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America, What the F........
by Thanos Kalamidas
2016-08-08 11:11:00
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US President, Barack Obama, addressing the Democratic convention a few days earlier said that the main question he's getting from world leaders as they watch the current presidential campaign is: "What is happening in America?” Well, he is not entirely correct. The whole of the world is wondering what’s happening in America – not just the leaders - and actually most of the globe is worrying with what’s happening in America this minute.

trum01_400_02But let’s stick with the Europeans, supposedly the closest allies of USA. In Europe there are as many stereotypes and prejudice about Americans and America probably as many there are in USA about Europeans. And even though is difficult to fight stereotypes and prejudice we all try to do so accepting the fact that bad leaders or individual choices don’t necessarily identify bad people. However, if you could put all the stereotypes and prejudice Europeans have towards Americans in one person that would have been Donald Trump. An arrogant, narcissist who believes that money buys everything and that: the end justifies the means, doesn’t matter what these “means” stands for. Lies, misleading misinformation, populism and manipulation cover just a few of those “means” in a state where stereotypes want its leaders to have in the past establish and support some of the most notorious and murderous dictators like Pinochet in Chile.

But Donald Trump is far more. He has a personal agenda. He’s aiming for a dictatorial regime that will “legally” discriminate people, establish the oligarchy of the few who belong to his entourage and use even nuclear weapons to establish global dominance. It sounds like a spy B-movie but unfortunately this is how he looks from this side of the Atlantic. Actually Trump’s America is everything Americans have described for decades as the Stalinist Russia. An aggressive and the same time paranoid state, living in and with fear and discrimination. Everything America supposedly stands against.

But the fear doesn’t stop with Donald Trump. While American leadership through history has shown arrogance, narcissism and militarism the same time there was a certain balance. This was the country made from immigrants and tolerance. This is a country that fought a civil war to end race discrimination, most of all the American constitution became a blue print for a log of democracies all around the world as the fundamental law that guarantees citizens’ rights – of any colour, religion, sexuality, ethnicity, origins - in a democracy. And everything Donald Trump and his supporters stand for opposes all the above.

The new president of NRA (National Rifle Association), Jim Porter: “It’s only a matter of time before we can own coloured people again.” I’m the exception who read the above in total shock. The man dared say something like that while in the white house there is a black president. This is beyond my logic. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said in an interview that he thinks it’s an “excellent idea” to monitor Muslims on the federal watch list through electronic monitoring tags. I’m speechless. Imagine Rudy Giuliani trying to force an electronic monitoring tag on Mohamed Ali. But these examples are just the peak of the iceberg. Others, including congressmen, representatives, local leaders and local authorities or businesspeople have been far more extreme and all these represent millions of American people. They are actually mouthing what millions believe.

I saw Hilary’s side celebrating the difference of 9 points in a latest survey. She got 47% to Trump’s 38%. Timo Soini in Finland represents just 19% of the electoral, still the last few years he has managed to change the global champion of the democratic transparency into a backyard xenophobic fascism with democratic veil.  38% US voters translates into 94 million people. 94,000,000 people in USA believe that black people should be slaves; 94,000,000 people in USA believe that Muslims should be stamped because of their religion; 94,000,000 people in USA believe that America should dominate, rule and use all of us as they wish and nothing matters to them since the end justifies the means. And that while their leaders and representatives have already warned that if they don’t win in the coming US elections that will prove forgery! 94,000,000 people in USA believe that the world is made with the ones who are with us and the ones against us and for the ones against us we have the biggest arsenal of nuclear bombs, biological and chemical weapons and nobody to tell us what right or wrong.

President Obama, Bill Clinton and Hillary have said many times the last few weeks pointing at Donald Trump that this is not America. Really? 94,000,000 people are Americans, are in every possible position from the US army to the Congress and the town-halls and these people scare the shit out of me. They are Goebbels and Stalin dream team and wet dream the same time.

Hillary will probably be the next US President – even though let me be a bit careful because this religious style fanaticism with Trump can work in strange ways – these 94,000,000 will not change. On the contrary they will become violently defensive to their choices. So, NO the question is not "What is happening in America?” but: Americans, what the F@CK you doing over there!


        
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Emanuel Paparella2016-08-08 15:52:13
Indeed Thanos, what you write makes a lot of sense, and the anger and irony is certainly justified, even though making sense and wrathful indignation and the truth do not have much currency nowadays; these are the times when insane politicians (who do not distinguish in their unhinged mind between truth and falsehood and are “kings of the bullshit” as Zakaria just proclaimed Trump); what you have written needs to be rounded up a bit; not to round up the square which would also be illogical and deranged, but to complement it, so to speak.

As you yourself have written at times, things always look different when one is closer to the place of the event being analyzed. After all, we do live on two different sides of the river called The Atlantic, albeit united, so they tell us, by common ideals and goals inherent to Western Civilization. So, from this side of the Atlantic, let’s dialogue a bit.

Consider what is going on in Britain and the US, as we speak. In Britain we see the spectacle of a Theresa May appealing to the populist movement and trying to co-opt it under the wing of British conservatism. It seems to be working for her. She has grasped that rather than emphasizing racism, bigotry, bigotry, xenophobia, which are surely there within both populism and extreme right wing conservatism, it is more clever and Machiavellian to emphasize economic globalization and the ensuing stagnation and economic retrogression of the middle class, suffering the manipulative stings and outrages of the rich and powerful (from the right and from the left as well) for thirty years now, beginning with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

For indeed, not all populists are racists and bigots, although there is admittedly a good number of those to be counted. Similarly, not all 90 million followers of Trump are bigots, although there is a substantial number of those too, not excluding those who, like Trump, have a temperament which is slightly unhinged. But not all, by any means; I have friends who happen to be Republicans and do not look insane and bigoted to me; many are intellectuals even if misguided at times; they too despise what is currently going on in the Republican party. It is a mistake, in my opinion to characterize them all with a wide brush as despicable right wing or left wing racists.

In the US, this morning, having secretly impeached presidential nominee Donald Trump (as intuited by me and explained exclusively in Ovi and Modern Diplomacy in my recent article on the impeachment of a Frankenstein monster) and duly found him impeachable and dangerously insane, the “praetorian guards” of the Republican party, to eliminate the real danger to the status quo (the globalization benefiting the rich and powerful rather than the disadvantaged), have decided in their considerable “wisdom” to assassinate and destroy him politically. Not physically, to be sure, but politically and of course by “democratic means”; do what the Romans did, destroy and then throw salt on the earth of the vanquished enemy so that nothing would grow after that and represent a threat; never mind that the real danger of a civil war (political, if not physical) may then loom because of the disrespect shown to the democratic process and the will of the frustrated deranged minds who follow the Bullshit artist. It is suspected that the new nominee, to replace Trump, will not be Pence but Kasich, the governor of Ohio. It gets more interesting by the minute.

Perhaps, given the above, we can agree on this much: that what is going on both sides of the Atlantic is also quite similar despite the perceived cultural nuances and differences. Both sides’ political events need to be analyzed dispassionately, remembering what unites us and what we both have to lose, nothing short than democracy itself. And if the diagnosis turns out to be similar, perhaps the prognosis ought to be considered similar too. But, whether the diagnosis and prognosis be right or wrong, let the dialogue among friends and allies continue; we can do worse if we continue to emphasize what divides us rather than what we have in common and unites us, urgently needing to be preserved.


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