On March 13 local time, the State Department of the United States released its 2018 country reports on human rights practices, continued pointing fingers at and slandering human rights situations in over 190 countries, while blindly ignoring its own serious human rights problems. If one takes a glimpse into the human rights situation of the United States in 2018, it will not be difficult to find that the United States government, a self-styled "human rights defender," has a human rights record which is flawed and lackluster, and the double standards of human rights it pursues are obvious.

 

-- Gun violence poses grave danger. There were a total of 57,103 gun violence incidents in the United States in 2018, leaving 14,717 killed and 28,172 injured. The number of children and teens killed or injured was 3,502. Gun violence has shortened the life expectancy of Americans by nearly 2.5 years.

 

-- Religious intolerance remarks were on the rise. The mid-term elections in 2018 saw a surge of anti-Muslim opinions. A report found that conspiracy theories targeting Muslims have increasingly entered the political mainstream. "More than a third have claimed that Muslims are inherently violent or pose an imminent threat," and "Just under a third of the candidates considered have called for Muslims to be denied basic rights or declared that Islam is not a religion."

 

-- Internet surveillance becomes a common practice. The warrantless wiretapping program PRISM is operating around the clock, vacuuming up emails, Facebook messages, Google chats, Skype calls, and the like.

 

-- Money politics prevail in the United States. The total cost of the 2018 mid-term elections was 5.2 billion U.S. dollars, a 35 percent increase over 2014 in nominal dollars, making them by far the most expensive mid-term elections on record. The U.S. government is representing the super rich.

 

-- The  United  States  has  the  highest  rate  of  income  inequality  among Western countries. The share of the top 1 percent of the population in the United States owned 38.6 percent of total wealth. In relation to both wealth and income, the share of the general public has fallen continuously. Nearly half of the American households live in financial difficulties and 18.5 million Americans live in extreme poverty.

 

-- Hate crimes surged to new height. A report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in November 2018 said hate crimes rose by about 17 percent to 7,175 cases in the United States in 2017. Offenses motivated by racial prejudice made up about 60 percent of hate crimes, with African-Americans being targeted in nearly half of them.

 

-- The living conditions of African-Americans are worrisome. The median white family has about 10 times as much wealth as the median black family. African Americans are 2.5 times as likely to be in poverty as whites, about twice as likely to be in unemployment as whites, and more than 6 times as likely as whites to be incarcerated. The infant mortality rate is 1.3 times higher for African Americans, whose average life expectancy is about 3.5 years shorter than whites.

 

-- There were endless school shootings. Last year, a total of 94 school shootings occurred across the United States and left 163 people dead or injured, making it the worst year on record with the most school shooting cases and the most severe casualties. Violent incidents in schools also increased 113 percent from the previous school year.

 

-- Women are living in fear of sexual harassment and sexual assaults. A survey found that 81 percent of women interviewed had experienced some form of sexual harassment, and 27 percent said they had been sexually assaulted.

 

-- Immigration policy separated children from parents. A new "zero tolerance" policy inaugurated by the U.S. government in April 2018 has separated at least 2,000 migrant children from their families. There has also been a startling increase in the number of instances where U.S. Border Patrol officers have mistreated or sexually abused juvenile migrants.

 

-- Flagrantly withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council. The Atlantic said in an online analysis that one of the most likely, and most insidious, arguments for the move is to prevent the United States from being called out on its own alleged human-rights abuses.