By Hermon Rock Hackshaw

A significant segment of the world’s population is anxiously awaiting the outcome of the next US presidential elections in November.

The truth, as told on the campaign trail itself, is rather controversial. If you don’t believe me, then let me refer you to a female spokesperson (Kelly-Ann Conway) for former US president Donald Trump. She said that there is something called “alternative facts.”

REALLY! Any analysis of the contemporary US political climate must acknowledge that a cancer has spread through the political discourse, and its potential for an eventual civil war is here again.

It did not start when Donald Trump descended an escalator to announce his run for the presidency in 2015.

Way back in the day, in the USA (United States of Amnesia), political disagreements would lead prominent politicians to duel to the death. That’s a historical fact. Recently, a wannabee assassin tried to take out one of the current presidential candidates. Bullets came within millimeters of taking the life of Donald Trump.

President Joe Biden went on national television to state that “this isn’t who we are as Americans.” Sorry, Mr. Biden. We are at a crucial point in World History. We have peregrinated to a place that is more precarious and perilous than the day before nuclear bombs were first dropped on Japan.

Many subscribe to the theory of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (M.A.D). They insist that since a nuclear war is unwinnable for any single nation, then the possession of said weapons serves as a deterrent to a nuclear war. Suppose, however, we must deal with a narcissistic sociopath as the leader of a country with nuclear weapons. What then? Would that theory hold up?

According to some religious folks, a World War where nuclear weapons are used will be “Armageddon.” To non-religious folks. it will be a cataclysm of limitless possibilities. Either way it wouldn’t be pretty.

We got here through half-truths, lies, hypocrisy, dishonesty, deception and contradictions. The funny thing is we have always had the receipts. We have had writings through books, newspapers, magazines and other periodicals. We have also had radio, television, audio and videotapes

We can debunk lies and half-truths. We can also expose hypocrisy, dishonesty, deceit and contradictions. All it takes is a little common sense; the ability to be rational, some education and logic.

When President Biden made that absurd remark about Americans, I recalled the tragic deaths of four US presidents: Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy. I also recalled the attempted assassinations of Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford.

And don’t forget the deaths of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers and Robert Kennedy; just to name a few prominent Americans who were also assassinated.

Let’s face it: Americans are a violent people with a fascination for guns and other weapons. We are also fearful and xenophobic. Our stubborn history of racism has led to this. The minimizing and trivializing of “her-story” is of no help in this regard.

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was the era that Europeans arrogantly deemed “The Age of Discovery”. But how do you discover something that is already there?

When Portuguese sailors started exploring the West-African coastline, it created some envy and resentment from other nations in Europe, since a whole new world was opening, and some felt left out of the happenings and possibilities.

And when Christopher Columbus sailed to the West Indies under the flag of Spain, nations like England, France, Belgium, Holland and others, were incensed. After all, the Roman Catholic Pope had issued a Papal Bull, “The Treaty of Tordesillas” in 1494, which divided the New World between Spain and Portugal. One Englishman said: “show me where in Adam’s will, it says the Pope can do this?”

Which brings me to “religion”, especially since it played a heavy hand in European parlor-games back then when monarchs and prelates from the various European nations sanctioned colonialism. Their imperialistic goals facilitated man’s inhumanity to fellow man, which was already in existence given the atrocities of war all over the “old” and “new” worlds. Thus, we can honestly say that whites don’t have a lock on inhumanity, since it comes in all races, ethnicities, tribes, genders and religions.

Once European explorers were given “carte-blanche” to conquer the “ungodly savages” of the new world, racism took a new turn. One historian wrote that “with callous brutality and wanton rapacity” Europeans depopulated the Americas, Indies, Asia and the Far East.

The hubris of whites during this era is nauseating. They had no respect for the cultures they encountered. The customs, rituals and practices of aboriginal people(s) were met with disdain and condescension. From Aztecs to Incas, from Indians (East and West) to natives in Australia, New Zealand, Africa, Asia, the Middle and Far-East: no real difference.

One of the foreign-policy goals of Spain’s Queen Isabella was to “Christianize” the new world via “Catholicism”. Other European monarchs followed suit. They haughtily believed that they had a “God-given right” to lands and resources of the native peoples. This is where those who subscribed to the views of “white supremacy” found their voices and they surely used violence to express and perpetuate this ideology.

Hermon Rock Hackshaw is a Trinidad-born university lecturer and political activist, based in New York.