THIS IS THE UPDATED VERSION OF BEDRI BAYKAM’S ARTICLE (FOLLOWING BIDEN’S INAUGURATION DAY) PUBLISHED BY THE CUMHURIYET DAILY IN İSTANBUL ON JANUARY 14/2021
After the chaotic sightings in the West, I started considering about this new “hybrid” face of the world, which occurs to be a blend of the 1st and the 3rd world, created by the USA and France, I thought about more cliché and key terms like “the 4th or the 5th world” to describe this new face, however, I noticed that even these and similar terms were already in use in various formats. Among all the vast amount of information circulating in the world, we see that concepts like “the 4th, 5th, 6th world” are everywhere. For this reason, I thought of the term "Submerged West" as the title that best describes the states of France and the USA; two iconic countries of the West. Like the giant transatlantic cruise ships of the great Western civilization slowly sinking into the depths of the water. However, if we look collectively at the process, especially in France and the USA, I still had to add the title “5th world” (The “4th world” is used to define the poorest and least developed countries, especially those in Africa. But beyond this, the content of the 5th, 6th and 7th worlds are a “multiple pending gray zones”) Just like the Great Roman or Ottoman Empires collapsed in history, maybe the time for the great “hybrid” West of the 21st century has come now...
The raid on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. by Trump supporters was like the apocalyptic "grande finale" of all kinds of rampages witnessed in the heart of the West for the last 2-3 years.
On January 20th, Trump did not attend the inauguration ceremony, thus marking this Presidential handover date permanently. After this event, every time the traditional meeting between the Presidents is made every four or eight years, his name will be mentioned and since he claims that “Biden has not won the election”, the occurrence of all these mishappenings will be constantly inherited to new decades, to new generations.
Bush, Clinton, Obama, all came to power as if to make up for the deficiencies of their predecessors. The poet Amanda Gorman, a young black girl, sang with the comfort of a free and self-confident nightingale flying over a clear river, presenting her verses to the world as pieces that suddenly relieve this troubled environment like a fresh breath. Maybe I got too poetic, but that's exactly what happened. The boredom of Biden, as if he was saying within himself, “I want to go home once this is finally over; I am already exhausted" was overcome by these poetic verses. Despite all, the Democrats could not abandon the desperate wish to legally punish Trump, who hesitantly fled the White House by helicopter on the “D” day...
Chuck Schumer, one of the spokespersons of the Democratic Party in the Senate, stated that starting this week, Trump's "impeachment" will be handled and confirmed, that the indictment will be on the agenda of the Senate as of February, 8th.
The interesting situation is: Trying to punish a President whose term is over is like taking a dead person out of the morgue and hanging him/her again just “to set an example”! Of course, with a slight difference; their goal is to prevent Trump from running for the Presidency of the United States again! Because everyone is seriously afraid of this possibility, even though they try to hide their fear. It is very likely that the "impeachment" might not pass the Senate once again. It will not be easy for the 17 Republican Senators to support 50 Democratic counterparts and secure the 2/3 required majority. There is also the risk of being "labelled" by Trump and his team! Even if Trump can or cannot overcome all the heavy troubles and burdens weighing on him, this time, "Trumpism", his son and Co. who knows may mobilize the 74 million voters, some of whom are fanatics, in a dangerous way and everyone's fear is that people will feel the planned and applied chaos and threat of that January 6th 2021 at their necks!
Going back to that "surrealist" setting staged that day; the scene was incredible. In a Viking-like typology that seems to come out of a surreal Hollywood movie, Jake Angeli, who beyond this nickname calls himself the “Q Shaman”, appears in the middle of each representative photograph; knowing that they were “writing history” in their minds, during the raid of the Capitol Hill, they posed with their "companions" dressed as if they were going to a masquerade with flags and clothes wrapped around their bodies, containing slogans.
Whether the Trump era ends in New York towers, in prison or in divorce courts, his eccentric image and the words will be remembered as well as the image of that bison-hunter-like showman inside the Congress... When Trump entered this adventure, he tried all kinds of tricks that were written and unwritten in the books in order any potential criminal complaints. Does he probably feel remorse now? I absolutely think so! But he tries to play the poker-face!
