Dallas shootings show that the US is in deep trouble. And no-one can fix it

America is in the grip of madness. The guns are out. Black Americans, asserting their right to life in the face of almost daily shootings of their young men by the police, have had enough. It is not an exaggeration to say that, with a black President in the White House, Black Power is back on the agenda. While white Americans convulse over whether to elect Donald Trump – a monster in the making – or his likely nemesis Hillary Clinton, who promises only the continuity of nothing in particular, the central truth is that the nation is in crisis. The list of things about which nothing can done grows longer by the day. Only if they are rich, gay, bisexual or of indeterminate gender have the lives of citizens of the world’s richest and most powerful nation improved significantly in the 21st century.

The violence in Dallas overnight – with the appalling murder of five police officers – is unusual only in that it has been so long coming.

If you are a black man under the age of 40, you would be well advised to stay away from the police in just about every state in the Union. Of the 1,134 people shot dead by officers in 2015, one out of three were black, although African-Americans make up less than 13 per cent of the population. One out of every 65 black men aged between 15 and 24 who died last year in the U.S. were shot by the police.

There is nothing to be done about this. Yesterday’s shootings of police by black snipers in Dallas is proof, if proof were needed, of the depth of anger and frustration felt in the face of an unending cull. Just about every politician of note, from the President downwards, has demanded that police forces should exercise restraint in their treatment of young black men. Police chiefs have publicly joined in the clamour. But it is empty rhetoric. The slaughter continues unabated.

The Dallas shootings followed what was in fact a typical week elsewhere. On Monday a black father of five who may or may not have threatened violence in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was tasered, pinned face-down on the street and then shot six times by officers. Two days later, in Minnesota, another black man was shot dead in his car by an officer while reaching for his ID and drivers license. Both incidents were videoed, as have been a number of others in the recent past. Black Americans are outraged. White liberals are embarrassed. But nothing changes. The manifest injustice of what takes place day after day is, in effect, accepted as just one of those things.

The easy availability of guns is, of course, part of the problem. More than 13,000 people were shot dead in the U.S. in 2015. Some 27,000 were wounded, many of them seriously. If the 19,000 Americans who committed suicide by blowing their brains out are added, the grand total exceeds 33,000, equivalent to the population of Tonbridge in the UK.

The police were among the most active shooters, but, in addition to gangland killings and one-off murders, there were 372 mass shootings (defined as incidents in which at least four people are killed), including 64 that took place in schools and colleges across the country.

There is nothing to be done about this. President Obama has tried several times to enforce change. Congress, taking its instructions from the National Rifle Association, representing the gunmakers, has steadfastly refused to act. Moreover, a recent poll for ABC Television and the Washington Post showed that the NRA, by and large, has the support of the people. More Americans favoured legislation protecting gun ownership than laws which would impose additional controls. A majority (53% to 45%) even opposed a ban on automatic assault weapons, the madman’s gun of choice.

But not all of the stasis in the US is rooted in guns and race. A sense of injustice is widespread and spreading wider by the day.

Just about everybody in American politics, including, absurdly, Donald Trump, is agreed that the nation, in terms of its distribution of wealth, is edging in a Third World direction. The 1 per cent are rich. The 0.1 per cent are fabulously rich. It is estimated that there are 535 billionaires in the U.S. in 2016 – a total exceeded only by China (568), with three times the population and, via its Communist central planners, zero regard for inequality.

At the same time, the so-called middle class (basically anyone with a full-time job) is struggling. Millions of Americans employed in offices, stores, manufacturing and construction have not had a pay rise in years. Those without proper jobs, such as supermarket and fast-food workers, bar staff and “security guards” (a burgeoning industry) – are often not even paid the minimum wage, which is illegal but increasingly the norm. At the bottom, those without work of any kind have to depend on charity and food stamps – the later denounced by Republicans as pandering. Even after Obama’s half-hearted reform of healthcare, some 30 per cent of Americans still cannot afford to visit their doctor or pay for necessary surgery.

But there is nothing to be done about this. In 1999, Bill Clinton rang out the old century by repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, a law which since its passage after the Great Depression had separated the straightforward retail divisions of banks and securities firms from the casino craziness that precipitated the Wall Street Crash.

Bankers were delighted. They cashed in with (as it turned out) total impunity, thus bringing about the 2008 collapse that, spreading from New York, soon engulfed much of the Western World. Everyone knew that Something Must Be Done. No one, from Obama down, did anything much. The system extracted the money it needed from taxpayers to ensure the necessary correction, then began again exactly as before.

The gulf between rich and poor in America is now a chasm. Trump know this (and has profited from it); Obama knows it; Congress knows it; Wall Street knows it. Bernie Sanders based his campaign on it, only to be trounced by Hillary Clinton, a friend and ally of those who, when she was First lady, urged her husband to consign Glass-Steagall to history.

I could go on. There is nothing to be done about cheap oil in America. As far as most Americans are concerned, climate change is a myth and “gas” at $2.50 a gallon was written into the Constitution by the Founders, all of whom drove SUVs. Nor is there anything to be done about the ludicrous frequency of federal elections – with the House of Representatives up for grabs every two years – or about the duration of Presidential campaigns, or about the shameless gerrymandering of Congressional districts that makes it almost impossible for Democrats to secure a majority. The Founders, in between drinking, playing cards and fighting duels, laid down the rules in 1787, and there’s an end to it. Hardly anyone asks the questions, never mind providing the answers.

But you get my point. America may be a democracy. Just don’t make the mistake of believing that government of the people by the people and for the people has anything to do with change.