Tag Archives: USA

Here we go again…

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So we’re 8 days in, and the new president in the world’s «leading democracy» has started his campaign to make his country great. Or great again, according to his slogan.

It’s true that the USA was one held up as an example to the rest of the free world, but now we seem to be better moving along without them. Or we should use them as a text book example of how NOT to do things.

First, you don’t make any country great by degrading at least half its population as secondary citizens. That goes for both women, LGBTQIA+ and immigrants. You can debate all you want immigrants’ rights to be there, but they are still human beings, and not all the other things Trump is calling them. (And, a friendly reminder that all of your ancestors were once immigrants, but that seems to have slipped your memory.)

As for women, we have the right to control our own bodies, and our own reproductive rights. The conservatives push (and victory in many states) for a total ban on abortions, are not going to eliminate abortions, but instead it will cause thousands of women to die from unsafe abortions and lack of proper healthcare. The same will follow with the re-enactment of the GAG-rule, in other parts of the world. Why is it that American conservative Christians dictate the healthcare given to women, both in their own country, and elsewhere? But we get it, it’s more important to be against abortion at all costs, than taking into consideration that you get blood on your hands through all the unnecessary deaths following from unsafe abortions, refusal of care, or total lack of care due to your policies.

Second, you don’t make a country great by bullying others to obey your petty wishes. I’m sorry, but you have again elected a president that behaves like a spoiled child, and who bullies and intimidates anyone standing in his way. It has nothing to do with the interest of Americans in general, it has to do with his ego.

Third, you don’t make your country great by denying climate change, pulling out of international agreements, and rolling back on the development of green technology and industries. Instead of seeing this as a threat, you should see it as new opportunities and new jobs.

Fourth, you don’t make your country great by removing the pages of the history books that don’t please you and your narrative. You could rather do with an update of your history books, and throw in some real geography at the same time.

Fifth, you don’t make your country great by increasing the social and economic differences. On the contrary, that’s a good recepie for social unrest and violence, but it is perhaps what the president wants? I mean, Marxist equality politics, or as we call it in Scandinavia and Europe, redistribution and well-fare, are really scary stuff! Not sure how we survive on the European side of the Atlantic, with our public funded educational system, public health care and so on.

Sixth, you don’t make your country great, or even make it look great, when your president throws a tantrum each time someone disagrees with him, whether it’s a journalist or a prime minister of another country or someone else. It actually makes it look like you’re run by an idiot.

Your president keeps saying «make America great again», but I don’t know how it’s going to work, both for the above mentioned facts, and then because America was never really that great. You don’t have to dive deep into history, to see all the injustice and bullying the USA has been doing over the years. Both within your own country, and abroad.

The only thing that can make the US great again, is that you elect responsible politicians at all levels, that are more interested in the well-fare of every citizen in your country, and not only interested in clinging to their power and generous pay-checks, actually paid for by the tax payers at the bottom of the hierarchy…

The reason I even bother to write this, is that, unfortunately, the US has too much influence on the global scene, which means US politics actually affects people outside the US. I also feel incredibly sorry for all Americans that didn’t vote for Trump, and I hope you will unite and fight back (with all means except violence!) and that you (and the rest of us) will manage to create a better world in the future.

What should we learn from the US elections?

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I will leave to other analysts and journalists to dissect the American elections, and what we might expect from it. I would rather like to reflect a bit on what we on the other side of the Atlantic, who doesn’t like Trump and his counterparts, can do as to not end up in the same mess.

First of all, I think that a big part of the electorate on this side of the Atlantic as well, is fed up with status quo. No matter the politicians we elect, few things seem to change. One of the reasons might be that political parties that used to speak on behalf of the working class, no longer do that. Instead they have moved towards the centre or even to the right, in desperate attempts to win back voters who have moved towards the extremes over the past ten years or more.

One example is the Norwegian Labour party, whose economic politics now are hard to distinguish from the Conservatives. Most people with normal salaries have small benefits of their tax cuts, while the better fortunate end up with larger tax cuts. It doesn’t seem fair for most people.

Rich people makes lots of fuzz about the taxes they have to pay, and several Norwegian millionaires have fled the country in recent years, taking their money with them. My question is, why should the normal working class pay their taxes with a smile, contributing to the common health- and education system, among other things, when the most fortunate ones find every possible loop hole to avoid paying taxes, and then complain about every cent they “so generously” contribute? Until it gets unbearable for them… Poor rich people…

We see the same in other countries, where corporations and rich people seem to have priority over normal people. Politicians are worried about the level of national and international tests comparing the results of their students, while at the same time never allocating enough money to uphold good schools with good teachers. Our kids suffer from lack of resources, both economically and due to lack of staff. Absent teachers are not replaced, causing at times big delays in the courses. Our children are our future, it’s actually not just a fancy slogan. How are they going to proceed if they don’t even get a good basic education?