The interesting thing is that the Trump supporters who stormed the Congress building were somewhat politically the opposite of those millions who participated in the marches during the George Floyd events, burning down the streets. Well, do these groups have absolutely nothing in common? Maybe on a very minimal scale! The FBI had announced that when Biden would gain the title of "President" on January 20th, they had been noticed about the groups that could engage in armed rebellion in the centers of all 50 states and they even had taken severe measures. The fact that the civil war-like scenes were not experienced again on that day, enabled every sane person in America to breathe with a sigh of relief. Even though there were no clear statements from Trump that would convince the masses on this issue. The Pentagon had been forced to make some dramatic war-zone like preparations by placing additional forces on the field, especially starting from the capital. The tension will be remembered…
LET'S LOOK AT THE BIG PICTURE!
Now, I want to move on to a more general story. For the next few weeks, whether we like it or not, we will follow America's de facto power transition, the aftershocks of the scandal, the flashy stories of names selected in the new Cabinet and Trump's painful "anti-epic" legal-political resistance efforts.
Please let's move a little further and take a look at what the Western world and especially France and the USA have experienced in the last few years with a broader look to their last couple centuries.
Before the incredible footage of the Congressional raid, the US experienced other mass street movements, starting in direct opposite from the empty squares brought by the harsh reality of Covid-19, to the nationwide reaction, indignation and looting caused by the brutal police murder of black citizen George Floyd. It is truly a pity and thought-provoking that these scenes can still on the agenda 60 years after the "Civil Rights Movement", which was organized under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., who had paid with his life the price for black peoples’ rights that swept across America in the 1960s.
Weren't the events in America just like the cinematographic scenes we also saw on the Champs-Elysées, when the great riots in France under the name of "Gilets-Jaunes" (Yellow Vests) turned into huge anti-Macron and anti-government demonstrations?
HOW COULD THE "BRAND VALUES" OF THE WEST FALL IN THAT TERRIBLE SITUATION?
The West and its cultural leaders, the USA and France, are two starting points that constitute democracy, law and the political origins of the contemporary world. However, in the last two years, they have turned in the new centers of giant social waves that disturb the order in their largest central cities. Having caused great agitation within the Generation of 68 in Europe, France carries the traces of the experiences where the youth and trade unions brought the political issues frequently to the streets in form of strikes to demand their rights following this tradition of the 1968 spirit. But the content and textures of today's environment are quite different.
France has long left behind its "pure original French" texture, with North Africans, Africans in general, and the additional Jewish and Turkish ethnic groups, which remained as souvenirs from their ancient colonies. Especially its capital is the center of a new sociological turmoil. Immigrants, whose childbearing rate is three times that of French families, will soon become dominant as a result of a simple mathematical calculation. No one should be surprised to see a First Lady with a veil/hijab in the Élysée Palace after a few decades at the latest!
In a similar situation, the turmoil in America comes from the Blacks, Puerto Ricans and Hispanics, as well as left-axis or anti-capitalist frequencies that are increasing among the youth. Those representing the opposite axis of this political and social stance are the new right-wing, “loud-conservative” cowboys summarized as “Rednecks” who flooded the streets during the Capitol Hill raid in Washington D.C.!
In America, the media watched by these two very different undercurrents, are completely different from each other; for example, CNN or FOX-News… And there is almost no follow up of each other's media among these groups! Social media also contributes heavily to this big rift. For example, groups that make internet searches with "Black Lives Matter" are then always provided with data and results in this particular specific direction! As a result of this, decisions of the House of Representatives or Congress, supported by both parties in the United States, declined significantly. The polarization in the masses began to look like that of the hardcore football hooligans. The regions dominated by the white squires, also defined as the "Sun Belt" states in America, do not have much intersection with the cosmopolitan eastern or western metropolitan cities.
Similarly, in France, far-right “Le Penists” who propagate racism and groups close to North African/Islamist frequencies in the suburbs do not have a chance to meet! Economic difficulties and social discrepancies fuel these divisions. The point where France and America differ, is that when France grants its immigrants citizenship rights, it accepts them as "French" and regards them as equal; America, on the other hand, takes the issue as "minority rights" and separates the different structures within these groups. For example, it may be required by law to employ certain percentages of ethnic minorities within public institutions with quotas adjusted to these minorities!
