Muhsin Ibrahim
@muhsin234
This is a Herculean job. I have read and listened to
several political commentators saying that Donald Trump’s triumph is a
logic-defying, demystifying puzzle and a record breaking event in the political
history of not only the US but the world in general. For those not very
familiar with this character, Trump is a bigot, racist, protectionist, misogynist, an Islamaphobic, and, above all, a very ignorant billionaire
businessman. That is why, perhaps, almost all pre-election opinion polls
indicated that his opponent, Hillary Clinton would win the election, but he
did.
A particular disgruntled analyst, Tom Freeman, has gone to the extreme in
his quest for meaning of Trump’s victory. He wrote an article that contains
only a word all through: F**k. The writer couldn’t be more descriptive and rational,
for this is just it. Yet, curses, yells, despair, etc. cannot change the
reality that Trump is the president-elect of the world’s super power, the mighty
United States of America. Needless to mention, the US is a country more than a
country. The value of its currency, the dollar, for example, affects the lives
of billions around the world; thus, its politics is the world’s politics. What
goes on in the US does not only stay there; it spills over into your room, your
market, your school and virtually everywhere else.
But, is this victory accidental, coincidental or
incidental? It is, as far as I can see, incidental. In other words, the victory
was due to a number of things, some of which I will discuss below.
Humans’
Desire for Change
In Nigeria, for instance, President Muhammadu
Buhari campaigned using the slogan of “Change”, and that appealed to the millions
who voted for him. Donald Trump deployed the same scheme. He said: “Let's Make
America Great Again”. Semantically, America was once, according to that slogan,
a great country, but not any longer. Thus, Trump calls on the people to come
together, to vote for him and he will rejuvenate the country to its lost glory,
to a great nation, again. He will change the status quo.
Patriarchal
World
Nobody captures this better than my favourite NYTimes
columnist, Nicholas Kristof. He says “Lots of voters had a mental paradigm of a
president as a man, and for them it was easier to see Trump as presidential
than Clinton”. But there is more to this. Americans could be fool as everyone
else can, however their preference of Trump over Clinton could be aligned to
what has happened in their neighbouring countries of Brazil and Argentina. In
both, female presidents were recently ousted, and with the popular and
executive supports. Again, Angela Markel of Germany has not been faring well.
Her chancellorship is, in fact, soon coming to an end and in a humbled way. She
is daily becoming more unpopular for her sympathy towards immigrants.
For long, there is a political commentator (or is he a
religious scholar? I cannot recall exactly) who, in a lecture, expressed a
strong opinion on gender politics and sexuality from global perspective. According
to him, the Corporation and the Establishment of the US would not allow a woman
to lead the country, at least not in our lifetime. I outright disagreed with
him then. It is now I see what he saw years back. I personally do not consider
women less human beings, but I am also of the opinion that certain jobs are
better carried out by men. Women – and they too know – have more frailties than
men.
Swimming
against the Current
The world is a dynamic place. We are today in an era
where people swim against the current more often than ever before. There are
more than several examples to cite. For instance, in Nigeria, Engr. Rabiu Musa
Kwankwaso did that in 2011 and won the governorship election of Kano state,
defeating the anointed candidate of the then highly popular governor, Malam
Ibrahim Shekarau. Many political commentators and analysts thought that Engr. Kwankwaso
would not even get his party’s ticket to contest. The current Indian Prime
Minister, Narendra Modi did the same by challenging the dynasty that ruled the
country for decades, though he is from what Indians would call a “low” or a “middle”
class family. Trump, with no background in politics whatsoever, now tried his
luck and hit the jackpot. The similitude between him and Kwankwaso and Mr. Modi
is so unmistakable.
The trio are very bold, up-front, fearless, and they express
their minds, not paying attention at how silly or impractical are their ideas
or promises perceived by others. For example: the then governor of Kano, Malam Shekarau
allocated plots to some top-notches and aristocrats of the state at an area
called Fegi at Kofar Naisa in the metropolis. During his campaign, Engr.
Kwankwaso boldly declared that whosoever is in possession of any
paper/certificate indicating ownership of those plots possesses a worthless
paper as good as a spoilt paper used by kebab sellers. In his case, Trump plans
to build a wall on the US-Mexico border to bar ‘illegal’ immigrants from
entering America, and Mexico will have to pay for that; he vows to ban Muslims
from entering the US; he engaged a Gold Star family in a media brawl; he threatens
to imprison his opponent, Clinton; he groped women and was proud of that as he
is rich; etc.
Undisguised
Honesty
The word “honesty” has a positive connotation, but not
in Trump’s situation. Yes, he is very honest but only for baring his mind to
his supporters. He tells them what he stands for, and that is what most of them
also stand for. He believes in the Whites’ supremacy. He is unapologetically
Islamaphobic, and this is an era of Islamaphobia with the rise of ‘Islamic’
terror attacks in the US, Europe and many other places around the world. This
way, Trump gingers up his supporters in a no small measure. That is why for the
first time in a long time in the history of American politics, the white
working class came out en mass and cast their votes for a candidate. The blacks
and Latinos were largely hopeless, thus cast less votes than anticipated by
Mrs. Clinton.
There are many other reasons, but I think the
aforesaid are some. As a Muslim, black and African, I don’t think I have
anything to lose by either his victory or that of Clinton. I am today wiser. I
often laugh at myself whenever I remember how I spent a night following the US
election during Obama’s first contest in 2008. I was filled with hope, optimism
and excitement that a ‘fellow black’ was about to make history. He made it, but
what does it mean now? What has changed? Things have in fact deteriorated
today. The US-African relationship has not improved at all. The Middle East is more
chaotic, messy and dangerous than before his presidency. Israel got a record
fund from his administration. Black lives even on the US soil matter less
today. He does not fulfil any promise such as of shutting down Guantanamo bay prison,
or withdrawing the US military from Afghanistan, etc.
In a nutshell, the US is a country governed by the Corporation,
not an individual. It therefore does not matter, in a long run, whether or not
one is a Democrat or a Republican president. There is a blueprint which you
must work with, while you are given only a sort of liberty to do what you want.
Some things, for instance, the US-Israel “special relationship” will remain
constant forever. There is, thus, less than little to worry over the Donald
Trump’s presidency. Who knows? He could even turn out to be a better leader
than the duplicitous Obama.
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