Who are going to take care of the elder population, if no-one in the end qualifies for medical and nursing studies? Or the next generations, if the quality of the teachers are in free fall? Who would even like to work in the public sector if the salaries are no longer sustainable?

The rich will always manage, as they can afford to send their children to private schools. But what about the rest? This is really the recipe for even bigger socio-economic differences.

The endless hunt for more profits and higher economic growth are going to kill us in more than one way. Moving all production to low-cost countries might have seemed as a good idea at one point, but it also took away lots of jobs, and with that people’s wages. If people don’t earn money, have can they consume anything? Those who really benefitted from this are the owners and shareholders of the multinationals. They are lining their pockets, while their employees barely make a minimum to survive. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. And the impression left with the masses, are that most politicians are in the pockets of the multinationals, in one way or another. People don’t care of the BNP is growing, if they can affort less with what they are paid.

There are vital institutions in our societies that should not be run for profit, and health and education are two of them. Since the late 1980’s and the 1990’s, when neo-liberalism really entered the public sector, hospitals are no longer just providing health-care, they are also supposed to make money. We saw some disastrous effects of this during the Covid-19 pandemic. Saturated hospitals, all over the world, resulting in lock-down of the whole world for months. The cost of this, in terms of both lives and money were horrendous. And I’m sure we would have managed better if we had not in all these years before, cut down on the number of hospital beds, and got rid of national stocks of basic medical supplies. In stead, the world as a whole, were dependent on supplies from China. As soon as the supply-chain broke down, because factories were closed and movement strictly restricted, we all got confined in our own homes.

All the applause, and all the big words spoken about health-personnel being on the frontline, with the people working in our supermarkets (one of the few things left open), about how valuable they are to the functioning of society, and still we pay them nickels and dimes. We keep rushing patients through the hospitals, because it’s not cost-effective to keep them there.

Maternity wards in smaller places in Norway are closed, because they are not cost-effective. And that is in one of the richest countries in the world. At the same time, Norwegian women are encouraged to have more children! Where’s the logic?

Universities have much suffered from the same changes in financing. It’s more important to push through a bigger number of students, than to assure good quality. The students comes under more pressure, at the same time as their financing is not keeping up with living-costs. The more they have to work in addition to being full-time students, the less time they actually have to prepare their courses. Less time to prepare, worse results.

If politicians see higher levels of education in the population as a means to counter future challenges, they should act on it, not just talk.

Because, as we all know, we have a lot of challenges ahead of us, with an ageing population and climate changes. Instead of giving us plenty of bullshit about how we are going to save the world if we recycle our waste at home and drive electric cars, they should put more pressure on the real big polluters to clean up their mess. I don’t say that we as individuals should not do anything, but what you and I do alone is not going to make much of a difference. When we say that we all need to pull together here, it actually includes the big corporations, who are reluctant to do major investments in cleaner technology, because it means less profit for them.

And cleaning up in our own neighbourhood is not enough. It changes nothing if European factories pollute less, if in the end it means that there are even more factories in Asia polluting even more. All because we have become addicted to our high consumption. We want a lot of stuff, and we want it cheap, cheaper and cheapest. And why do we want the cheapest? Because our salaries are getting less worth every year. Indirectly we are told by our governments that we are less valuable than the multinationals with their focus on constant economic growth. It’s more important to keep the rich both rich and happy, than to ensure a decent living-standard for the majority.

If you are serious about saving the planet, make sure that people can actually afford to care about the planet. Because when they can barely manage to make ends meet, it’s more tempting to vote for someone who promise them more value for the money, than anything else. For them, what do they care happens to the planet in ten to twenty years, when they are not able to put food on the table for their kids today?

Our politicians have to realise at some point, that we demand action on behalf of the normal and poor people now, not the rich and super-rich. That we, the average people, don’t care about the shareholders of multinationals, because they have enough money already to support themselves in this life, and probably the next twenty as well. We are fed up of being down-prioritised, of being neglected or fed fancy slogans that in the end means nothing at all.

