From First to Third World: The USA that Trump Would Bequeath To Biden

The unbecoming antics of President Donald Trump gave umbrage to Magnus Onyibe, former member of the Delta State Executive Council to pass a damning judgement on his presidency

When Donald J. Trump’s tumultuous presidency ends on January 20, 2021, he would be handing over to president elect, Joseph R Biden, a United States of America, USA, that has degenerated from first to third world.

That is remarkable because, the trend has always been for a country to move from third to first world as reflected by the case of Singapore , the island country, which leaped from first to third world as documented in a book titled “From Third To First World: The Story of Singapore, written by Lee Kuan Yew, that country’s most famous leader under whose watch the country experienced the phenomenal leap forward.

There is a legion of reasons that the USA which Trump will be handing over to Biden would be a third world. And one of it is simply because after about four years of Trump’s presidency , the USA that was the acclaimed leader of the democratic world; and the foremost defender of political and social liberalism ; the most advanced society economically, which is a prime position that it has proudly held for at least 60 years as the leader of the pack in the first world, would be a shadow of itself due to the ferocious attacks and systematic destruction of its critical institutions that bolster democracy. In the course of Trump’s presidency in the past four years , the erstwhile structures that serve as the bulwark and anchor of the famous American liberties have also experienced denigration of monumental proportions. Consequently, the fundamental principles and ethos of the USA as the melting pot for people from all over the world seeking freedom or where to blossom as long as they meet the immigration criteria of bringing something worthwhile to the table became a pie dream with Trump constructing physical and virtual barriers against them . Strikingly , under Trump’s watch , the American dream which served as the magnetic force that pulled even his parents from Europe to the USA , and which is the basis, as well as the very essence of the USA also known as God’s own country, has almost vanished . As a result of the onslaught on the institutions of democracy , politicians from both the democratic and republican parties are now mostly in harmony about the fact that the hitherto acclaimed and critical democratic foundations of the USA which are core to its existence have been gravely bastardized in the past fours years and there is need to return to status-quo . It became even more alarming when it was discovered that president Trump was ready to go to the extent of engaging in an act as bizarre and incredible as a coup detat that he was reportedly contemplating in the hallowed chambers of the White House to remain the occupant of the Oval Office.

Thinking of resorting to a declaration of marshal laws as part of his self perpetuating strategies following his loss in the November 3 , 2020 presidential elections which the candidate of the opposition party,former vice President, Joseph Biden won, mimics situations in Africa and particularly in Nigeria where the removal of leaders from office through coup detat was the norm until the last two decades. As part of the wind of democracy sweeping across the continent of Africa, change of government through military force is now an anathema on the continent as the idea has been consigned to the dustbin of history in the better part of the last two decades.

That’s basically because in the so called third world countries , dominated by African and South American countries , military coup detat is not fashionable anymore. It is evidenced by the fact that since the past decade or so, virtually no country in Africa has been under military rule. The assertion above is underscored by the reality that the few countries where military coups resurrected in the past half a decade or so, the coup plotters had their dreams as soldiers of fortune with inordinate ambitions of taking over the reins of political power in their countries quashed. Which is in tandem or in conformity with African leaders policy , under the aegis of African Union, AU towards ensuring that coup plotters were either forced or eased out shortly after they stage coups. To demonstrate that coups are no longer in vogue in Africa , President Mohammadu Buhari of Nigeria -himself and ex coup plotter/ beneficiary of a coup, is reputed to have told the officers who staged a putsch in Gabon in June 2019, that the “Era of coup is long gone.”

As a proof of the AU’s ability to bark and bite , literarily speaking , in Zimbabwe the coup plot that toppled Robert Mugabe in 2017 was not allowed to be sustained as a new president Emerson Mnangangwa was quickly elected. Ditto in Mali in 2020 where Bah Ndaw was named interim president shortly after the coup.

Effectively , there are zero countries in Africa whose leaders are not elected via general elections and open ballot. But whether the elections are being conducted with fidelity or how illiberal the democracies, and their leaders are, is another kettle of fish. So Trump’s determination to remain in the White House through hook or crook echoes the attitude of African or third world countries leaders who fix their countries elections to sit tight in office.

Another odd thing about Donald Trump’s USA that controverts the situation in the third world is that it is usually the incumbents that rig elections by deploying the apparatuses of government such as the electoral agency, police force , and lately the armed forces as well as the judges in the law courts who aid and abet in the perfidy in favor of the persons holding the reins of power. The wise crack ‘It is he who pays the piper that dictates the tune’ rings true here.

But strangely, it is Trump, the incumbent president that is crying foul about an election that all the security and intelligence agencies under his control including his chief judicial officer have endorsed as being free and fair.

Nonetheless, if democracy has become so entrenched in Africa ,it never could have been imagined that the USA famously referred to as God’s own country,a clime that the entire free world practically looked up to as a bastion of liberal democracy, would descend so low to the extent that its president would attempt to sit tight in office in the manner that third world leaders like Theodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea and Paul Biya in Cameroon have been doing . The warped idea is not only most absurd, but fantastically odd.

And the relegation of USA from 1st world to 3rd world is not being made up by me.

Actually, it is a comparison made by Trump himself in some of his recent tweets where he stated that:

“Courts are bad, the FBI and “Justice” didn’t do their job, and the United States Election System looks like that of a third world country.”

Before Trump’s last attempted gambit of contemplating the sinister plan to invoke the marshal law in order to self perpetuate, some of Trump’s supporters had also reportedly planned to kidnap the governor of the state of Michigan , Gretchen Witmer who has been at the receiving end of Trump’s verbal and tweeter tirade . Fortunately, the FBI nipped the weird plot in the bud before the sinister act could be hashed.

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