Trump ignites chaos
ON JULY 26, 1920, HL Mencken, an American journalist, satirist and cultural critic, wrote in the Baltimore Evening Sun: “As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents more and more closely the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.”
Despite all the soulsearching analysis of history, politics and personalities, it would seem that Hillary Clinton simply did not stand a chance. A silent revolution unseen, unheard was brewing under Obama’s reign to release the force of the “red caps” of the American proletariat.
There are disturbing similarities with Hitler’s Brownshirts or Storm troopers in the German Nazi Party, a paramilitary organisation whose methods of violent intimidation played a key role in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. Has Trump released this faction of “commonness” within the American nation?
During his first week in office, US President Donald Trump has acted as predicted by all his supporters and nonsupporters. He has caused inter-racial mayhem by banning in one large swoop Syrian refugees and other Muslims.
The great religious war has begun. Video clips are depicting angry Americans insulting Muslims on the streets throughout the cities.
One such clip showed an angry red cap shouting profanities outside of a mosque: “You cover up your women, you ban them from driving cars in Saudi Arabia, you kill people and your prophet is a paedophile. The Buddhist doesn’t kill, the Hindus don’t kill ...” and so the ranting goes.
My daughter was recently in the US and was accosted by a typical red-cap brigade of heavyweights. While standing in a queue at Rockefeller Centre, she looked too long at the caption on the caps which read: “We will make America great again.”
“You hate with your eyes,” they growled.
She said she was not American but proudly South African and was just curious. They punched the air and said: “We are going to make America great again and you are all ignorant.”
At this point other people in the queue intervened and asked them to behave themselves. To which they replied “You Hillary supporters are all ignorant of the truth.”
What Trump has managed to do is divide his people and the people of the world. Now as Trump causes havoc in his drive to oust and to keep out selective immigrants by racially targeting Muslim citizens, he does so at his own peril. Where will all of this end?
Public opinion is rapidly gaining momentum throughout the world as people take to the streets demonstrating against Trump’s callous treatment of Muslims.
As thousands of mainly young protesters gathered outside Downing Street against UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s pro-Trump stance, plans are being made for a summer state visit when Trump wishes to play a round of golf at the Queen’s Balmoral estate in Scotland.
Ironically, a year ago British MPs were debating as to whether they should ban Trump from Britain.
The Economist (January 28) reports: “Scorn is out, flummery is in” and some influential members of the Tory party are even openly declaring the election result a positive outcome for Britain.
Unlike her counterpart in Germany, May is a clever and articulate politician but she lacks the humanness and maturity of an ethical leader like Angela Merkel.
In comparison to Justin Trudeau in Canada, who comforted all his people from every ethnic group, May disregarded British minorities threatened and insulted by Trump.
For her, being a leader is a blinkered task of national imperatives over global issues.
Alliances
While the British public is loath to associate themselves with a man like Trump, it seems that May and her party are determined to forge strategic links with the US.
Convenient alliances have been forged in the past between disparate groups for the sake of expediency.
Many of us will recall the alliance between Tony Blair and George Bush and Britain’s entry into the Iraq War.
But unlike past US presidents, Trump threatens the economic and social stability of the Third World by his outlandish policies.
No psychologist has yet spoken. But a lay person can see that Donald Trump displays all the signs of a borderline narcissistic personality disorder with his inflated ego, little self-insight, inability to relate to people outside of group stereotypes and adopting a cavalier attitude to solving problems with little concern for adverse outcomes.
While he may display some strategic intelligence, he does so with little depth and limited knowledge. He is clever in a Machiavellian sense, but is he wise? Is he humane and benevolent?
What Trump is doing is causing dissension within his country and across the world.
He is gathering all the agents of discontent and discord and creating an army of haters.
The message attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller during Hitler’s rise to power must surely be heeded by those who hate and are comfortable with their animosity:
“They came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
“Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
“Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
“Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
“Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
It is indeed time for all of us plagued by fears of racism and xenophobia to stick together and protect the values of goodness. In the words of SS Radhakrishnan: “Rich is not the person who has wealth but the person who has principles.”
And so our prayer should be rooted in the thoughts of Rabindranath Tagore: “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; where knowledge is free; where the world has not been broken up Into fragments by narrow domestic wall; where words come from the depth of truth; where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action – into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.”