The years 2016 to 2020 will surely go down in history as the period during which the USA was forced to see itself in the mirror without makeup for the first time... when they realized that there are and always have been more than one "America"... as it is perceived by different kinds of Americans... victims, champions, bystanders - and perpetrators... a period of internal schism, self-examination, blame, denial, anger, sorrow, revulsion, self-recrimination, introspection and reckoning.
People are shocked - intensely shocked - that so many could still in 2020 have voted for a demagogue who usurped every notion of human decency (I certainly am) while over 230k people died due to entirely avoidable circumstances - namely Trump's sabotage of the Pandemic Response Team, constant science denialism, meddling in the affairs and duties of the CDC and hamstringing medical experts who could have made a difference. Even this week, Trumpanzees have been holding rallies and protests around the US with nary a mask in sight. COVID-19's all part of a larger hoax and conspiracy - Q'anon and their conservative messiah told them so. Oh, right, and the Earth's flat too.
On Trump's rhetoric, immigrant and refugee children were stolen from their parents and literally sold into a network of paid adoption agencies or languished for 4 years in cages, lawful immigrants, migrants and refugees were deported or lived in fear of deportation - at least one person was killed after he was forcibly returned to his country of origin. Hatred, fear and violence spread like wildfire, fueled by a litany of hate spewed by malicious and dishonest political figures - Trump chiefly at their head. Environmental and human rights protections were undone and sabotaged under the auspices of the GOP-Trump administration...and hate crime and incidence of domestic terrorism and the normalization of a peculiar cocktail of white supremacist Christian nationalism thrived.
The margin of difference in the election result should not have been so close. It's truly shocking that vastly more Americans didn't demonstrate the moral outrage against this Trumpian regime - which they so richly deserve - by means of their vote. That anyone could still show any kind of approval to the irredeemable scum occupying the seat of government is quite beyond me - and leads me to conclude that the world contains a disturbing number of evil, twisted, narcissistic fiends in human form.
As I am, I suppose - half a world away - many Americans themselves will be wondering the same things, pondering the same glaring disparities between Republicans and Democrats. It's more than just politics and party loyalty, or who they like best among candidates - it's become violently extremist and overtly fundamentalist in nature in recent years.
Many times people have likened their opposition to being evil people... but that's all just rhetorical and par for the course in any contest as spirited as an election. Not this time - this time, a man who's demonstrated his tendency to do truly evil things - who's flaunted his penchant for malice and cruelty and flagrant narcissism - although he didn't receive the required number of votes to win, has still received a disproportionately large slice of the vote pie.
This, in a country which until heretofore has enjoyed the reputation of being the bastion of fair play, justice, champion of human rights and democracy and etc. - whether truly deserved or not?
Americans - and the rest of us - wonder when did it become thus, forgetting that those people didn't just appear out of thin air, neither did their attitudes or supporting organizations, ideologies and movements. They only became more visible. Emboldened. Less afraid to be recognized. More vocal. More acceptable. Even worse, that sort of lowlife doesn't just exist over there - they're everywhere.
After another 4 years in power, I'm sure the GOP would've seen to it that being a sociopathic fascist draped in the US flag with a bible tucked in one hand and holding an AR-15 in the other, was "normal" and "patriotic", almost without argument. They would erase democracy, human rights, social conscience and compassion - and they'd use patriotism and religion to do it. Amen, brutha's and sista's, pass the collection plate.
Sane, rational people in the US and all around the planet have been horrified over the past 4 years, watching the unmitigated shit-show going on over there. While people peacefully kneeled in a legal form of protest were threatened with violence and death and slandered as 'traitors' and 'terrorists' - while the real terrorists doing the threatening were praised as 'patriotic' and admirable by Mr. Trump and his legion of brain-dead acid-blooded followers.
Sadly, the GOP and those who empowered, collaborated with and supported these sickening displays of barbarism since 2016 aren't going anywhere - but their hatred can still fade, along with their fears and their ignorance. This is not a simple problem that can be solved overnight. It's going to take at least a generation. That's if they even try.
We've seen now what happened when people like that were given control. The whole world has watched on social media and in the news in shock and astonishment for four unbearably long unsettling years as the USA they thought they knew disintegrated and became a banana republic, object of pity and a laughing stock.
