The USA goes to the polls to elect President!

Michael Dingake | Tuesday November 8, 2016 18:09

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton dwarf the two like colossuses do the midgets. All eyes, American and non-American, voters and nonvoters will be on Trump and Clinton. Why? Whether one likes either  of them or not, once elected to the American Presidency ,any of them is bound to impact on ones life whether one likes it, hates it, knows it, is ignorant of it; whoever is to be the American President, will touch on ones life willy-nilly, directly or indirectly!

You wonder why and how. Well, you may be Motswana, your country independent for over 50 years; if the President of the USA tells your President (whoever he/she is) ‘jump!’ expect your President not to ask any question except: ‘how high?’ You see, America rules the world and the so-called Presidents or heads of state, are her satellites or proxies. The few who assert independence are invaded, blockaded, sanctioned or brainwashed through propaganda -  electronic or print media or school. Ask Vietnam, Lumumba’s Congo, Panama, Cuba, Russia, Iran, Libya, Iraq, the lot, what happens to recalcitrant leaders who try to challenge or duck the American hegemony!  America wasn’t always the America we know today; though ‘discovered’ by Christopher Columbus, she existed long before this ‘discovery’ and was a land occupied by the Chirokee Indians whose last chief was Big Foot. The colonists running away from the oppressive rule of their British king, arrived, slaughtered the Indians and colonised the survivors of the ‘discovered’ land, ruled them  with an unwonted savagery imaginable in the history of mankind. The vast land they now occupied and owned was huge, fertile, with enormous potential for cultivation and development. Since they were arrogant, lazy, adventurous they raided Africa for unpaid slave labour. Africans were transported across the Atlantic bound in leg-irons to be sold by auction at slave marts. Child was wrenched from parent and husband from wife to farmer (plantation) and housewife to the highest bidder! Slave labour became the foundation and source of American wealth, more than the entrepreneurship and the pioneering spirit of immigrants flaunted glibly.

Give the devil his/her due. Though the immigrants were distance-wise faraway from the king, his arm was elastic, extending to the prodigals across the ocean. That’s how the American war of independence was ignited. Early in my literate life I was inspired by the American cry, “Taxation without representation is tyranny!” From this war-cry, which energized  the colonists in the War for Independence, there  followed the definition of democracy by President Abram Lincoln, the slave emancipator: ‘‘Government of the people by the people for the people.’’ The Americans went on to nurture, enrich, entrench democracy by adopting in practice the Frenchman Montesquieu’s doctrine of the Separation of Powers to ensure checks and balances in government administration. For some time America appeared to be governed by democratic principles; she did her best to propagate democracy throughout the world in the interest of humankind.

Suddenly America became swollen-headed, particularly after ‘winning the ‘cold war’ against USSR, the advocate of socialism and peaceful co-existence, in the ideologically divided world. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, USA has become bigheaded, roguish with scant respect for other lands, their independence and sovereignty. She is even copying undemocratic habits of countries struggling to become democratic in practice. In presidential debates that ensued in preparations for today’s event, both candidates  - Trump and Clinton, have made statements which depict the USA groping (not in the Trumplike groping of women)in the dark, in the culture of democratic elections. Trump, asked at the end of the public debate whether he would accept the results if they went against him, demurred. Obviously he suspects rigging of polls as he has darkly hinted during his campaign speeches. Rigging of elections in the mother of modern democracies, more than 300 years of democratic elections!? Clinton and her camp isn’t different; she has some idiotic ‘fear’ of President Putin of Russia hacking the American  election process in favour of Donald Trump! Can the democratic world continue to trust America to lead with its morbid fear of rigging of elections not only in the limping and wounded democracies in the developing world, but in America as well?

I have been re-reading, Stupid White Men  by Michael Moore. Moore wrote this riveting story of the 2000 presidential elections, de jure won by Republican Party’s GW Bush when de facto it was Al Gore who won. I recommend the book to all who haven’t read it. It’s a must-read.  In a chapter titled, Idiot Nation, Moore writes: “It comes as no surprise to foreigners that Americans who like to revel in their stupidity, would “elect” a president who rarely reads anything ---including his own briefing papers ---and think Africa is a nation, not a continent. An idiot leader of an idiot nation. In our glorious land of plenty , less is always more when it comes to taxing any lobe of the brain with the intake of facts and numbers , critical thinking or the comprehension of anything that isn’t … well, sports.”  Who do I think will win or wish should win between the two? Who’s the more popular or the more unpopular, Trump or Clinton? Well I believe the two deserve the curse: A plague on both your houses!.