LETTER: This is the dark shadow of the American experiment

According to doomsayers like US geopolitical analyst and author Peter Zeihan, North America has the demographic, agricultural capacity, space and mineral wealth to sail relatively unscathed through the coming apocalypse. Mexico has the youngsters, the US the capital and Canada the natural resources.

But Zeihan doesn’t consider the possibility of social and political tension exploding in the US. The hallowed US constitution was, like all such, a compromise. One unsolved contention was around the poles of federalism and state rights, two opposites that no great US mind has managed to pattern weld into one.

It's the dark shadow of the American experiment, unfurled in the arguments between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, disastrously destructive during the civil war and now once again venomous, with the current replay simplistically pitting Republican racist, gun-toting state right fundamentalists against Democrat wokist and gender-confused environmental federalists.

The arraignment of former president Donald Trump, a first in US history, on what Republicans would say are politically motivated charges related to porn star Stormy Daniels, has opened the chasm just a little wider. The gulf was already opening with the repeal of Roe v Wade, which made abortion legislation a state competence. Now Florida's governor has offered to prevent Trump's extradition to the state of New York.

Dysfunctional cities, underfunded police forces, racially inspired violence, an overflow of guns and irregular militias are a potent tinderbox just waiting for a match. While we must all hope this doesn’t happen, the current US leadership doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.  

James Cunningham
Camps Bay

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