Trump’s Ticking Time Bomb: Is America Teetering on the Brink of Chaos Once More

Is America succumbing to insanity again? The history of the country shows: This has been true many times. Our columnist about a country he has long admired.

America came early in my life. America was the GIs who listened to the Eastern Bloc on Europe’s largest radar station at Hof. America was the CIA agent who lived in the flat in our house and he had a habit of keeping a glass of whiskey in the driver’s compartment of his car so he wouldn’t die of thirst on the long seven minute drive home.

I was there for the first time in 1975. From Sioux City, Iowa, where my boyfriend lived, I took the Greyhound bus to Denver, rented a car, drove up to the Rocky Mountains and snow skied this unique fine powder. To this day I prefer Chicago to New York.

America meant safety in my life. Had I been born five kilometers further east, I would have grown up in the GDR. But America was also this vastness, this very impressive nature. And when I later went to Harvard, I decided that after my rebirth, I would study in these hallowed halls with the brightest teachers in the world.

Our television was not yet connected when, three weeks earlier, I came in as a “Spiegel” reporter and experienced 9/11 and then a bout of hysteria that only America can enjoy so deeply. This was followed by: Restriction of fundamental rights. Looking for Arab looking Americans. Guantanamo.

Throughout its history, America has repeatedly succumbed to upheavals that even those who sympathize with this country cannot understand. The lynching of the Ku Klux Clan deep into the 1960s. The hunt for communists, who were rarely communists, in the McCarthy years. The false evidence to pull Saddam Hussein out of a hole in the ground. And now Donald Trump.

I wonder when this division of a civil war-ready America into two camps really began. The first signs appeared under George W. Bush, who gave the neocons free rein. Among the neocons, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney (who has a very good movie dedicated to him) stood out. They were aggressive nationalists, wanting to overthrow dictatorial regimes and democratize the world. They succeeded in South Korea and the Philippines, but not in Iraq, with the well-known consequences for Syria and the entire Middle East.

Then Barack Obama had the decisive impact. The white underclass went mad because a black president had dared to win two elections. Instead of America reconciling, America fell apart. The result was the surprise victory of Donald Trump in 2016. The result of his smear campaigns was the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, held by his most ardent supporters, who called themselves, among other things, “Proud Boys”.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, America will decide if it wants to continue enjoying the bout of madness or pull the ripcord. Is the country turning around like it did with McCarthy, who had four years of freedom from fools? Or will white America turn back the clock and reverse the situation? And what happens if Kamala Harris wins by a wide margin and Trump calls on the Proud Boys and other right-wing armed groups to rig the election?

America was founded on July 4, 1776, almost 250 years ago. No other country has enriched the world more. Without America, the two world wars of the 20th century would have ended differently. Nothing compares historically to this vast country in terms of cultural and political influence. He acted big and made big mistakes. There is a lot to hate about America. The reasons to admire her have diminished.

Of course, I would prefer Kamala Harris to be president. Because my America would no longer be my America if things happened, as they seem to be happening, and Donald Trump returned to the positions of control of the great power.