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A pedestrian wearing a protective mask walks past a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s wanted advertisement at a bus stop in downtown Washington, D.C., U.S., January 17, 2021. /Getty
Editor's note: Bradley Blankenship is a Prague-based American journalist, political analyst and freelance reporter. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.
I had a chance to visit the United States in October 2020, the first time I had been in the country since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and though I had seen from a distance how much everything had deteriorated, seeing it first hand was quite shocking. What I'm referring to specifically is the near-complete breakdown of social relations that has taken place and how little regard many have for each other.
One Uber driver explained to me that the pandemic is a hoax and that then-President Donald Trump should jail California's administration over the state's restrictions. A family member of mine that owns a small business explained to me that we should open back up because "people die all the time." Another friend of mine, a frontline worker in a precarious work situation, insisted we meet up while I was undergoing quarantine immediately after my flight from Europe because "no one cares."
While I was shocked and even angry at times by the lack of concern the people I spoke to had for others, there was a common theme: economic insecurity. While this might ordinarily be a spark for class solidarity, especially given the fact that wealth has funneled dramatically upward during the pandemic and average Americans have been left behind, many are taking their anger out on the wrong people – people of different backgrounds, public health officials, political leaders and even themselves.
This unfocused resentment, most of it triggered by economic insecurity, is actually nothing new and has been the common theme of American politics for some time, notably during the election. At least one peak of this grief, which was the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot, shows something interesting.
A recent Washington Post investigation into the riot revealed that a majority of the people arrested during the events that took place – nearly 60 percent – had a history of financial trouble. This includes "bankruptcies, notices of eviction or foreclosure, bad debts, or unpaid taxes over the past two decades," according to public records analyzed by the Post.
Of the 125 defendants, the bankruptcy rate was 18 percent (twice as high as the general American public), nearly 25 percent had been sued for money owed to a creditor and nearly 20 percent "had faced losing their home at one point." At the same time, 40 percent of the defendants are business owners or white-collar workers and 9 percent appeared to be unemployed, according to the Post.
A screenshot of the Washington Post article on the Capitol riot.
So to be clear about how to interpret this: Many alleged rioters were facing economic insecurity but they are not what one would consider to be the most marginalized in society. These are people that are disproportionately white and middle class, i.e. people with some measure of privilege in society but feel they are being robbed of something.
And because of this they naturally gravitated to a politician like Trump who spoke about an idealized past (as his motto "Make America Great Again" was meant to) that was being taken away. But, as many of the defendants now realize and are publicly stating, Trump and his sycophants are liars that manipulated them for their own gain.
While indeed troubling, it also provides a serious opportunity for President Joe Biden to reconcile America's twisted libertarian cultural values. More importantly, it provides an opportunity for him to fundamentally change the direction of the economy and, as I recently explained, more and more Americans are waking up to the fact that they deserve more from their government in terms of wealth redistribution.
Despite all of these advantages, however, the future of American society is not set in stone. After all, the next figure to capitalize on what Trump tapped into may be far more sophisticated and, moreover, a society that has normalized the death of nearly half a million of its own citizens as tribute for "the economy" is already primed to accept political violence as the norm.
Biden does seem to be tactfully maneuvering to avoid angering Trump's riled up base of supporters by avoiding cultural issues and instead focusing on popular economic issues, namely the next round of government stimulus. He is also wisely staying out of the second Trump impeachment proceedings, which would have otherwise caused friction in right-wing circles. But if he stands in the way of any popular working class demands over the next four years, it would be a fatal mistake.
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