Collapsing Miami building in US kills one after explosion, 99 missing
Rescuers are desperately searching for any survivors trapped in the rubble of a collapsed 12-storey residential building north of Miami. At least one person has been killed and 99 are still missing, officials say. As families desperately wait for news, search teams have been working around the clock and have...
‘Just America’ is a narrative of young and educated citizens that continually misreads Blacks, Latinos
There are too many things that Just America can’t talk about for the narrative to get at the hardest problems. It can’t talk about the complex causes of poverty. Structural racism – ongoing disadvantages that Black people suffer as a result of policies and institutions over the centuries – is...
Venus: Scientists renew interest in Earth’s evil twin to solve planet’s biggest mysteries
After years of waiting, an armada of spacecraft are headed to Venus. US scientists were thrilled earlier this month when NASA approved not one, but two new missions to our closest planetary neighbour. Now, Europe has followed suit and approved its own mission. The explorations raise the prospect that major...
Fractured dream: From Real America to Free America, Just America then Smart America
In 2014, American character changed. A large and influential generation came of age in the shadow of accumulating failures by the ruling class – especially by business and foreign-policy elites. This new generation had little faith in ideas that previous ones were raised on: All men are created equal. Work...
Making of Trump: He’d reptilian genius for intuiting the emotions of Real America
When Donald Trump ran for president, the party of Free America collapsed into its own hollowness. The mass of Republicans were not free-traders who wanted corporate taxes zeroed out. They wanted government to do things that benefited them – not the undeserving classes below and above them. Party elites were...
Real America’s attitude toward the rest of the world is isolationist, hostile to humanitarianism
From its beginnings, Real America has also been religious and in a particular way: evangelical and fundamentalist, hostile to modern ideas and intellectual authority. The truth will enter every simple heart and it doesn’t come in shades of grey. “If we have to give up either religion or education, we...
Espionage: The AN0M fake secure chat app may have been too clever for its own good
In April 1943, Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was killed when the US Air Force shot down the plane carrying him to Balalae Airfield in the Solomon Islands. The attack was made possible by the USA cracking Japanese codes and decrypting a message that revealed Yamamoto’s flight plan would just take...
National loyalty: Real America has always been a country of white people
As a national narrative, Smart America has a tenuous sense of the nation. Smart America doesn’t hate America, which has been so good to the meritocrats. Smart Americans believe in institutions and they support American leadership of military alliances and international organisations. But Smart Americans are uneasy with patriotism. It’s...
In Smart America, new economy replaced ‘outmoded ideologies’ with dazzling technologies
Winners in Smart America have lost the capacity and the need for a national identity, which is why they can’t grasp its importance for others. Politically, Smart America came to be associated with the Democratic Party. This was not inevitable. If the party had refused to accept the closing of...
Free America always had an insurgent mindset, breaking institutions down, not building them up
The government, which did so little for ordinary Americans, was still the enemy, along with “governing elites.” But for the sinking working class, freedom lost whatever economic meaning it had once had. It was a matter of personal dignity, identity. Members of this class began to see trespassers everywhere and...
