By Ryhaan Shah
The “ugly American” is a term often used to refer to American citizens, most often abroad, who are loud, brash, arrogant, ignorant and egocentric. For a whole body of Americans, President Donald Trump embodies these traits and they feel that he is exporting this portrait of themselves and their country to the world.
The term comes from the novel “The Ugly American” written by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, which was made into a movie in 1963 starring Marlon Brando. The plot exposed the behaviour of Americans in Southeast Asia who were corrupt, blundering, boastful and incompetent, and who backed impractical projects that would serve the interests of American contractors, rather than the local population.
In Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal”, he personalises these very traits as a businessman and the book’s ghost writer Tony Schwartz did not support Trump’s campaign because from his up-close vantage point, he had concluded that Trump cared about nobody but himself. In an interview with The New York Times, Schwartz said that Trump lied strategically and that since most people are constrained by the truth, this indifference to the truth “gave him a strange advantage”.
Trump’s preference for communicating via Twitter is explained by his short attention span which has left him with “a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance,” Schwartz stated.
These character traits were exposed during the election campaign when Trump’s narcissism, racism and sexism became regular talking points. But he won, has been inaugurated and on the first day in office took to Twitter to complain about the news media misrepresenting the crowd size at his inauguration. He claimed it was the biggest ever of any inauguration.
That was a lie but his obsession with claiming everything of his as the biggest appears an over compensation for areas in which he feels he falls short; or else, it exposes an authoritarian mind-set where crowd appeal matters more in domination and power than constitutional legitimacy.
He now wants an investigation into electoral fraud. Electoral rigging, and authoritarianism and its sickening sycophancy – the US sounds like a Third World country like, say, Guyana.
The US news media and political elite are most concerned about Trump undermining their democracy and questioning the legitimacy of the US government, and they expect their concerns to be taken seriously.
Yet, they can hardly be unaware about the “ugly American” policies undertaken abroad by their government and what this means for countries like Guyana. However, it is unlikely that the US will be prompted because of this first-hand experience to rethink their policies of enabling election rigging, authoritarianism and dishonest government in other countries in order to secure their national interests.
It is unlikely because they are the world’s superpower and it is, as Trump believes, all about furthering their selfish agenda. While Americans are protective about their democracy, the authoritarianism that threatens Guyana again – and their suspected role in creating this situation – will hardly register as a concern for them. Guyana is nothing, if not a dispensable pawn in a high-stakes game for valuable oil reserves. However, the US media’s watchdog role in protecting the freedoms and principles of their democracy might have incidental fallouts and discoveries that could favour our country’s interests.
Greenpeace USA has joined the US media that have published reports on the possible conflicts of interest that incoming US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will face over the ExxonMobil oil find here.
Greenpeace USA has stated that Tillerson will most likely hire staff who will represent his position while negotiating in Guyana. “The unavoidable outcome of this is friendlier rules for Exxon, rules that prioritise production over the environment and corporate comfort over social justice,” Jesse Coleman of Greenpeace USA writes.
The “friendlier rules for Exxon” uncovered might well include the trampling on democracy and democratic processes in order to keep a government deemed “friendlier” to ExxonMobil in a “frontier” location, as Guyana is called.
This might be seen as intolerable in the current climate of widespread opposition to Trump, which already includes demonstrations from women and environmentalists.
Trump begins his presidency with the lowest popularity rating of 40 per cent of any newly elected US President, and America and the world are in for a roller coaster ride dictated by Trump’s Twitter messages, his conspiracy theories and, mostly, by his disdain for truth. Ever the showman, he probably believes he is the star of the biggest reality media show ever. While many Americans are appalled by his show, just as many more think the “ugly American” is just what they ordered.
