US administration’s human rights promises
THE United States has just had another Independence Day holiday. But to many Americans, even those fancy fireworks and buzzing parades cannot set them free from the pandemic pain nor undo their disappointment over Washington’s broken promises.
The US administration announced a goal on May 4 of getting 70 percent of American adults to receive at least one COVID-19 vaccine shot by July 4. Now two months have passed, and the goal fell through, not surprisingly.
In fact, the brag this time about building a “summer of freedom” was not the only blank check some US politicians have written for their fellow Americans. Nearly 245 years after the country proudly pronounced its Declaration of Independence, the “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal” has been forgotten, and even abandoned, by those politicians.
Slightly better than the previous administration’s arrogance and ignorance in the anti-pandemic response, the current one has nevertheless turned a blind eye to the deep-rooted COVID-19 racial and ethnic disparities at home. At present, there are still an average of 257 Americans dying every single day of the disease, with the death rate among indigenous people and ethnic minority groups far higher than their white peers.
And the vaccination gap is also wide between different communities, with adults aged 18 to 24, as well as nonHispanic Black adults and those with less education, no insurance and lower household incomes having the lowest reported vaccination coverage.
In fact, a Politico article published in late June found that Hispanic communities, the most eager ones to get the doses, registered a first dose vaccination rate 6 percent lower than that of whites, as they fear for losing jobs, failing to afford costly medical bills, and lacking good transportation.
While there is little hope for the world’s sole superpower to secure independence from COVID-19 in the near future, there is still lesser, if any, hope for the 124 people still buried under the debris of the partially collapsed condominium in Florida to survive the tragedy.
More than 10 days have passed since the incident took place, and yet the US politicians have displayed unmistakable indifference to the lives of their fellow Americans.
Those trapped in the rubble had to wait for 16 hours before the local government completed all the paperwork required to bring response teams to the site. The “archaeological” rescue method of slowly passing bricks, with which nobody has been so far pulled alive, was praised as “incredible” by the federal government. And in terms of seeking responsibility for the incident, the federal and local governments have turned to the old scapegoating game again.
Please do remember those frozen to death in February in the roaring blizzards in Texas, those Asian Americans violently bullied during the pandemic, those African Americans killed by police, and those Native Americans regularly exposed to toxic pollutants.
Getting to the bottom, it is not hard to find that the blood and tears are coming out of America’s corrupted governing system: The political ideal of US founding fathers that the government should
exist to serve the people is no longer the code of conduct for modern US politicians. Instead, bitter partisanship and personal interests have become their top concerns in office.
Just as an opinion article by The Atlantic pointed out last November, “the spirit necessary to make the US system work is draining away.”
And that explains why those selfserving politicians pay no attention to the human rights atrocities in their own country, and show little interest in addressing such entrenched domestic problems as racial discrimination, gun violence, income gap and bureaucratic inefficiency.
“All men ... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” said the 1776 Declaration. But have such rights promised by US founding fathers been truly secured for all Americans?
Although some forms of celebrations might continue in the US, politicians there should really take the time to think it over.