Afrasianet - The New York Times reviewed in a sharp and anxious tone a year into U.S. President Donald Trump's second term, warning that the United States is at a watershed moment and that the time to act against authoritarianism is now "still possible."
She began her article in the New York Times with a seemingly simple but revealing remark: her friends abroad follow the news of the United States with dismay and fear, and some of them ask her about her personal safety. She meets this with apparent indifference, not because she does not see the danger but because Americans are "used to shock," as she puts it.
Internal transformation
What was terrifying a year ago is now passing news, she said, painting a bleak picture of the country's transformation with Trump, saying "we have become a country building concentration camps" with little debate, referring to Trump's anti-immigration campaigns.
What has happened in one year cannot be seen as simply a continuation of a previous pattern, but a dangerous shift towards a radically different model
The article stopped at the incident of the killing of US citizen Renee Good in the state of Minneapolis by a member of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, stressing that what is worrying is not only the crime, but the Trump administration's justification for it, and the president's defense of the agent who fired the shot.
This could suggest that protest could be punishable by the death penalty under Trump.
It highlighted what it considers an organized attack on universities and higher education institutions, by drying up funding for scientific research, undermining the independence of universities, and targeting museums and cultural institutions.
These measures are carried out openly through executive orders and official letters, with little resistance, she said, adding that "we are making ourselves more stupid" as destroying knowledge is one of the quickest ways to weaken any society.
"A ruler obsessed with grandeur"
On the foreign policy front, the United States has become unequivocally violating international law by repeatedly bombing countries, carrying out political assassinations, threatening its allies before its adversaries, and adopting an explicitly expansionist imperial rhetoric.
This scene is topped by a "grandfather-obsessed ruler" whom the author describes as "a hateful, ignorant and greedy person" who claims absolute power, while world leaders race to appease him with gifts and flattery.
Still, she stressed that the roots of American politics today are older than Trump himself. The United States has the largest prison system in the Western world, has a long record of violence against blacks, and Washington has long ignored international law and played the role of "the world's policeman."
'Unlikely to be postponed'
At the same time, however, the newspaper stressed that what happened in one year cannot be seen as a continuation of a previous pattern, but rather a dangerous shift towards a radically different model.
"The only way to prevent the walls from applying to us is to fill the space of freedom left before us with speech, writing, publishing, protesting and voting," she concluded, stressing that the matter "cannot be postponed."