Therefore, in the changing social climate, these rigid stances fuel each other, they become more severe. Meanwhile, thanks to (or because of) the media and social media, those with the lowest income trying to earn their bread and the right to live versus those who take caviar baths in golden palaces allegedly meet in the same dream, but by experiencing and creating terrible disappointments!
FACING YOUR OWN INNER-BEAST
I have lived for years in these tense ethnicity fueled tension points or other frequencies of both France and the USA; I know both from within. I watched with on-site observations of their changing demographics, gang wars, student riots and university strikes, families' difficulties of staying alive and well without getting involved in crime!
Like the accelerated videos giving us fleeting images of the cities, life now flows at a similar terrifying speed. By constantly reading the stories of becoming a dollar billionaire, which they see as “success stories”, people are becoming more struggling in their own desperation. The famous slogan of a sports company is "one life, live it", unfortunately corresponds now more to another slogan born from within the ghettos "one life and we missed it" in real life! As this increases the disappointment, the reckoning that gushes from the traces left by slaves, races and colonies that have been exploited for centuries, now take this confrontation to "here and now" in an existential way.
Thus, we arrive at a schizophrenic environment where burning everything down is permissible and historically and ethically normalized. Evacuated cities, tens of thousands of stores that have been raided and looted, destroyed streets, like the footage we see in science fiction movies… Social textures create their own inside grown beasts from their guts like in the movie “Alien”. The gap between politics and real life is rapidly built up in the environments that create blood enemies, not blood brothers. The sociological tsunami, which reaches almost 200 meters in the apocalyptic environment, hits societies in their faces and catches them in their centuries-old sleep. Thus, the "American Dream” of privilege ends.
As a result, the American dream, democracy and the power segregation are shattering. The realities of war, poverty and hunger spread by the West to the rest of the world and the bragging of democracy
There is also another huge wound in the face of the United States and some of its allies like England and Poland: That is the terrible drama caused by the Iraqi War launched under the Bush Presidency in 2003. Supposedly going to the Middle-East again in order to “look for weapons of mass destruction” and coming back after few years having killed 1,5 million humans, will forever stay as a shame, at least for all the responsible politicians of the Bush administration alongside the President. Also history will never forget the unacceptable so-called “apologetic” behaviors of Bush after the damage was done, in spite of all the international warnings, the heavy remorse declared by Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair, when they dared saying that “they had received misleading intelligence” that lead to this genocide like mass killing of the Iraqi people. The English Labor Party carrying that shame also, will never really be pardoned by the conscience of the democratic people of the earth. In other words, the “West” supposedly the cradle of democracy, civilization and advancement, remains also still unfortunately the dark side of humanity, always ready to spit out its own monstrous face, whenever their large interest is at stake… These are much more recent-history reminders without going into the colonial periods and earlier massacres…
This new face of the West will never be the same as before. 1963 marks the terrible turn of cards with the assassination of JFK, who would have led the USA into completely a much more peaceful horizons. Seeing in horror at what dangerous waters his country was drawn into, John F. Kennedy was executed by American fascism in front of his own people in Dallas, when he dared to go on a total war against the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, the big capitalists, the war industry and the mafia at the same time! He acted just like a social democratic leader. But in the eyes of the most fascist centers of the US-regime, he was labelled as a "secret communist". JFK had to pay for these efforts with his life. Since then, the US has tried to shape the world according to its own interests, from Vietnam to Latin America, from Iraq to the entire Middle East, and this has been going on for almost 60 years!
Capitalism, with its brutal crushing and reckless attitude, seeks methods of "getting rid of the excess of human beings" counted now with several billions, beyond the desire to search for cheap labor force either in migrants or in the dark sides of the moon in the Far East. Will the emerging Covid-19 surprise or the robots provide them with more relief in the mid-term; who is really running after what, we will have to stay alive to check all that!
In this 3rd millennium where the Silicon Valley has succeeded in devouring and fitting in digital number all by itself, a considerable slice of the world’s wealth for the Tycoon stars of that environment, after all maybe all these “regimes”, “congresses”, “senate” or all the panicky scenarios of struggling with Covid-19, these supposedly current efforts to protect personal data and private lives as well as the so often talked about protection shields for “freedom of thought”, all of the above will rather and up looking like meager scenes that are the wasted out-takes of an old documentary film…
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