Extreme-right wing parties say they stand with “the normal” people, which is why they are coming to power in several countries. I don’t buy their rhetoric, though, and I certainly don’t like their views on immigrants and other minorities. But lots of people do, and this should have been a wake-up call long ago for other politicians more moderate, both left and right, but specially to the left.

Those who used to represent the working class, have instead turned into an elite, that moves further and further away from their original base.

When they, and the moderate parties at the centre and right, start to put people over profit, the voters might come back. I advise that they give it a shot before it’s too late, and we find ourselves under the rule of neo-fascism all over Europe.

What can we learn from the American election?

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Yes, I freely admit it. I was one of them who didn’t believe Trump would run off with the victory in this election. He was too much of a bully, a misogynist and not really consequent (except for criticizing Hillary to the detail). That there exist resistance against immigration in USA was neither shocking nor surprising. We have seen too much of the same in Europe the recent years.

Maybe the Americans are not ready for a female president yet? That was more surprising to me at first, but looking to whom she lost against, it’s a natural conclusion.

Because what is most shocking, is that one who evidently looks upon women as objects he can treat as he likes, one who is degrading women, invalids and immigrants to second rate people, still gets enough votes to embark on the position as the world’s most powerful president.

It is obvious that we are many who hasn’t understood what it is that is going on in the American population. Perhaps it is not so strange, because our impression of USA is shaped most of all by what (political) news that reach us, films and tv-series. They clearly tell us next to nothing about the average American everyday life of people in like the Mid-West. As a matter of fact we know hardly anything about the actual living conditions in the USA. Now and then we read about how people have two or three jobs to make ends meet, we read every so often about shootings and murders. But most of all are we fed with “happy” political news from the country where everything is supposedly possible, if you just dream hard enough about it, and films and tv-series where love conquers everything or where the hero always beats the bad guy. What we do know about USA is in other words very superficial.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be so overly surprised about the outcome of this election. At least not if we take a closer look to our “near surroundings”. If you dear take a dive into the comments section in the internet newspapers, you’ll soon realize it’s a rather “muddy business”. Females engaged in debate are told they should be gang raped and beaten the shit out of. And what they write about is not even controversial.

There’s a strong resent against immigration in the comment sections, to put it mildly. The view on women is shocking as we write 2016. I would have thought and hoped for, that these views were thrown out the window long time ago, but evidently we are many being proved wrong about this.

The day after, we clearly see that masses of voters, previously not mobilized, this time finally left their sofas to cast their vote. Masses of voters who long have found themselves overseen and neglected. This is something we should learn from, even in little Norway. Because even if the turnout of the election is higher in Norway than in USA, there’s still plenty of people out there who feels invisible and neglected by the establishment, and the despise against politicians is blooming as the apple trees in Norwegian gardens in May.

I do hope, that also the French political establishment, takes a lesson from this as we are soon to enter into the presidential election campaign here. Marine Le Penn was the first, French politician to congratulate Trump with his victory, honouring the American people for “taking their country back”. The contrast to the rather coldly congratulations from President Holland could not have been more clear.

Le Penn has renewed her inspiration in front of the 2017 elections, and I guess it’s needless to say that I fear she will rise to power.

The European political establishment has to put a finger in the ground, or better still, get grounded. They have to open their eyes and see what is actually going on out there in their own countries. They have to remove their well-polished shoes, and stroll around in the dust trod by normal people. They need to understand why the average man and woman is angry and frustrated.

There’s no use in hanging around in their empowered offices and corridors, fiddling with their ties and wonder about what went wrong. It’s no longer enough to make some visits to construction sites or factories, shake peoples’ hands and think you earned their vote.

Let the average man and woman scream out why they are angry and frustrated, and meet them wih constructive ideas in a language they get.

The rhetoric might be nasty for some time, but at least, words kill nobody.

It would be a shame if we didn’t take any lessons from the American election, but keep shutting our eyes and ears to what concerns most people. If we insist on continuing down that path, we risk ending up with political leaders (I hope at least) the majority of us would rather not see in office.

 

Hva kan vi lære av det amerikanske valgresultatet?

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Jada, jeg innrømmer det. Jeg var en av dem som ikke trodde Trump ville stikke av med seieren i dette valget. Til det var han for ubehøvlet, kvinnefiendtlig og for lite konsekvent (bortsett fra i å kritisere Hillary ned til minste detalj). At det finnes strømninger i USA som er motstandere av innvandring er ikke hverken sjokkerende eller overraskende. Til det har vi sett for mye av det samme i Europa de senere årene.