Emboldened by Trumps malice and audacity, other small tin-pot dictators and proponents of human rights abuse around the world - like Bolsenaro (who supposedly wept openly when news of Trumps electoral defeat reached him) became more open and bold about who they were and what they were doing, encouraged by the apparent lack of resistance rising to meet him. Crackpots emerged everywhere, scuttling out into the open - even in South Africa - touting their admiration for Trump, while supporting right-wing movements in their own countries. Meanwhile, with Trump and his cronies maintaining a white-knuckled grip on the tiller, the US withdrew from international agreements and instead supported anti-human rights and climate change denial measures internationally, and proudly defied commonsense and reason, and undermined the value of science.
Fueled by stochastic terrorism, the death toll of transgender women, and especially those of color in the US has never been higher than under this hateful administration, which has thrived on spewing hateful transphobic rhetoric and engaged in sweeping legal sabotage which has resulted in a situation where being transgender is tantamount to having a target on your forehead.
The people of Earth collectively held our breaths as Donald Trump brought the world to the brink of nuclear war with Iran and its allies only three little days into 2020, and shook our heads in sheer disbelief as a righteous and overdue effort to impeach him did not in fact remove him from office.
How could a country which for so long had maintained the position of an apparent moral authority, figure of international justice, beacon of compassion and bastion of human rights have sunk so low? How could they? Clearly the entire Trump administration has no compassion, sense of decency, and has lost its humanity - to the point where I think the backs of their necks should be checked for zips.
The Western world had us all growing up believing the propaganda we'd been fed via generations of American media, movies and series - and even news - which suggests the USA is, was and always will be the 'good guy' - because their Constitution (and their celebration of it) makes them out to be thus. The US Constitution is very good - just a pity it doesn't really get put into full effect as it reads. Everything's put to interpretation of course, and it seems loopholes are abundant, as is the potential for corruption and distortion, just as in religion.
Things are not that simple or clear-cut in reality, they never were. The US alleges it's presence in the Middle East is to "fight terrorism" and "defend democracy", and plenty of American soldiers have been maimed, scarred for life and killed in this cause that has appreciative patriots thanking unemployed veterans with PTSD sleeping on park benches for their service - or praising women vets posing in bikinis with prosthetic limbs for their bravery - but at the same time there are the other Americans... the ones caught torturing prisoners and raping and even killing villagers and innocent bystanders - and being pardoned by Trump. It's an old story - not a new one, and it goes back many years. Just being American - or wrapping your genitals in underwear with the American flag printed on it - doesn't automatically mean you're a good person.
A country run by the winning party tends to take the tone of the government under that party. Under the Democratic party in the last half-century at least, the US has historically prospered - while under the Republicans it tended to take on gradually more religious, pious, conservative and fiscally irresponsible overtones. In fact, for the last half century, as fanatical 'revivalist' Christian-nationalist pundits increasingly infiltrated the Republican party, each successive Republican administration became increasingly fanatical, reactionary and extremist - until it became the unmitigated shambles that clinched electoral victory in 2016 - handed to it by that elephant in the room and leftover of slavery, the Electoral College.
It's glaringly obvious that the US isn't always the good guy - it couldn't be, because their perceived goodness is determined by the actions of whichever skipper happens to be sitting at the wheel of the ship at the time - which could be anyone, frankly. To carry the euphemism, Captain Kirk or Picard would inspire confidence, humanity and good conscience... but Captain Pugwash or Captain Ahab - or in the present case, a curious mix of both? I've been consistently surprised that it took four years for protests against this malicious regime on the scale of BLM to emerge.
Since I entered the field of human rights activism in 2008, I've grown weary watching the progress (and setback) of human rights in the US with regards to racial and LGBT equality. Typically, rights on paper don't always reach the real world - as borne witness to by the unbelievably numerous examples of blatant prejudice and bigotry in the actions of government officers, law enforcement - and the current president of the USA himself. It takes constant enforcement of the law to ensure that the law has any real meaning. That said, if the bill of rights and the constitution and other laws promising fairness, justice and equality for all had been enforced all along, the situation where people needed to protest race-based murder at the hands of the law enforcers themselves would not exist today.
The arrogant boldness on the face of that cop who callously kneeled on that black man's throat and killed him on camera without the slightest bit of justification - or concern for consequences - still nauseates me. The look on his face said he knew he would get away with it - and many do. Many have before, and probably will in future - a long history of institutionalized racism says so.
It's absurd really - instead of a blanket ruling on applying equality to all people under the law (as specified by the Constitution of the US) there is instead perpetual ongoing legal debate in each state on who the operative word ALL applies to, as though it were some kind of arcane riddle.
