Biden takes power: Propaganda machine in full gear
Iam writing on the D-Day, Wednesday. Former vicepresident Joe Biden is preparing to take power even as we speak. Generally, he seems to have learned a few lessons from the past, and has a team ready to work to reverse the economic effects of Covid-19. I await my cheque in the mail of $2 000. That is very nice.
But, the captured media houses are all agog, spreading fearmongering wherever and to whoever can listen. Now that former president Donald Trump and his family wait to be taken to Florida to their paradise home, Mar-alargo, the propagandists are running short of devils to scour. They said Trump would refuse to leave power.
“As I prepare to hand over power to a new administration at noon on Wednesday, I want you to know that the movement we have started is only just beginning”. he told his 73 million followers. You will not hear these words. What you will hear is that Trump is “touting his administration’s tax cuts, trade deals and economic foreign policy.” “To these propagandists, Trump is lying about these achievements”.
Including the Covid-19 stimulus pay-out, and the $2 000 tax cut, a small family like mine took home $6 000 more in 2020 than we did the previous year.
The news all over the press is that Trump, as his last act of treachery, will pardon all the crooks in his administration, Steve Bannon, his strategist, being the chief sinner. Indeed, Bannon is a sinner. He is accused of diverting $25 million volunteer gifts for the Mexican Wall to his personal use.
Trump is the biggest crook who ever sat in the White House. But wait a moment.
Former president Bill Clinton pardoned all the crooks he had ever seen or did business with, more than any two presidents combined. In his last day in office, he pardoned 150 on January 21 2001, making it a total of 450. Two criminals stand out.
Marc Rich was a fugitive millionaire hiding in Switzerland. He owed government $48 million in taxes and was accused of 51 tax fraud and evasions. His most egregious crime was that the avoidance of sanctions against Iraq. He crafted a deal whereby he handled 4 million barrels of oil in exchange for food on behalf of US companies and pocketed kickbacks. Former president Jimmy Carter found this pardon “disgraceful” in that it was also linked to a donation given by Rich to Ms Hillary Clinton and to the Clinton Foundation.
Another Clinton pardon went to Dan Rostenkowski, the powerful chairperson of the House Means and Ways Committee. Over a period of 20 years, Rostenkowski had arranged with the Congressional postmaster to hand over cash to the boys, ranging from $900 to $2 500 at a time. A congressman would go by to the postmaster and ask for, say, $2 000 worth of stamps. He would then hand them back in exchange for cash. That was very nice.
As we speak, President Joe Biden is now guarded by 25 000 federal troops, supposedly in fear of reaction from Trump supporters. So, apart from the restrictions due to Covid-19, the ceremony will be subdued.
It is feared that Trump supporters, who claim that the election was stolen from their candidate, might become physical. The FBI is looking for information leading to the arrest of a pipe bomb manufacturer.
The photo enclosed shows the Trump inauguration of January 20, 2017. On that day there were two protests by Hillary Clinton supporters who went under the banner of V-POWER. The V was a reference to a private part of their body which they claimed gave them mysterious powers. This movement was joined by another called the RESISTANCE (by former president Barack Obama).
The claim was that Trump was a Russian impostor and his government must be resisted at all costs leading to his overthrow.
Dr Martin Luther King
I have made an attempt to show you in the space provided that the events in Washington are by no means unique. But because Americans suffer from cultural ahistorical amnesia, their presentations are full of hyperbole, their reactions to simple events are tempestuous and no one seems to learn from the past.
I am not the first to observe this characteristic. Even the great British leader, Winston Churchill (whose mother was American), expressed in a private moment that Americans can be trusted to do the right thing, after exhausting all the wrong options. In simple English, it means they do not learn from the past.
As we celebrate Martin Luther King Day, January 17, we are reminded how dangerous this ahistoricity is when combined with a certain American trait, arrogance. Because of their great achievements in material and human progress, due to this ahistorical trait, they forget at what great costs those achievements came about. They, therefore, are the first to give advice on everything under the sun, forgetting that their own history is full of false starts and failures.
In Southern English, (New Yorkers like Trump are the worst) Americans want to tell folks what to do in their own countries, even when, because they have no precedent to learn from, they may be on a false step.
But allow the master himself, Dr King, to speak. “We have built gargantuan bridges to span the seas and gigantic buildings to kiss the skies. All of this is a staggering picture of our power.” Now listen you sluggards, as the Holy Man speaks:
“But honesty impels me to admit that our power has often made us arrogant. We feel that our money can do anything. We arrogantly feel that we have everything to teach other nations and nothing to learn from them.”
In his last year in office, our brother Obama visited Kenya, Ghana and Senegal. In typical American zeal, at every step, he propagated the gospel that gay rights were the last frontier in the struggle for human freedom.
The Kenyan president rebuked him kindly. In Senegal the story is that some women, clothed in their finery and wearing modest veils across their faces wanted to take a peek at the leader of the Western world. When the women heard the translation about gay marriages (women marrying women and men likewise), they could not hide their laughter behind their veils.
“What is the use of such a marriage?” they whispered among themselves. When asked to elaborate, they said, with great mirth and indulgence, that Obama was the silliest man they had ever seen.
Again listen to the Holy Man: “We often feel that we have some divine, messianic mission to police the whole world. We are arrogant in not allowing young nations to go through the same growing pains, turbulence of our revolutionary history.”
I say again, Americans are the most generous people on earth, but their government’s posturing must be taken with discernment. African leaders must be forced to study American history. Again, I say, my brothers, an African leader who refuses to learn the tempestuous and bloody struggles of the American saga, needs to be shot. He places Africa in danger by stupid imitations of American foibles and shenanigans.
I will not recant, now help me God.