Trump’s America is turning into a Third World country

Six months after US President Donald Trump assumed office on January 20, 2017, he visited France during that country’s annual Bastille Day’s celebrations. This is the day the French Revolution started on July 14, 1789, and it is marked with fireworks, concerts and military parades.

Mr Trump was so impressed by the fly-pasts that when he went home, he expressed a desire to showcase American military might in a grand parade during the celebrations marked to honour those who have in the past served in the country’s armed forces.

The grand spectacle that President Trump envisioned was not to be that year because, according to critics, spending $92 million for the mighty show could not be justified; apparently he wanted the whole works – fireworks, state-of-the-art military jets and even tanks rumbling on the ground.

Although the proposal was rejected that year, Mr Trump would get a scaled down version in 2018 during the Independence Day celebrations.

TOTALITARIAN RULERS

This whole thing should have raised a red flag; such parades seem to be, on the whole, the preserve of totalitarian rulers. Every year, Russia holds one, and so does China. On the main, these two super-powers do it as a form of arm-flexing to show their rivals they are not to be trifled with.

North Korea’s annual spectacles are meant to intimidate its mortal enemy to the south. However, the need for the mightiest military power in the world to do the same thing escapes many.

 It appears the projection of raw power runs in President Trump’s veins, for it beats reason why a powerful president needs to constantly engage in a show of might against fellow citizens, while groveling at the feet of a nuclear-armed despot who, in ordinary circumstances, would be regarded as the real enemy.

Time for confession: Since my youth, I always looked up to the United States as the champion of freedom, the defender of human rights, and the source of all that was good in culture and entertainment.

When I was very young, my greatest pleasure was to watch cowboy films brought to us weekly in the villages for entertainment during which hapless ‘Red’ Indians were always defeated by cowboys wearing white hats.

Later, these villains were replaced by leering Mexican or black fugitives from justice. The sheriff and his posse always carried the day and we went home happy.

My fascination with everything American continued even after biting huge chunks of British culture in literature classes at secondary and university levels. In hindsight, the only meaningful education I received at those levels was when African literature studies were introduced and we were made aware there is an alternative narrative which, though somewhat underdeveloped, could be a lot more satisfying.

But whatever the case, we are all steeped in American culture in one way or the other. The American film industry has no equal in the world. American music still shapes our idea about entertainment, and our broadcasters try to outdo one another on who is better at nasal tweng.

DISILLUSIONED

 But now, as the Americans head towards the elections, many people who believed in the values its past leaders always espoused are becoming disillusioned, for this great nation seems to be sliding towards a Third World status. At this rate, it may even join the rest of us “s*thole countries” whose electoral politics are often dysfunctional.

Judging by most opinion polls, Mr Trump may very well be whitewashed by Mr Joe Biden on November 3, and he is growing increasingly desperate. Two occurrences that could not have been foreseen contrived to make his continued hold on power precarious because of how poorly he has handled them—race relations and the coronavirus pandemic.

The months-long Black Lives Matter protests in major cities, and the spiraling of Covid-19 deaths, have pushed him into a corner from which he is trying to extricate himself using very unorthodox means.

He remains one of only three US presidents who have ever been impeached. He is also the president most likely to refuse to leave office if defeated. But perhaps the most worrying behaviour is his decision to pour heavily armed federal troops into cities run by Democratic governors and mayors with the aim of shoring up his flagging electoral numbers. He probably hopes that citizens who are being whisked off the streets and detained will resist, giving him an excuse to crack down hard.

These are tactics usually employed by tinpot dictators to rig elections. The fact that, despite the outcry, he has threatened to send these “stormtroopers” to keep peace in seven other cities including New York means the situation may rapidly get out of hand. In the meantime, the US is in danger of losing all the respect accorded to it by the rest of the world, but judging from his tweets, Mr Trump couldn’t care less.

Mr Ngwiri is a consultant editor; [email protected]