Legal changes in either direction come rapidly - one year, gay people can get married in so many states, and the next, that number goes up or down while rabid right wingers trying to ban marriage or employment or human rights equality play tug-o-war with equality advocates trying to preserve or win it. It never seems to end - and Trump has only made things worse by rolling back legal equality laws and protections for LGBT (specifically transgender) people by presidential decree. Thanks to him, medical staff and hospitals can now legally refuse lifesaving medical treatment to transgender people using the old pretext of "religious principle" to excuse blatant murder. How twisted and evil does someone have to be to think that's the right thing to do - and to still support such a cruel, vicious, spiteful fiend? Even worse, how can anyone have peace of mind living in such ongoing uncertainty?
Everyone has a right to an opinion, or so those who try to extinguish the light for those they despise like to claim, while calling people "snowflakes" and telling native Americans and Mexicans to "go back home" without having the intellect to see the irony. As it's been exhaustively said before, an opinion is about what kind of pizza or flavor of toothpaste you like better over others. Publicly inciting hatred from a position of influence or authority against people who are literally dying as a result of hate-crime is NOT! It's stochastic terrorism.
These people are by far not the brightest bulbs on the tree, and to think that their equally moronic and malicious idol is sitting in the Oval Office - dug in, complete with a newly built wall to fortify his position there, with full access to the "nukular" football, and having already brought the world to the brink of WW3, is simply horrifying!
In the past four years, we've seen things we never thought possible, starting with a rapid decline as of the last election in 2016, getting progressively worse until November 2020. This past year has been the worst of the lot, where we've come to the brink of seeing in advance what terrible things would happen if these frightful people maintained control of the US government. It would only get worse - much worse.
What makes that prospect all the more frightening, is that despite all the terrible things this administration has done since 2016, and in spite of losing the election, they don't want to take their exit cue - they want to stay on and do more harm. The fact that just under half of American voters want them to, is simply horrifying. Unbelievable, isn't it?
In spite of all the thoroughly damning evidence which to my mind should warrant a Nuremberg style trial for crimes against humanity for the entire administration - the thickest of the thick, the "Trumpsters" STILL fanatically support him, seemingly to the hilt. Unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud abound - carelessly and deliberately fueled by the Trumpster himself, whose Twitter account was actually recently muted for a period for the first time ever. Took them long enough though, didn't it?
As if to solidly demonstrate the influence of Trump on emboldening right wing leaders around the world, his defeat appears to have the opposite effect as well - South American right wing leaders - who mostly emerged during the Trump era, appear reluctant to continue following his defeat and are clamoring to congratulate Biden.
Now that control has been fairly - and seemingly - won back from these fascist corporate billionaire stooges, incoming lawmakers need to take pains to ensure that something like this never happens again. That is, if Mango Mussolini actually leaves office, or is made to if he refuses. Being an amateur historian, I like to imagine the sort of solution the Romans had for stubborn people who didn't want to vacate their offices... the Praetorian Guard did more than just protect Emperors after all.
At the time of writing, Trump has not only yet to concede defeat in an election in which the results were not only glaringly obvious, but which was declared free and fair by an impartial body commissioned by a skeptical Trump himself - and his Secretary of State has formally announced a "smooth transition to a second Trump administration". Oh gods, please, no. This seems to me like a glaring attempt to remain in power by a man eager to stay out of jail for the remainder of his life, and I wouldn't put it past him to stage a coup.
He's fighting to stay in power to the very last moment. Can't say I'm surprised at all. Even some of his team-mates are saying "the election is over" and criticizing the delay. The transition is taking too long.
How, I wonder, would the American people react to such a scenario? Imagine that the "recount" Trump is demanding takes place. The only conceivable outcome in a free and fair election in which he'd already lost fairly, is that he would be shown up to be the loser a second time - unless his supporters somehow fudge the results of such a recount. Sound far-fetched? Think it's beyond or beneath Trump? Watch out for tons of fake Trump votes just appearing out of thin air to stack the count in his favor AFTER the election has already been found free of any suspicious activities...
Remember the 2008 Zimbabwe election in which dictator for life, Robert Mugabe lost? (1,2) After a "recount" supervised by the corrupt and biased South African-run "Independent Electoral Commission" that keeps the ANC in power year after year (1,2,3) - that's right, the one that admits ballot boxes "found lying on the side of the road" every time, conveniently filled to the brim with ANC votes in districts the party is losing in - that IEC, Bob miraculously "won" and stayed in power up to his death a decade later.
