THIS IS AMERICA: An unpopular view
This is America! The mob. The violence. The teargas. The pandemonium. The Confederate flag. The shattered glasses. The shattered Capitol. The battered image. The Twitter ban. The impeachment. A cacophony of chaos. Anarchy on steroids . The scenes at the Capitol Hill, the seat of American hegemony, have been likened to those on February 27, 1933, when the Reichstag ( German parliament) went up in flames, a flashpoint event which set the stage for the rise of Nazi Germany. The chaos has attracted all sorts of labels, with former American president, Jimmy Carter calling it a “national tragedy,” and George W. Bush, an “insurrection.” At that moment, nothing short of unceremonial departure of Donald Trump from the Oval office would satisfy the ferocious appetite of the anti- Trump camp.
As the anti- Trump takes centre stage, his political lynching by both mainstream and social media has reached diabolical proportions. He is currently banned from every social platform, save for China’s Weibo. For a nation that ‘ prides’ itself, the defender of human rights, freedom of association and free speech, the continuing gagging of its former President, is mockery of first kind. Currently, Trump is trending as Lucifer himself. The Apocalyptic beast with “seven heads and ten horns” that must be defeated in the impending battle of Armageddon. He is presented as the incarnation of evil, and hater of mankind. His 74 million voters and supporters, trashed as the lowest form of life of earth, thriving on bigotry and anarchy. The anti- Trump club has marshalled its forces to propagate, THIS IS NOT AMERICA narrative. But wait a minute; did Trump really misrepresent America as we are made to believe by CNN and company? No, I do not think so. Trump did not invent anything new in the American political ecology. He is just the fallback guy. This is America.
Although Trump is presented as an oddity in American political ethic, and the source of all trouble, history disputes these assertions as thorough lies. The political psychology and culture behind the violent scenes displayed at the Capitol Hill far pre- dated Trump. In fact, the scenes are a replay of US- sponsored Colour Revolutions such as the Rose Revolution in Georgia in November 2003, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in November 2004, and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan in April 2005. These violent protests that overthrew duly elected presidents, were greeted in the US as ‘ democratic’ breakthroughs that might thoroughly reshape the political terrain in former Soviet republics to further US interests. Further, the Capitol Hill scenes are almost a replica of the recent Hong Kong protests, where protesters ransacked the Legislative Council building and unleashed rampage on the city, hurling petrol bombs at critical infrastructure and burning Chinese flag. These protests enjoyed bipartisan support, even the ardent Trump nemesis; Nancy Pelosi described the anarchic scenes as, “a beautiful sight to behold.” Therefore, claims that the employment of violence as a function of politics was a Trump- phenomena in the US body politic is gross neglection of facts. This is America.
Furthermore, Trump’s ‘ America First’ foreign policy was not in anyway, a deviation from the long established hawkish, hegemonic and carrot-and-stick American foreign policy anchored on American exceptionalism. He may have been uncharacteristically blunt in conducting his foreign policy, but all intent and purposes are the same; robbing Peter to pay Paul. Trump has been labelled reckless and a pathological liar in his conduct of international relations.
But, is this not a common feature in American foreign policy that has seen it susceptible to hypocrisy and collective self- delusion, to what the Greeks called hubris? Is it not the morass of American foreign policy that has seen it limp one unanticipated disaster to the other?
Surely, we can agree that Trump was not President during the Bay of Pigs invasion when a CIA- financed and trained group of Cubans attempted to topple the communist government of Fidel Castro in April 1961. We can agree that Trump was not President when Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and brutally killed in October 2011. We can also agree that Trump was not President when the US sponsored the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in January 1961. If we cannot agree on those, at least let us agree that the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan was based on one big fat lie, Weapons of Mass Destruction. The lie was fabricated by the US security establishment, peddled by the political establishment and propagated by the mainstream media. Therefore, recklessness, hypocrisy and the utter lies have been the cogwheels of US foreign policy from time immemorial. They are not a Trump invention. Trump is just a scapegoat.
Further, Trump has been labelled an ardent racist and a trump card of white supremacists. Indeed, Trump is a blatant racist. Unlike many of his Caucasian race, he has had the courage to come out. But to think that Trump authored the racist American system, that for centuries condemned its Black population to humiliation, subjugation, abject poverty, and social exclusion is utter lies. Racism and racial inequality in the American society is as old as slave trade. Surely, it was not Trump who incited the White mob that lynched Mary Turner in 1918. It was not Trump that gave Dylann Roof the weapon to commit Charleston church mass shooting that left nine Black congregants dead in June 2015. Trump is being used to scapegoat for a system that since slave trade to the brutal killing of George Floyd by white police officer, has condemned its Black population to an inferior social caste.
The truth is; White America, across the political divide, has never thoroughly endeavoured to fight racism. The parading of Barack Obama or Kamal Harris as symbols of racial integration and equality is nothing more than cosmetics.
In fact, Trump’s blatant racism, has in turn, exposed the extent of racism and anti- Black sentiments in America. He has given some section of White America, the courage to come out of the closet and be true to who they are; racists. Despite their different party colours, White America would never give up privileges bestowed upon them by monopoly of economic and political power.
Therefore, any narrative that seeks to present Trump as the genesis of racism and White supremacy is devoid on reality. Trump’s muscular showing of over 74 million American voters, the most of any incumbent president by far in the history of the US, indicates that his rhetoric and politics is resonating with more than just ‘ White Supremacists’ as we saw him raking record votes among Hispanics. The point is, in condemning other countries to political sickbeds, the US forgot to take antinode for the same diseases. Trump is merely the symptom of a very sick American system, not its cause.