By Carlton Joseph
On Monday, mainstream media applauded the president for his hostage news conference at which he read from a teleprompter. The media claimed he was “presidential” and ranted and raved at how well he delivered his speech. I was flabbergasted. Why are these supposedly intelligent broadcasters so gullible? This is third-rate acting at its best. Are they so in need of an inspirational president that they would ignore the true character of Donald Trump when he is off the teleprompter. Trump is his true self -“tweeting” in the morning and evening. This is a very disturbing and dangerous development in our democratic Republic, and I began to realize how easy it is for a dictator to emerge and gain power in weaker democracies, and how Hitler and Mussolini were able to wreak havoc on the world. And more recently, how Erdogan was able to become a dictator in Turkey.
It was obvious to even the casual observer that Trump didn’t mean a word of what he read. He looked like someone had a gun to his head; he didn’t want to make that speech. This president is racist, Islamophobic, and anti-Semitic, (even though his daughter converted to Judaism and is married to a Jew) In Trump’s world, money “trumps” everything, and the Kushners have money.
Some congressional democrats have complained that the extreme right wing, white supremacists, like Sebastian Gorka, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller have exerted significant influence on U.S. policy and has emboldened and approved the ideological extremism that leads White supremacists to spread violence and hatred. My position is that the white supremacists have installed their Supreme Grand Wizard as President of the United States.
After the “Supreme Wizard’s” terrible week, he located a foreign enemy to distract attention. He completely reversed his position of 2012 when he tweeted “Afghanistan is a complete waste. Time to come home!” He announced that the U.S. would continue the ongoing war in Afghanistan stating that “We can’t withdraw too hastily.”
However, to many observers, the same arguments are being made with respect to the continued occupation of Afghanistan. This time there’s no timetable for withdrawal and there is also no delineation of the exact number of troops. The major difference is in the approach towards Pakistan. Trump acknowledged the contributions and sacrifices of Pakistan but insisted “Pakistan has also sheltered the same organizations that try every single day to kill our people. We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting. But that will have to change. And that will change immediately. No partnership can survive a country’s harboring of militants and terrorists who target U.S. service members and officials. It is time for Pakistan to demonstrate its commitment to civilization, order and to peace.” He then proposed to further develop a strategic partnership with India and a more important role for India in Afghanistan, stating “we want them to help us more with Afghanistan, especially in the area of economic assistance and development.”
Having addressed the troops on Monday, using a teleprompter to appear presidential, the Supreme Wizard was defiant on Tuesday at a campaign rally in Arizona. There he claimed: “They’re trying to take away our culture. They’re trying to take away our history,” He blamed “weak, weak people” for allowing the removal of statues commemorating the Confederacy. He threatened to shut down the government over border wall funding, and went on an extended diatribe about the media, blaming reporters for the negative fallout he had received over his responses to the hate-fueled violence in Charlottesville.
Trump selectively recounted the statements he made in the days following the chaos in Charlottesville, arguing that he “spoke out forcefully against hatred and bigotry and violence” but that the media — whom he called “sick people” — refused to report it properly. “You know where my heart is,” Trump said. He later accused the media of giving a platform to the hate groups that were central to the violence in Charlottesville.
Yes! Mr. Trump, we know where your heart is. It is with David Duke who stated that ” we are determined to take our country back. We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in. That’s why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he’s going to take our country back. And that’s what we’ve got to do.” Your heart is with the members of other white supremacists who said, “America was, until this last generation, a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance and it belongs to us.” —- “America was founded by white people. It was founded for white people. America was not founded to be a multiracial, multicultural society.” Of course they failed to acknowledge that the country was built on the free labor of black people.
I understand their feeling of loss and impotence. If I were a white person living in a country that erroneously made me believe that I was superior for over 400 years and then I realize that the people I have hated and thought inferior had in many cases caught up with me or surpassed me financially, politically, socially and culturally. I would be mad. I would also feel inferior, because I had wasted a 400-year advantage. I would ask the question: how could a people who were forcible removed from their homeland, enslaved, denied the right to their own language and religion, denied the right to learn to read and write the new language of the oppressors, survived slavery and Jim Crow have succeeded? How could a people who received Civil Rights in 1964 catch up so quickly? Are they inferior? Have we poor and lower middle class whites been duped? African American culture from Blues, Jazz, Rhythm & Blues, and Hip Hop dominates the world culture. African Americans are members of Congress and the Senate and one of them has occupied the highest office in the land, the Presidency. If I were a white person I would realize the cruel trick that has been played on me.
It is time for dispossessed white people to realize that black, brown or any other colored people are not the problem. Rather, the problem is the extreme greed of the one per cent and their goal of total control of the economics and peoples of the world.
(Trinidad-born Carlton Joseph who lives in Washington D.C., is a close observer of political developments in the United States.)