America has plumbed the depths to offer the world its most irrational and bigoted leader to date, writes Zenzile Khoisan.
There can be no doubt that the election of Donald Trump to the highest office in the US will have a seismic effect on the profile of the planet as we have known it.
For, unlike any other occupant of the much-coveted 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue address, Trump brings with him a distinctly disturbing truth - the realisation that America has plumbed the depths to offer the world its most irrational and bigoted leader.
Some have suggested that with his installation in January as the 45th president of the US, the country will hit a new low, surpassing the Watergate scandal of Richard “tricky Dick” Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the Bushes. This is a most amazing feat considering Nixon burgled and bugged the headquarters of the Democratic Party, which eventually resulted in his impeachment. Reagan”s claims to fame were numerous invasions by US military forces, including Lebanon and Grenada, during which president Maurice Bishop was assassinated. He also presided over the Iran-Contra scandal.
Then there was the warmong-ering Bush father and son pair that bombed Iraq back to the Stone Age, removed a sitting-president in Panama and intensified the US embargo on Cuba to such an extent that the Cuban people of that progressive isle had to declare a special period through which they only survived because of their ingenuity and resilience.
With the election of Barack Obama, the US became a somewhat more humane space where the com-plexion of the White House changed and where the administration was, in some measure, able to engage more respectfully with the rest of the world.
On his watch, to some degree, the poor got some relief with health care, social security and alternatives to the fossil fuel syndicates opened a way to the research, funding and development of alternative energy initiatives.
Most notably, under the Obama administration, the African agenda, albeit with the US imperialist bent, was taken on board, with Obama even holding court in the circle of international African leadership with his address to South Africa at the memorial service for first democratic president Nelson Mandela.
This feat was later topped by a whirlwind tour of the continent and a rousing address to the AU in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Obama then stepped across the impossible divide and began the process of normalising relations with Cuba, so that, for the first time since that country”s revolution in 1959, despite diametrically opposed ideological positions, the flags of both countries flap freely in the breezes of both Havana and Washington DC.
Now, with the election of Donald Trump, the US stands at a crossroads, because, waiting in the wings for the first black family of that nation to exit Pennsylvania Avenue”s most protected address, is a man whose world view is underpinned by a myopic, insular, and decidedly anti-progressive ideology that has the entire world on tenterhooks and, gauging by protests in cities across the US, seems to be the lightning rod for protests across the country.
Many of the protesters in New York, Oakland, San Francisco, Boston and towns and cities across the country are bearing placards reading “Not my President”, and are chanting slogans reflecting their disgust at Trump”s public pronouncements over several decades, reflecting his deeply ingrained misogyny, racism, jingoism and warped world view that places the US and its interests over those of any other nation.
While we certainly do not wish to knock the new guy down even before he settles in at the White House, there can be no doubt that Trump”s tenure, with a landslide mandate of complete congressional, senatorial, gubernatorial power reflecting a red swath across the American heartland, will be defined by the dictate of talk show host Dr Phil, who famously stated that “the best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour”.
Now, for the record, let us reflect, with the benefit of a few prized gems, on that past behaviour that could indicate what the future holds for the planet with Donald Trump, firmly ensconced in the oval office as the leader of the so-called free world.
A most astonishing indicator of his attitude to the people who reside in the shadow of the stature of liberty, is his attitude towards President Barack Obama, the current White House incumbent whose nationality he has questioned with his oft-repeated statement: “I don”t know where he was born.”
This racist and chauvinist position against the first citizen is not just a once-off brain fart, but is the tip of the iceberg of a deeply-disturbed person who has a history of statements and actions that have undermined the dignity and humanity of numerous racial groups, nationalities and cultural, social and religious groups within the complex US demographic tapestry.
These embedded Trump values can be traced as far back as 1973, when the Trump, then president of the Trump Management Corporation, was sued by the US justice department for racial discrimination, a case that stemmed from thousands of complaints that it discriminated against black people, quoting different rates for potential white and black rental candidates.
He settled that suit by agreeing not to discriminate against blacks, Puerto Ricans and other minorities and to send weekly vacancy lists for 15 000 apartments to the Urban League, a civil rights group.
A few years later, his Trump Plaza hotel and casino group was brought on the carpet and fined for discriminating against black people at his Atlantic City casino operations, with his own black staff bringing damning narratives of how the casino areas were cleared of black people when Trump and his then wife Ivana entered the space.
These attitudes have been repeated so many times in the history of his business, and of late in politics, that Trump just seems to roll on, despite any offence to anyone, including Gonzalo Curiel, a sitting Mexican-American federal judge presiding over a lawsuit brought against his Trump University, whom he accused of bias because “he”s a Mexican”.
Then there are the two clinchers that certainly put Trump in a bigoted class of his own - his campaign promise to build a wall between the US and Mexico and his other truly remarkable light-bulb moment, when he stated that he would stop the immigration of all Muslims to America “until we find out what the hell is going on” which has made Donald Trump the king of the low-water mark.
His view of Africa as a “basket case” and of South Africa as “a crime-ridden mess” certainly gives one pause for thought on how we are going to deal with an international leader with an IQ below room temperature..
The Sunday Independent