Kanskje er ikke amerikanerne modne for en kvinnelig president enda? Det er i så fall noe som i utgangspunktet overrasket meg, men som blir en naturlig slutning når man ser hvem hun tapte mot.

For det som sjokkerer mest, er at en som tydeligvis ser på kvinner som objekter han kan behandle som han vil, en som degraderer det kvinnelige kjønn, funksjonshemmede og immigranter til annenrangs mennesker, får nok stemmer til å innta posisjonen som verdens mektigste president.

Det er helt tydelig at vi er mange som ikke har forstått hva som rører seg i den amerikanske befolkningen. Og det er kanskje ikke så rart, for vårt inntrykk av USA formes jo selvfølgelig av det vi leser av politiske nyheter derfra, filmer og tv-serier. De forteller oss helt klart veldig lite om hvordan den gjennomsnittelige amerikaner i f eks Midtvesten lever. Vi vet faktisk forsvinnende lite om de faktiske forhold i USA. Nå og da leser vi om at folk har to og tre jobber for å få det til å gå rundt, vi leser til stadighet om skyteepisoder og drap. Men mest av alt fores vi med «lykkelige» politiske nyheter fra landet der alt visstnok går an hvis man bare drømmer hardt nok om det, og filmer og tv-serier der kjærligheten vinner til slutt eller der helten alltid overvinner skurken. Det vi vet om USA er med andre ord særdeles overflatisk.

Kanskje burde vi ikke være så overrasket over utfallet av valget. I alle fall ikke om vi tar en titt rundt i vårt eget «nærmiljø». Den som våger seg ned i kommentarfeltet i nettavisene vil fort se at det er mye grums som rører seg. Kvinnelige samfunnsdebattanter blir ønsket gjenvoldtatt og banket opp, og man skal ikke ha skrevet om veldig kontroversielle temaer for å få slike meldinger tilbake.

Det er en sterk skepsis til innvandring i disse kommentarfeltene, for å si det mildt. Kvinnesynet som kommer til overflaten er sjokkerende lesning i 2016. Jeg hadde trodd og håpet at et slikt kvinnesyn for lengst var havnet på skraphaugen, men vi er mange som har tatt skammelig feil der.

Dagen derpå ser vi tydelig at en tidligere umobilisert velgermasse denne gangen forlot sofaen og gikk for å stemme. En velgermasse som lenge har følt seg oversett og neglisjert. Dette er noe vi bør ta lærdom av, selv i lille Norge. For selv om valgoppslutningen i Norge er bedre enn den amerikanske, så finnes det mange mennesker der ute som føler seg oversett og neglisjert av dem som styrer, og politikerforakten blomstrer som epletrærne i norske hager i mai.

Også i Frankrike håper jeg virkelig det politiske establissement tar lærdom av dette når vi snart går inn i presidentvalgkampen her. Marine Le Penn var den første franske politiker til å gratulere Trump med seieren, og det var en ubetinget hyllest til det amerikanske folket som «nå har tatt sitt land tilbake». Sånn sett kunne ikke kontrasten til Hollandes heller kjølige gratulasjon vært tydeligere.

Le Penn har fått fornyet inspirasjon i forkant av valget i 2017, og jeg tror ikke jeg trenger å si at jeg er engstelig for at hun skal komme til makten.

Topp-politikere Europa over må nå stikke fingeren i jorda, eller aller helst faktisk komme seg ned på bakken. De må åpne øynene og se hva som faktisk rører seg blant folk. De må ta av seg lakkskoene og tråkke rundt i støvet som vanlige folk tråkker i, forstå hvorfor mannen i gata er sint og frustrert.

Det nytter ikke lenger å sitte i maktens korridorer og tvinne sitt slips og lure på hva som gikk galt. Det holder ikke lenger å besøke noen byggeplasser og ta arbeiderne der i hånda, og tro at det gjør at de stemmer på deg.

La mannen og kvinnen i gata få rope høyt ut hvorfor de er frustrert, og kom dem i møte med kontruktive forslag, fremlagt på et språk de forstår.

Det kan bli hard retorikk en periode, men ord dreper i alle fall ingen.

Det er for galt om vi ikke skal lære noe av det amerikanske valget, men fortsetter å holde oss for øyne og ører for hva som faktisk opptar folk flest. For da ender vi selv snart opp med statsledere som (håper jeg i alle fall) de fleste av oss innerst inne ikke vil se ved makten.