By P. Gunasegaram
On July 4, the United States celebrated its 249th year of independence. Shakily, under Trump, the landmark 250th year of freedom moved into a brutal morality morass abandoning the most basic human compassion in favour of an all-encompassing misanthropic “make America great again” catastrophe.
The latest mocking madness – threatening world economic order and sovereign countries through another round of tariff increases, which he might in all probability pull back later when he feels that world attention on him is flagging. Such is his need to be in the limelight, even for the wrong reasons.
Trump has seen fit to hatefully deport eight illegals, to an uncertain future in Sudan, only one of whom was from that country, in complicity with a compliant Supreme Court where his appointees and conservatives hold sway.
Here is what one dissident judge, Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote: “What the government wants to do concretely is send the eight noncitizens it illegally removed from the United States from Djibouti to South Sudan, where they will be turned over to the local authorities without regard for the likelihood that they will face torture or death.”
How the face of America under Trump has transmogrified to a hell of uncertainty from a heaven of potential redemption from previous hardship for migrants!
An emblem for thousands
The eight are an emblem for hundreds of thousands, and eventually perhaps millions of mostly coloureds from the Third World who have been blatantly, systematically and racially targeted from among those who have sought refuge and a living in the US, most of them innocent people merely aspiring to a better life.
In a very public demonstration of his racial skewedness, he ridiculously and wantonly announced asylum for whites from South Africa even as coloureds were being forcefully evicted from the US, wrongly alleging whites were subjected to genocide there and flying them to the US.
He ignored and was completely insensitive to the most brutal oppression extending into modern times by white South Africans over a black people who outnumbered them several times, for hundreds of years.
Free and fair elections ended the apartheid government only in April 1994 but white economic supremacy persists. Whites form some 7% of the population, but own three quarters of private land. Blacks form some 82% of people but own only 4% of private land, showing the steep economic divide 30 years after the end of apartheid.
Trump had unbelievably warned that South Africa “discriminating against and killing white people”, could happen in America if attempts to promote diversity aren’t stopped, a criminal move aimed at mongering hate against migrant coloured communities among the whites.
Ignorance of the past
All this is complete ignorance of the US past. The country was annexed from the indigenous people who lived there in harmony with nature, and then areas, even those reserved for the original people, were filled largely with white people over centuries, mainly from Europe.
To help develop the country and for the comfort of the ruling classes, slaves were brought in from Africa and made to live in appalling conditions enduring intolerable suffering, pain and torture for centuries under the hands of the whites.
They gained little by the abolition of slavery in 1865 being heavily discriminated against and badly treated, obtaining equality under the law only in 1964. The discrimination continued unabated and is widely prevalent until today.
While huge strides have been made in terms of human rights recognition under the law, there is a strong militant movement which wants to reverse the process and put paid to progress that has been made in furtherance of equality and fair play.
Donald Trump heads that movement and dangerously he is president of the US. He has shown that the only thing that he respects is power, illegally bombing Iran, supporting the genocide of Palestinians by Israel, bullying smaller nations into making one-sided deals, and interfering in the internal affairs of nations in favour of despots, to mention a few.
The irrelevant Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty in New York is a gift from the French people to commemorate the centennial of US independence from the British in 1776. It was long seen as a beacon welcoming people into the US from other countries but becoming increasingly irrelevant now.
In 1883, a Jewish poet wrote the following about the Statue of Liberty which was, 20 years later, engraved on a bronze plaque and placed on its pedestal. It says:
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Emma Lazarus
November 2, 1883
Below is a picture of the plaque.
Great words, but at that time they were aimed at the white world not to the Third World most of whom were under the oppression, direct or indirect, of the various imperialist powers, which sadly included the latest addition then, the US.
As the 21st century loomed and progressed, there were hopes that finally things were beginning to change. A Black American became president, more thoughts were given to the welfare of people, there seemed to be a new humanism in America for its own downtrodden and for the downtrodden of the world.
But Trump – a convict, a sexual offender and predator, a person who incited a riot in an American place of political office and got away with it – is in power due to presidential immunity affirmed by the courts. He is throwing his weight.
Only the American people can stop this rapid insane retreat from humanity into inhumanity by the world’s greatest country now into a morality morass. They must stop Trump if they want to maintain that status quo for a long, long time more.
Otherwise an increasingly sidelined, bypassed and hated America will find out that it needs the world more than the world needs it. Taking its rightful place as a responsible world leader now which respects reciprocal rights will put the brakes on this mad, headlong downhill dash to oblivion.
P Gunasegaram says even the greatest of countries can fall from grace in a thrice with the wrong leader.
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