Burning Down The House
In another place or another time, fate might have decreed that one Donald J Trump might not have blighted our lives for the last decade; unfortunately, it was not to be. Of course, millions knew of him from his stint as a reality television celebrity or seeing his logo in gigantic letters plastered across his garish skyscrapers. However, even though he thought himself to be famous, he could somehow never penetrate and ingratiate himself into New York society's elite.
His business, coupled with inherited wealth made him a billionaire (perhaps) his name splashed across vodka bottles, steaks, Chinese made ties and lurid casinos. He grew ever richer even with his bankruptcies and soaring debt to gullible bankers who lent even more money to him, all the while being egged on by trashy tabloids. His theatrics, bad business decisions and questionable commercial ethics left a trail of destruction across the country; T
This farce was sure to end in tragedy.
However, fate is a strange mistress, and she truly outdid herself when this ill-suited and unlikely candidate became president, not once but twice, of the United States. He was again given a lofty pedestal to survey, not just his own country but the entire world whose populations often questioned the viability of an 'unprofessional' occupying the most powerful office on the planet.
His unexpected elevation unleashed a well of unfounded bitterness, spitefulness, lies and rage that has mutated and grown like a cancerous tumour. He is meticulously eroding and destabilising the republic as well as his own party. Trump seems hell-bent on undermining the concept of democratic citizenship, ignoring the boundaries governing the customs and norms that he feels are irrelevant; he views them as cumbersome restraints on his absolute authority.
America was founded on a self-imposed, self-restraint platform outlined in that most brilliant of documents, the Constitution. This slim volume, which has endured for over two hundred and fifty years, sets in stone the principles of respecting religion, free speech, the press and perhaps most importantly, the right to peaceable assembly. The Constitution that begins with the words, "We the people", is a masterpiece in its simplicity and has endured largely intact for generations. A vast melting pot of humanity sprang up around it, following and abiding by its guiding principles: a system of checks and balances, a loose affiliation of articles that adhere to the limits set by America's founding fathers.
Trump flagrantly ignored those very principles of that most sacred document in 2020 by inciting a mob, telling them he had been cheated out of re-election and urging them to take their grievances to the Capitol, where his defeat was, at that very moment, being formalised by both houses.
This attack was built on a wellspring of fury, a tissue of lies, egregious lawsuits and refusal to accept that he and his party had lost the election. His assembled supporters were inflamed by the seditious rhetoric spewing from the podium and acting out of fealty to one man, duly stormed that bastion of democracy.
Within minutes, television images were being beamed around the world, depicting enraged demonstrators brandishing confederate flags, smashing their way into the rotunda, calling for the heads of the vice-president and the speaker of the house. That distressing scene reminded us of the storming of the Bastille in 1815.
Five unfortunate souls lost their lives in the ensuing melee.
This blatant attack, dressed up in the unfounded concept of revenge, proved to be a catastrophic miscalculation. Trump, standing behind a sheet of bulletproof glass, ranted and raved, lamenting the fact that he had been cheated out of an election that he felt he had won in a landslide. It was he who pointed the way to the Capitol building, urging the rabble to cause mayhem. It was, and still is, a day of infamy.
Americans seem to identify their very existence by whom they voted for in the last election and some seemed more than willing to put aside their day to day lives, travel to Washington and stage a violent insurrection fueled by one man's childish and incomprehensible tantrums.
The unfortunate thing that we have realised is that millions of American citizens empathise with a president whose lies have been the solid foundation for their collective beliefs and cheer on his destructive behaviour with gusto. Somehow, he has managed to weaponise his blatant narcissism and whimpering self-pity to drive mobs of healthy white men who had for years enjoyed untold privileges based solely on their skin colour. Trump's rhetoric led them to feel morally outraged by the fact that their success might be stripped away, after enduring the spectacle of their fellow Americans of a different skin tone achieving high office.
All of this from a white man who has lived his pampered life inside a gilded cage whose answers to any perceived problems could be solved by iron – clad non - disclosure agreements. Trump is incapable of showing an ounce of compassion, even when millions of his fellow citizens were laid low by a deadly virus spreading across the country, taking the lives of four thousand citizens each day. He literally cannot do it, for his neediness and self-pity are all-consuming.
America depends on half, sometimes more than half of the electorate, to accept a government for whom they did not vote. If learning from history is any guide, America need look no further than Abraham Lincoln's election. At that time, half of the electorate refused to concede that the lawfully elected candidate was indeed their president.
Well, we all know how that ended.
Compared to last week's extremist behaviour, fascism, the comparison that many are making, is entirely justified, even though, post-riot, some claimed to speak from an aggrieved position as if they acted with good intentions that nullified the law and indeed logical reason. They slavishly followed Trump's rhetoric of, "You are the real people; you are the people who built this country." Now, one can easily read between the lines here as he is talking to a minority of white people who adore and empathise with him, and he, in turn, has created a patriotic band of zealots who hang on to his every word.
For the media, Fox News's mendacious hosts alongside the other right-wing networks and producers have to take a long, hard look at themselves, for they too have no excuses and have been entirely complicit in encouraging these heinous acts. For two long years, they repeatedly told Trump supporters that the election was stolen and the attempted coup was "understandable" as Trump supporters were aggrieved to think they lost. The likes of Hannity, Ingram and Carlson should, morally if not legally, share responsibility for this travesty.
Trump's act of sedition backfired spectacularly, as he became the only president to suffer the ignominy of a second impeachment after just one term in office, even though he was ‘forgiuven’ by a compliant Senate.
Washington, thankfully, is more significant than any one sitting president, especially a candidate who believed that he had become the ultimate insider. Ultimately, his boundless self-obsession made him blind to the fact that even his most loyal sycophants realised that they had everything to lose by associating with him.
Perhaps, when he left the Oval Office in disgrace and headed to the ‘Southern White House', he comforted himself that he still had millions of followers, many of whom he urged to enter and destroy the centre of government. As he faded to black on our TV screens, those self-same people who attacked the capital shouldn't delude themselves that they will ever be welcome at Mar-a-Lago.
The irony of all of this is that, as we all know, Trump has come storming back for another term. In just 18 months, he has taken the country to war, toppled a president in South America, damaged a robust economy that he inherited, started a disastrous trade war, and spewed over 10,000 lies and falsehoods. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Wake up America!!!
Bali, Indonesia 10th January 2021