Never say never, hey. Trump's a desperate man - desperate enough to avoid facing prison.
Would there be more rioting? Would Trump flex his muscles and cite emergency powers to bring in the armed forces "to restore order" - essentially cementing himself in position, if not just for the next 4 years, perhaps for life? Afterwards, he might justify his actions by a run of his usual mad, inane litany of lies, deceit and finger-pointing and incredible capacity for narcissism, more energetic tweeting, and look for ways to cling to power a little longer.
Remember, he's already 74 years old - his clock's ticking rapidly towards its last tock. But he could live another 20 years, just out of spite - like Mugabe did. Even worse, imagine Mike Pence rising to take his place. Or one of Trump's offspring. Just imagine that. Brr.
I have no doubt that if something like that were to happen, the US as we know it would be forced into some kind of cataclysm. Maybe not open civil war, but yes, even that is possible I fear. At best, Mr. Trump will be cajoled into doing the right and honorable thing by the more rational Republican elite who still have some kind of tenuous grip on his leash - and will eventually hand over the reigns of power come January. If not, we're all likely to be in for a pretty horrible spectacle in 2021.
As it is, I think the USA as we knew it has been forever changed - and not for the better.
While we still wait to see what will happen - if Trump will eventually concede defeat, or trash the White House on the way out - or even need to be dragged out by the Secret Service come one minute past noon on January 20, 2021 - people are celebrating his democratic defeat and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's victory.
Nevertheless, once this monster (I don't use that word lightly, believe me) and his supporting cast of traitors and abusers of human rights have finally been excised from the people's house, as a malignant tumor is removed from a body to ensure its recovery, there's going to be a heck of a lot of cleaning up to do.
This task won't be accomplished by a single human, but would need a concerted effort from the people themselves - lawmakers, senators, representatives, federal, state and local government officials, and citizens.
What should America do to fix the mess and damage left in the wake of the Trump regime and ensure it doesn't happen again? Here are a few suggestions from me:
- Ensure the growth of free education, and include civics in all schools rather than financing endless wars and military incursions.
- Ensure free medical treatment for all. It works in the EU, and given the appropriate funding, it can work anywhere.
- End tax breaks for the rich - stop acting as if 'trickle-down Reaganomics' was ever more than the act of a corrupt politician sucking up to his billionaire buddies. It's destroyed the middle class.
- Ensure that minimum wage is commensurate with current decent living expenses. Nobody should have to work two or three jobs and still have to rely on food stamps to survive and feed their family.
- End tax passes for religious organizations who seem to think a Learjet and a sprawling mansion and a 'church' the size of a football stadium are god-ordained religious accoutrements and use religion as a tax write-off.
- Install an IQ test with a reasonable minimum threshold applicable to candidates for the presidency. We've seen the results of having a stupid president who thinks windmills cause cancer. It's not going to end well.
- Restore the EPA - ensure that only scientists with no connection to industries associated with pollution or hazardous waste products.
- Restore the CDC and the credibility of education, science and academia.
- Pass and support hate-crimes laws in all states.
- Rebuild and reinforce the wall separating religion and state.
- Make the spreading and idolatry of doctrinal hatred and the existence of groups founded to celebrate and advocate racism and bigotry and hate-crime a federal crime.
- Ensure the reintroduction of the fairness doctrine in news media to eliminate the dissemination of fake news and disinformation propaganda.
- Hold corrupt politicians criminally accountable no matter how high their office or political affiliation.
- Reverse the militarization of police departments and purge law enforcement of domestic terrorists.
- Eliminate poverty and income inequality rather than restricting freedoms.
- Remove the electoral college to restore a true democracy.
- Introduce commonsense gun laws and eliminate private 'militia' groups - the national guard is already a "well regulated militia", and nobody needs 30 assault rifles in their basement, or to walk down the street to Walmart with four pistols strapped to their waist and legs.
- End predatory capitalism and restore the middle class.
- Give everyone equal opportunities in society, no matter who they are.
- Teach respect and consideration for other people.
- Teach self-reliance and kindness.
- Teach people to be generous and charitable instead of selfish, greedy and entitled.
I won't say "make America great again", because of what it's been twisted to mean by the haters who coined it, but l will close by saying "give America hope again".
Give America - and the World - Hope Again.
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If you would like to know more about Christina Engela and her writing, please feel free to browse her website.
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All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2020.
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