By Raffique Shah
November 18, 2020

Donald Trump seems prepared to plunge the United States of America into civil war if that becomes his only option as he clings to the office of President, refusing to acknowledge that he lost the presidential election to Joseph Biden. The world looks on with much foreboding as this real-life tragi-comedy plays before an audience of billions of people.

Trump refuses to recognise the official counting of votes that are presided over by state governors and their staff, many of whom belong to his Republican party. In so doing, he is showing contempt for the state institutions that he, as president, oversees. And he ignores the political and social mores of Washington that hinge on the loser graciously bowing out of office to allow for a smooth transition of power.

But this is Trump we are dealing with, the consequential if not quintessential American macho man, the embodiment of the values that define the successful American, albeit a mutated version, the ultimate ugly American. In an environment where money equals power, and might is always right, he rode roughshod into the highest office in the country in 2016, trampling all opposition, preying on the base instincts of his core supporters who are not exactly intelligent people, hence ripe for the picking by a latter-day, swashbuckling buccaneer.

Give Trump his trumpet: where American politicians saw citizens of one of the most populous democracies as fodder for their respective party agendas, which hardly differed, certainly between the Democrats and Republicans, Trump the pirate saw pawns and bishops and knights on a vast chessboard, waiting to be exploited, manipulated, if only he could find their lowest common denominator.

That was not difficult. Among the 300-plus millions of Americans who populate the nation, the most aggrieved are those who, in the face of a multi-ethnic melting pot that allows the newly-arrived the same rights and similar entitlements, see themselves as descendants of the founding fathers, the inheritors of the realm. Mattered not that many of them had squandered their inheritance, ignored opportunities to pursue the American dream: they were the first, and not among equals. They were armed and ready to stake their claim for supremacy in the land of the brave and the free.

That was Trump’s constituency, his “blue-bloods” that he would harness and saddle, on whose backs he would continue to ride roughshod over his subjects—the hell with elections, constitution, norms, mores and such tripe.

It was not by accident that some 70 million of Trump’s fellow-Americans, as Barack Obama and the validating elites in Washington would formally address them, went beyond the call to duty by ensuring that they register their choice for leading the country by participating in the quadrennial exercise that constitutionally empowers them to so do. That mass, which can hardly be associated with the herd mentality, consist of a curious mix of white supremacists who are armed and ready for the Second Civil War, the massive and mighty evangelical far-right, non-white nationalists of the neo-Nazi sense of that term, who seem to be confused in the absence of a Hitler, but would settle for a Trump, and interestingly, radicals from what’s left of the revolutionary left, who consciously squeezed their noses to staunch the stench, and voted Trump.

That’s why the abominable Donald all but welcomed a latter-day plague in the form of Covid-19. It gave him the opportunity to let the virus run its course, cleanse America of Blacks and Hispanics who were more prone to falling victims to the virus. It is not accidental that the USA, the richest and most powerful country on earth, suffered the greatest number of deaths and infections. And in this the current second wave he has cast the fate of the country to the wind with thousands dying daily and millions infected weekly. That is all part of Donald’s plan.

He had hoped to win the election and allow Covid-19 to take its course. He was surprised when 78 million, and counting, Americans, who see their country as a secular democracy, voted against him more than they voted for Biden. Luckily for the country, there are still such persons who are prepared to stand up, even bury their differences, to rescue America from a fate worse than The Black Plague. Such patriots used the vehicle that is the Democratic Party to halt Trump in his tracks. America must be thankful to them. But Trumpism will be far from defeated or dealt a fatal blow by preventing Donald from continuing in The White House.

Clearly, theirs is a greater plan for dominance and control certainly in the hemisphere. It is not accidental that Trump-like leaders are turning up in the Americas. In one instance, a government is removed from power (Ecuador) and in another crippling sanctions are imposed (Venezuela) and in yet another a Trump-like president is wreaking havoc (Brazil). Dump Trump, I say. And beware Trumpism.