The State of tge Union this March is terrible. Absolutely terrible.
One should not make the same mistake which led Germans, looking at economic indicators in 1939, to conclude that the state of the union in Germany was great.
What is the State of the Union in the United States in March 2024?
The country faces the greatest anti-democratic movement since the Civil War.
A fascist movement led by Donald Trump is leading consistently in the polls, and has a very good chance of winning the presidential race on November 5, 2024. The newly fascist Republican Party could well win majorities in both the House and the Senate at the same time.
The Supreme Court is politically corrupt, and consistently favors Donald Trump and the Republican party in its decisions. In its recent decision in Trump v. Anderson it eschewed serious legal and constitutional analysis in overruling the Colorado Supreme Court decision barring Trump from the ballot in application of Section 3 of the 14th amendment.
It’s decision will live in infamy, as the last proof that the the Court has been politically corrupted, and is not capable of fairly adjudicating constitutional question of the utmost importance.
The only way one can accept the Trump v. Anderson as legitimate is to rrcognize the power of the Supreme Court to make up constitutional law as it best sees fit.
The State of the Union in 2024 is one in which the concept of Truth, the very standard of truth, has been demolished in the minds of half the population.
What should be a democratic press in a vibrant democracy has been corrupted by private commercial interests, and by the gathering impacts of a technological revolution in which the fleeting and disconnected images of television and social media have replaced the logical content of the written word.
On January 8, 2024, outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro led an attempted coup, in a manner similar to Donal Trump’s attempted coup in the U.S.on January 6, 2021.
The courts in Brazil banned Bolsonaro from running for public office for 10 years. In that manner, the Brazilian courts defended the country’s democracy against those who would overthrow it.
The U.S. Supreme Court in Anderson was unable to show the courage and the dedication to upholding the Constitution the Brazilian Supreme Court manifested in dealing with Bolsonaro.
In this sense, democracy and the rule of law are better protected in Brazil than they are in the United States.
The State of the Union includes the State of the World. Here the situation is also absolutely terrible.
The Republican Party has been taken over by the MAGA cult of Donald Trump.
It has become an openly pro-Russian party subservient to the foreign policy directives of Donald Trump, who openly supports Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump is leading efforts to block $60 billion of military aid for Ukraine, which is urgently needed as the country is running out of artillery ammunition and losing ground every day to Russian forces as a direct result.
In Gaza, Israel continues to bomb and attack targets in Gaza, where it has killed over 30,000 people since the Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023. President Biden continues to run interference for Israel, gaslighting the American public with task of a truce being only days–or even hours–away.
In the meantime, Biden refuses to use any of the real levers of U.S. influence over Israel, such as withholding the veto of U.N. Security Council resolutions, or halting shipment of U.S. arms to Israel because of restrictions on their use in existing U.S. law (self-defense only, not for commission of war crimes or human rights abuses. Instead, he urges restraint on Israel and concocts a plan for sea delivery of humanitarian aid. Instead of forcing Israel to open up multiple border crossings. In tge meantime, tge ooerative command for thecIsraeli armed forces is “Bombs Away”, as hundreds of thousands of Gazan civilians starve.
By its actions in Gaza, the United States has greatly weakened the force of International Humanitarian Law, and lost all all credibility, particularly in the Global South, in accusing Russia of war crimes in Ukraine.
Elsewhere, the civil wars in Sudan (where the rebel RSF forces are backed by Russia), and in Tigray Province in Ethiopia rage unchecked.
With this increasing breakdown in international order, prospects for effective international action on urgent global problems, such as global warming, regulation of artificial intelligence, the mikitarization of space, and nuclear proliferation, are dim indeed.
All things considered, the State of the Union like the State of the World, is terrible.