I found life in Cambodia rife with contradictions. Peasants who became millionaires, often at the expense of other peasants. Upscale, high-end Japanese malls and local village markets exist side-by-side and all are full of shoppers. Gated mansions overlook dirt streets and layers of garbage. Hun Sen, Cambodia’s strong man, is a heinous maniacal dictator in power since the UN elections of 1993—elections I helped to organize and run.
Now I find America the same, or maybe worse. People reasonably well off and richer have not seen their fortunes eroded by the Trump presidency. Because of COVID 19, the working poor are a little better off because of additions to welfare benefits. Nevertheless, the so-called middle class is devastated and so are those in deep poverty deprived of social services and access.
I’m reminded of a X-Men movie where the president is allowing drug users to be annihilated by a monstrous plot of a drug queen to get drugs legalized so she could return to normal society. She was holed-up in a grotesque compound in Cambodia with Elton John. Rather than give in to her demands, he encouraged her to carry out her diabolical plans in hopes of ridding society of undesirables. I can imagine Trump seeing the pandemic as a vehicle to destroy groups hostile to his presidency since many of those same groups are those most vulnerable to the virus.
Now RBG is dead and the crazy coalition between the wealthy without a moral compass and the religious right will sacrifice any common sense or decency to keep Trump in office and another conservative appointee to the Supreme Court. Too far out … a crazy conspiracy theory. Maybe
Carole J. Garrison 