May your road be rough, America!
While a handful of protesters were childishly shouting ‘Not My President’ in some American quarters, Barack Obama was doing the needful - welcoming his successor, the Dumbs to their upcoming abode. Peeping from the historical curtains of the White House were the acrimonious exchanges of the campaign era. The pictures of the event circulated after the visit spoke more than a thousand words. This was not the world president of 2002, ebullient, jovial, full of banter and zest and riding the crest of global adulation. Nor were the shots those of a sore loser counting the cost of defeat. Illegibly written behind Obama’s bland face, were questions such as - how did we get back here?
For all you care, the Oaf could have been shaking a ghost specially released from the morgue on an assignment conscious of having to return to the nether world immediately after. First, the Nazis are creeping back to power in Europe, now its America in the hands of a man whose state of mental balance could’ve been a good case study for Freud or Albert Ellis.
Donald Dumb could be everything he props himself up to be, but in reality he is a paperweight crook basking in the aggrandizement of a heavyweight. Facts are daily tearing through the façade leaving the children of lesser political gods with an image of political sinkhole waiting to manifest. And, like the disappointed protesters on the streets, the world is not laughing. In fact, the world is not smiling. How could America reach the zenith of political tolerance that erased the slate of hate eight years ago only to sink back into the abyss of infernal bigotry so soon?
The questionable primaries, the campaign era, the bilious rhetoric and the caustic language once reserved for demagogic lowlife characterised the entire process. America began to sink when both the hitherto greatest parties jettisoned time-tested tradition of shifting through the stack of eminent peers to prop up the con and the fraud or the six and half a dozen. To malapropize Pius Adesanmi’s coinage, the 2016 American election left the voter the uncanny choice between Satan and Lucifer.
Even in the absence of court rulings, it was morally expedient on Hilary Clinton to duck out of the race, save her face and her family from the moral repercussions of the scandals that dogged her candidacy. Behind the stoicism of her concessionary speech lie the lingering questions as to where America’s former First Lady and its erstwhile Secretary of State would eventually wind up. Would she retire with Bill to a corner of America’s political Siberia or the dinghy dungeons of a prison wall? If Dumb is to be taken seriously, a loss does not atone for the sins of her scandals - shouldn’t be in hitherto moral America.
In the same way, for the first time since it abrogated slave trade, America now has a racist in the White House. One whose rhetoric glorifies the shameful acts of a forgotten past that vows to rake up the old wounds. For the first time since it’s liberation, America would have as president, a man who declared financial bankruptcy several times, and whose record of moral bankruptcy as a proud tax-dodger who trivialises assaults on women is legendary. Here is a president who bullies a crying baby and mother at his rally; promises to shoot people to upgrade his popularity ratings and yet won an election. Only in America.
It is not just that Dumb now has his fingers on the trigger of nuclear arsenal he could not be trusted not to use it. America has a president who is facing classaction suits from questionable business deals but would not put his shares in a blind trust; instead he leaves it in the hands of his maverick children. Did Hillary wine and dine with the behemoths of Wall Street? The Oaf is smart enough to use his office to feather his business nest. With a man of such questionable psychological temperament in Washington, Saddam Hussein’s ghost should be cackling in Sheol!
Is America truly great, or was it propped on the bullish backbone of its military and its nuclear arsenal to meddle in everyone else’s porridge? The world is dumbstruck at such regression, but the enormity of what Americans have gotten us into would start to stare us blandly when nudist Melania and crooked Donald move into the White House.
For now, the famous prayer of late social critic Tai Solarin is apt for the New World Order - May your road be rough, America and ours too. America has installed a heavy snorer in ‘the other room’, the world is set for insomnia. My uncle, Folajimi Andrew Iyeku used to have this meme on one of several postcards at Broadcasting House on Ibrahim Taiwo Road in Kano in the 80’s; this is what it says - you don’t have to be mad to work here, but if you are, it helps!