Who will trump Donald Trump?
Michael Dingake | Tuesday March 22, 2016 15:45
A series of debates across the length and breadth of the country are held. It is an arduous, grueling, protracted, expensive, no-holds-barred countrywide battle to sift the chaff from the corn, to churn the cream from whey, to unleash the top dogs from the respective party kennels. Candidates who make the grade must belong to the parties’ pedigree stable. Candidates are scrutinised from cradle, through the crèche, primary school, university, bedroom and workplace to check their suitability as presidential material.
The race for nomination of the Republican candidate is something of a sensation, with Trump leading the pack. Trump is the man the American establishment loves to hate. President Barack Obama has said Trump cannot (underline cannot) become the American President. Republican leading figures, among them, Mitt Romney a has-run in the previous presidential elections, is among those who are nervously mobilising the Republican camp to shun DT. The media revels in reporting Trump’s maverick antics, but are generally ambivalent about whether he will be the ideal Republican candidate. Meanwhile, DT’s caravan rolls on. He looks formidable and unstoppable!
American presidential elections are synonymous with headless spending spree. Dollars, dollars, all the way! DT a multibillionaire is untroubled by the nightmare of funding his campaign. He is on record as one without little anxiety whence his help will come. He can afford to self-fund. I have a feeling if any of his opponents were to ask for assistance, he would gladly oblige.
The Democratic Party candidates, instead of concentrating on internal feuds, have begun denouncing DT as maverick, unsuitable for the presidential seat. It implies they perceive DT as an opponent to sidestep if possible. DT is a spectre haunting the US political establishment. Why? DT is viewed as someone to the extreme right of the American political spectrum. I don’t know why. What I know is American politics is essentially rightist and extremist. I mean American politics across the board! I wholeheartedly agree with those who say, in the US there is only one party, the Business Party, with two factions – the Republican and the Democratic! The factions differ on minor details not on basic political outlook. I must admit, were Bernie Sanders to win the American Presidency, then we’d say the US has devolved into two parties: the Business Party and the Social Democratic Party (US)! Until then, America remains one conservative-rightist monolith, expressing its outlook in laissez faire economics - less government, interventionist and bully in world affairs!
DT scares people by his straight talk. What past US presidents refrained from enunciating but, never hesitated to do when in power, DT blurts out without apology. He’s no hypocrite. You may gasp at the outlandish Trump-speak of building a wall along the US-Mexico border and stating the Mexicans will built it! As far as I know, the wall between Mexico and the US exists already, though not of concrete. If you visit the US-Mexico border at San Diego, you’ll notice that the Immigration border is almost an impermeable wall, invisible to the naked eye to keep the Mexicans out as much as possible; another issue on which DT shocks those who listen to his rhetoric, is banning Muslims entering the States. He doesn’t say he will banish Muslims already in America; with the terrorism associated with fundamental Muslims, I wonder how many Americans are indifferent to influx of Muslims into the US. At least Trump isn’t shy to express his fear and the revulsion of the putative terrorism-carriers entering the US. It’s his straight talk that endears him to the masses. The Ku Klux Klan? Would this American version of Hitler’s Blackshirts still be surviving if past American presidents didn’t nurture it secretly? The attitude to the KKK by American authorities won’t change with the next president unless it is Bernie Saunders.
Fact! That’s why it’ll be a miracle for BS to win! Somewhere I have come across statements of people who condemn DT for his Middle East policy and still others who decry his latent suspension of Aid to Africa. I am one with DT if he could keep his word and stop aiding and abetting the Israelis from persecuting the Palestinians, and allowing the Middle East situation to unravel without one-sided interference from the US. The US does its best to tie the hands of the Palestinians and Middle East sympathisers behind their backs, while sponsoring the Israelis with the WMD, including nuclear weapons! Yes, you don’t hear a word against Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, yet a spec of uranium dust in Iran drives US establishment bonkers!.
And what may be wrong with withholding aid from Africa by the US/Western powers? As far as I am concerned, it’s high time Africa was weaned of foreign aid. Africa, weaned of foreign aid which comes with ties of steel, will begin to reorganise and reinvent herself for developments that could consolidate her independence.
Instead of falling on her knees to beg for foreign aid, Africa will be better advised to demand reparations for her economic devastation during the slave and colonial periods. Slavery and colonialism impoverished Africa and bequeathed her, the leadership she groans under. Africa must demand reparations, not aid! Who will trump Trump then? Himself, should he buckle under pressure, lose momentum and become inconsistent and irrelevant!