By Ryhaan Shah
The liberal left in the US are raising a hue and cry about the policies and actions being taken by President Donald Trump. They are condemning them as being contrary to American values and principles, and there have been protests across the US aimed at pressuring Trump to change direction.
Trump’s Supreme Court voted for his travel ban, which effectively makes it difficult for Muslims to enter the US. This followed on the heels of the Trump-created crisis at the US/Mexican border, when the president actually followed through on regulations that allowed for families entering the US to be separated – children from parents — as a deterrent to illegal immigration. Previous presidents never enforced that policy, but the regulation was always there; it took a Trump to enforce it.
Trump promotes himself as a strongman to his conservative base, and lambasts those previous presidents for being weak on immigration issues. His authoritarian moves go over well with ultra-conservative Republicans even as he forges alliances with dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jung Un. These are the leaders he admires. He views dialogue and diplomacy as weaknesses, and the liberal left continue to decry what they see as Trump’s blatant ignorance of the way democracy works, and his lack of understanding about what it means to be the leader of the free world.
But America voted for Trump. They voted for a buffoon, bully and bigot because some were simply fed up with the way Washington worked, or not worked, and wanted to give an outsider a chance; but most were heeding his campaign calls for strong borders, which painted Mexicans as rapists and criminals, and they cheered on his assaults against just about every minority group: women, Muslims, the disabled, which lay outside of his white conservative base.
The loudest dog whistle was his stance on immigration aimed at barring non-white and Muslim people from what he has called “shit-hole” countries from entering the US. Trump ignores the fact that the West amassed its wealth by invading, occupying and exploiting those very countries, and that their colonisation was done from a position of superiority that was shaded not only by the colour of the invaders’ skin, but also from the crusading angle of their supposedly superior God.
When US Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended Trump’s immigration policy by using the Bible, he was not out of order. The Europeans and Americans had done the same to justify slavery. Why blame Trump when he simply personifies the white supremacist racism on which Western democracy was built? What seems clear is that that racism never went away, and the authoritarianism that Trump effects publicly had always simmered under the veneer of democratic values that claimed to respect diversity and promised equality for everyone.
Trump has ripped away that veneer, and his autocratic behaviour is in perfect step with Britain and Europe, where the conservative right is also pushing for anti-immigration policies using a similar Trumpian pretext of border security.
A closer look at many of the global conflicts that result in migration and refugee crises often show the imperialist hand still at work. Who, for instance, are Israel’s allies as it continues to invade and occupy Palestinian territory?
Here, in Guyana, thousands fled from the 1960s onwards, when the US and UK colluded to place a brutal PNC dictator in power, and cared nothing about the consequences for the people and our country.
Guyana was simply a dispensable pawn that was used to protect their “democracy”; and it appears that another round of that dictatorial rule is to be inflicted on our country, and again to serve foreign interests.
Trump is giving Americans a taste of the damage and chaos that the US has imposed on other countries through their creation and support for authoritarian regimes. If accepted as a lesson learned, his presidency could help shift US foreign policy towards working to establish peaceful and constructive solutions for global problems.
Just think how quickly our country would attain peace and prosperity if powerful international players used their diplomatic clout to bring the major political parties to the table to thrash out and find solutions for the egregious issues of race and ethnicity that continue to divide us, rather than playing one side against the other? But then a prosperous Guyana would not be so easily manipulated to serve their interests.
No lessons will be learned from Trump’s excesses, despite the hue and cry. What he has exposed are the racism and authoritarian tendencies that lie at the very heart of America.
