The United States of America celebrated its birthday a week ago with pomp and pageantry. President Donald John Trump is spending more than 1.5 billion dollars beautifying Washington’s District of Columbia . Some have criticized him for satisfying his penchant for showmanship . Of course, Trump does not give a damn for public criticism. He nearly spoiled the apparent success of the current global football fiesta when he leaned on FIFA to cancel the RED card given to the American centre forward, Folarin Balogun, for infringement on a defensive midfielder in the BOSNIA – HERZEGOVINA team . He went public telling the whole world that he intervened with FIFA to cancel the RED Card. In spite of this unusual intervention, the American team was thrashed 4 to 1 by Belgium which is not a strong team. The thing about global competition in sports and even in the Olympics, which are said to foster global amity and friendship, is that these games have happily replaced the usual conflicts and wars characteristic of global politics. Those of us with the power of the pen must continue to criticize men of power who misuse the great powers they have to propagate extremist political tendencies in politics, whether in their countries or in international politics. Thank God that criticism is beginning to have effect on leaders of extremist political tendencies like the recent defeat of the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban . As I am writing this piece, Nigel Farage, the leader of the racist and extremist UK reform party and copycat of Donald Trump , has resigned his membership of the House of Commons for taking a bribe of 5million pounds from a businessman who supports his views of keeping Britain white . Although Mr. Farage says he will contest the seat again and there is the probability that he will win, the fact remains that criticism of the public has had devastating effect. American media is full of the details of how President Trump is using his presidency to rake in billions of dollars into his own and family business, thus abusing public trust . His own time to answer public criticism is not far away.
I say all these in the preambular statements to show how Trump has betrayed the American 1776 revolution. I don’t want to engage in much academic disputation of how the American revolution was ab initio not a revolution like that of the French revolution when the streets of Paris were drenched with the blood of members of the Upper Clergy and the aristocracy and later the bourgeoisie and leaders of the revolution until Napoleon Bonaparte put an end to the nonsense. Heads did not roll in America even though it took up to 1797 before the wars accompanying the secession from the British Crown by the 13 American colonies came to an end. Besides, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, two prominent leaders of the American revolution and presidents of the republic, held large numbers of slaves while signing the declaration that “All men are born equal,” though some wise cracks and cynics later said they were “born equal because they were born naked!” If we were to judge the American revolution by its inability to live by the declaration, we would conclude that it was not a revolution because it was not until after the First World War in 1918 and the Civil Rights 1965 act granting franchise to women and blacks respectively that political rights became available to all Americans, and even today President Trump has been busy whittling down the rights of blacks especially in education, political representation and economic opportunity. The Trump effect was given expression to when some members of the racist black murdering KU KLUX KLAN (KKK) publicly tormented a black girl in the underground train in Washington DC during the celebration of the 250 years of American revolution without being arrested . The official explanation was that freedom of speech, association and belief are guaranteed in the American constitution. This has made many people to wonder whether Americans indeed believe that all men are created equal as enshrined in their famous independence declaration.
Yet we must accept the revolutionary language of the declaration as a plan of future action and also as a document rooted in European Age of Enlightenment for which future political development is expected to comply with. The declaration itself said: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness etc.” These opening statements have provided fighting ideology everywhere for people struggling against oppression and domination in Europe, Latin America where it set the example for Spanish and Portuguese and Dutch, and even British colonies to free themselves from European occupation . By the time the revolutionary ideology got to Africa, it was superseded by Communism, because by the 1950and 1960s America had abandoned its revolutionary credentials.
These days of President Trump’s belief in wielding American power and not respecting national sovereignty and even using American power to ride roughshod over countries like Iran, Venezuela are quite different from the Kennedy era of the PEACE CORPS spreading freedom and education to underdeveloped countries. Denmark, a NATO member, feared being attacked over its sovereignty over Greenland which President Trump said he needed to annex for the purpose of America’s defence. He has also been bullying European and Canadian member nations of NATO and dismissing leaders of sovereign countries as not deserving American friendship and support and condemning opposition and allies as being liberal. The question to ask is what does America stand for in today’s world except what President Trump calls respect through power and strength. This is for me not an ideology, but using naked power to convince allies or overwhelm enemies. But what happens when one’s enemy has power to resist? If the current respect through strength and power becomes the dominant American creed, the world will be entering a dangerous era especially with countries like Russia and China not being ready to kowtow to America. An era of war by countries wielding nuclear power will lead to the extinction of mankind and reminds one of the statement of President John F. Kennedy that in “the event a nuclear war the living will envy the dead.” The good thing is that America has seen this kind of extremist tendencies before. The Republican candidate for president in 1964 , Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a major General in the Air Force reserve, was famous or infamous for saying “moderation in the defense of liberty is no virtue and extremism in the defense of freedom is no vice”. He was a Conservative who opposed the civil rights proposal of President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1965 and ran for president. He was rejected by the American voters for his war longing strategy and ended his political life in obscurity after being thoroughly thrashed by President Johnson in 1964. I recall how frightened the whole world was to have a president Barry Goldwater in the height of fear of nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States. Although I must say President Trump is happily not prone to nuclear sabre rattling, he is not averse to threatening other countries with AMERICAN POWER especially when such countries are not nuclear weapons states .
One of the most regrettable policies of President Trump is his decision to wind down and withdraw from global humanitarian assistance for which America had been known. The scrapping of USAID as an agency and the whittling down of American soft power in the world may turn out to be a mistake. It is, of course, true that American assistance is not always appreciated and sometimes taken for Yankee imperialism; but there is no doubt the world in general is grateful to the USA for feeding the hungry and starving, even if it has a hidden cost which an hungry person does not care about. The abandonment of taking in immigrants and preaching to the rest of the affluent world to follow suit is the most consequential of the negative policies of the Trump administration which is a betrayal of the American revolution and does not augur for global peace and understanding which the American revolution represents to mankind.
NOTE: Views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Theliberationnews
