Violence

This country has a public violence problem. Although it sports a robust police state, the police state cannot keep the public safe from rogue shooters who cause terror and havoc when they shoot up any public space including churches, shopping malls and elsewhere. This creates a culture of fear within the population. No one is immune and nowhere is safe within the entire country. Fringe groups are now taking to arms and shooting civilians and this trend has gone one for years. The government, due to its ties with oligarchs, has done nothing to stem the violence. There is no attempt to restrict the sales of weapons of mass destruction or the weapons of war to the general public and these weapons are often used to murder innocent people due to ethnic tensions and other problems within the country. Lately, racism as been a motivation for violence but there have been other factors ranging from religion to a dislike of the social mores of the country. Meaningful Legislation has never been passed.

Housing and Sanitation

Parts of this country have problems with water systems and sanitation. People are forced to live in filth or don’t have access to clean water. This country has a housing crisis and boasts many homeless people who live in parking lots or alongside roads. Nothing has been done at the national level to solve these problems. Its federal regions lack the resources to create meaningful change for everyone. This causes people to freeze during the country’s harsh winters or die of heatstroke in the summers. Major cities have citizens living in cars or elsewhere. Accessing food can also be a problem. The country does not have a robust food infrastructure leading to people who are unable to buy food, even if they have money. In places with stores, the stores often offer low-quality food and lack fresh fruit and vegetables leaving people in poor health. The national program for food is underfunded and leaves people with little money to actually buy food. Although people accuse the program of corruption, reviews have shows the program works well, it is one of the few that do.

It’s Time to Invade?

If you have made it this far in the article and haven’t realized what I’ve done then please keep reading. What I have done here is described America from an outside perspective. If another country were going through what this country is going through, there would be calls for an intervention. There would be calls for humanitarian aid (at least) and there would be calls for regime change. We are the type of country that would be ripe for international criticism at the United Nations. But this is America. No one can invade us. Only Russia and China would dare criticize us and therefore no one is really powerful enough to stop any of the problems I mentioned.

It’s time to invade America with the type of values that this country once stood for. It is time to improve the lot of people, reform laws, and make sure that everyone has safety, sanitation, clean water, and food. It’s time for us to do for ourselves what we’ve been trying to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s time to invade.