Siege of Capitol Hill: The weathered shoe is now on the other foot.
GENEVA HAMILTON
DEAR United States Government,
The wheel is round.
Sincerely
The Third World
Recently, a marauding mob of Americans rejected the outcome of a democratic election and forcefully tried to ensure the power of an outgoing president who meets the criteria of an everyday dictator.
Although this narrative is the foundation of modern history for the third world, this weathered shoe is now on the other foot; if not firmly planted in the bottom of the US government, that grand global power that believes it controls the world.
Yes indeed, the wheel turned this week as a sovereign government saw the danger its own people can pose to democracy.
The storming of the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob has left most of the American government in bipartisan horror. After all, what could be scarier than an unpredictable group thrusting themselves in the affairs of democracy?
The third world can’t help but feel underwhelmed by these recent events. After all, this is simply Americans doing what Americans do: a timeless pastime to reject the results of a democratic election in favour of a corrupted leader, simply because they feel they stand to benefit under his dictatorship.
The Cold War saw the Americans successfully destabilise governments and establish authoritarian regimes in Argentina, Brazil, British Guiana, Bolivia, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Uruguay… and that’s just in Central and South America. It was only two years ago that America was rejecting the results of the presidential election in Venezuela.
Economic interests saw the USA hold off sanctions against the Apartheid government in South Africa until the last minute because being anti-communism in the 1970’s seemed to absolve the Apartheid government of their atrocities in the eyes of the Americans. It was US funding that gave the morally corrupt Jonas Savimbi the means he needed to launch the terror he inflicted on Angola in his attempts to rule the country. It was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) orchestrated coup d’état that placed the despotic Mobutu Sese Seko in control of the Congo in 1965, the start of his 32 year dictatorship.
And needless to say, the Americans are insatiable when it comes to taking the liberty of involving themselves in the Middle East, often subjugating many Middle Eastern countries to the same historical narrative they leave everywhere they go. The CIA overthrew Iran’s democracy in four days in 1953 when a coup d’état, sanctioned by the US and UK governments, was orchestrated to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, in favour of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi — the last Shah of Iran— who ruled for 25 years until the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
The Americans have meddled in the affairs of different countries of every continent and in all corners of the world…however, the third world has borne the consequences of the Americans succeeding in placing “their man” in power. US-backed dictators have left desolation and ruin in their wake; in their lifelong terms, they’ve not only robbed their countries of mineral and monetary wealth… but also of socio-economic development and a fruitful future for the countries, it’s people, and their continents.
American meddling has now flipped on the US government. The third world isn’t surprised, and the US government shouldn’t be either. In fact, they should consider themselves lucky at the end of this: their despot could not establish his lifelong dictatorship this time.
