Editor's note: The G7 Summit is underway in Hiroshima, Japan. What are the challenges facing the bloc? How has the U.S. government responded to them? In this episode of Reality Check, CGTN Special Commentator Lee Camp shared his thoughts on the power imbalance in the G7 and the growing inequality in the American society.
The G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan – where better for my home country, the U.S., to get together with some other nations and talk about how important it is to create a cold war with China – than the location where the U.S. killed over 100,000 people, dropping a bomb that totally didn't need to be dropped. I suppose it fits with the ongoing theme of U.S. foreign policy "Drastic and always Unnecessary."
The G7, of course, consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the U.S. Although that sounds like a formidable list of countries, let's think about it for a minute. If you take the U.S. out of the equation, the other six countries' GDPs barely add up to the same as China's alone. I mean Canada and Italy each have a gross domestic product of only $2 trillion. That's what Jeff Bezos spends on a nice steak dinner.
(L to R) European Council President Charles Michel, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, U.S. President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen pose for a family photo as they pay a visit to Itsukushima Shrine on Miyajima island, near Hiroshima, Japan, during the G7 Summit Leaders' Meeting, May 19, 2023. /CFP
Point being – The G7 is not really a group of seven important countries. It's the U.S. and six vassal states asking if they can shine America's shoes. The third-largest economy in that group is Germany, a country the U.S. recently attacked by blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline. I know, they claim they didn't do it, but Charles Manson said the same thing.
But on top of that, the U.S., my beloved home country, is not exactly seeing good times right now. 64 percent of Americans say they have trouble affording basic necessities. Most of our cities have tap water filled with lead, arsenic and other toxic chemicals. Our president looks like an amateur taxidermy job gone awry, and we're one of the only developed countries where the life expectancy is going down. I'm not a scientist, but maybe the arsenic water is not helping that number.
Dangerous levels of arsenic were found in a New York City Public Housing Authority (NYCHA) complex, leaving thousands of affected residents without safe tap water in New York, United States, September 7, 2022. /CFP
Then as a final slap to the face of all of us, while average Americans suffer, the ruling class sends $100 billion to Ukraine.
Apparently, my government thinks the answer to our declining empire is to create unprecedented restrictions on Chinese trade. This is the classic redirect.
Americans are struggling because the richest people in our country have extracted all of the wealth and left us nothing. You can't even find a penny on the ground nowadays. If you do, someone from the Joe Biden administration will jump out of the bushes, grabs it, and says "We're sending this to Ukraine.”
Our inequality levels are beyond imagination. Yet both Biden and Donald Trump have responded in the same exact way – by going, "Look! It's China that did it. What's over there? It's China. It's China's fault! What's that in the sky? It's a balloon made by China!"
One of the main targets of U.S. anger is China's semiconductor and microchip production. This is because the U.S. knows microchips are in everything. There are microchips in our walls, our kitchen appliances, our Roombas, our weapons, our toys – both child and adult toys. We've quickly gotten to a point that the world doesn't function without these microchips.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during the groundbreaking of the new Intel semiconductor plant in Johnstown, Ohio, United States, September 9, 2022. /CFP
Here's an idea though: instead of the new cold war against China – it's an idea, just spit ball, just throwing stuff out there – What if instead of trying to go in each other's throats, we tried working together? I know it's crazy, it just came to me, but just about everything positive ever done in this world is done with cooperation.
Point is – if the U.S. ruling class were to behave like adults, we would all want to cooperate and work together to create a technologically advanced world that benefits us all. We could use our technology to save the environment and defend the planet that is our only home. But instead, the U.S. is focused on "great power competition," trying to maintain hegemony and exploitation even at the cost of the future of humanity.
But what do I know? I'm just the most censored comedian in America. Maybe they wouldn't censor me if I stopped saying that one dangerous word so much – "cooperation."
Script editors: Lu Xiaoyi, She Ziyi
Video editor: Feng Ran
Cover image designers: Li Jingjie, Liu Shaozhen
Producers: Bi Jianlu, Zhang Peijin, Wang Xinyan
Chief editor: Li Shou'en
Supervisors: Ma Jing, Liu Ge, Ge Jing
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