Donald Trump admitted verbal sexual
assault; involved in alleged charity fraud; called for nuclear proliferation as
well as national stop and frisk; allegedly violated trade embargo with Cuba;
admitted dodging tax employing loopholes in the system; called for ban of
Muslims from entering the US; lied
about support for the invasion of
Iraq in 2003; penalized for racist housing discrimination; filed for bankruptcy
a number of times; lost the three presidential debates largely by showing scant
knowledge of world politics; mocked John McCain for being a Prisoner of War,
POW; labelled Mexicans rapists and thieves; allegedly questioned judge’s
integrity because of parent’s heritage; confronted by dozens of assault victims
and witnesses with allegations of abuse; disparaged former Ms America for being
overweigh; tweeted about sex tapes at 3am; called for more extreme forms of
torture against terror suspects; asked why nuclear weapons can’t be used since
they are readily available; said working women who become pregnant are a
discount to productivity; caught on tape saying women should be grabbed by the
….
As for Hillary Clinton, she used an
unauthorised server to send emails while serving as Secretary of State. This,
some Americans found unforgivable?
Therefore, they opted to vote for
Donald Trump.
Perish that assumption.
Even if Madam Clinton had not had
the email controversy to contend with, Trump would have probably won because of
the theme of his campaign: Hate!
He promised Americans what many of
them liked hearing – that the country was being lost, and that some people were
out to take their country from them.
Trump was able to work on the
mentality of fanatical Americans, those breed who believe in the
‘us-against-them’ syndrome.
Indeed, there were some who openly
wept in lamentation because Obama won the 2008 presidential contest.
At Silversprings, Maryland, not far
from the office of Discovery in Maryland, this writer had a first hand
encounter with Americans who cursed and swore to take their country back from
Obama after his first term. Unfortunately for that lot, Obama defeated Mitt
Romney in 2012 and secured a second term.
Therefore, when you see a Trump in
shining xenophobic armour chanting “we need to take our country back”, he had a
ready base to appeal to.
Against all odds, Trump was
necessarily going to win the presidential election of November 8, 2016. This
because, according to an exposition on the internet, every bold advancement of
freedom in America had always met with a backlash of equal if not more measure
and, in some instances, racist in nature.
Take, for stance, the emancipation
of the slaves and reconstruction which was met with resistance by one white
supremacist Jim Crow. Or how the desegregation of schools and public spaces in
the 1960s “birthed a wave of resegregation in the 1980s; or the voting rights
act of 1965; and half century later there are poll lines so long they
disenfranchise those who cannot afford to wait, while new laws are excluding
countless citizens who have voted all their lives”
The post goes on to illustrate why
the occupancy of the White House by a black man was most sacrilegious in the
estimation of some Americans.
“So”, it continues, “when we voted
against the odds to elect the first black President eight years ago, when we
had a clear symbol that the country was literally becoming more black, why
shouldn’t we expect the successor to be the meanest, whitest most vile bigot
possible? The very same guy who demanded to see Obama’s birth certificate to
prove he was a real American. And when protesters demanded that Black Lives
Matter, why shouldn’t we have anticipated the rise of a candidate who
encourages violence against peaceful demonstrators? A President Trump would fit
right into American history. And like Presidents Jefferson, Jackson, FDR,
Reagan, Clinton, and yes, even Obama, a President Trump would continue our
American tradition of leaders who expand the empire through the suffering of
people of colour. I’m waiting for the year 2043, when this white supremacist nation
becomes mostly non-white” – there is a study which suggests that by 2043,
Latinos, and people of colour generally would have a numerical superiority
against white Americans.
As for the monster of electoral
college, it is not for lack of trying: 700 times Americans had made attempts to
amend or thrash the electoral college model but they had never succeeded.
Perhaps, were the generality of
Americans to allow for proportional sharing of electors in the college, Donald
Trump may not have won the US presidential election of last Tuesday. Just as
members of the Democratic Party woke up at some point to the fairness of
proportional allocation of delegates, a process which allows contending
aspirants for the party’s ticket to share delegates based on the proportion of
votes garnered, it is expected, rather than hoped, that, at some point, the
American system would find meaning in proportional representation for electors.
In fact, but for proportionality, Barrack Obama could not have defeated Hillary
Clinton in the 2008 Democratic Party primary.
That said, how did virtually every
opinion poll misread the stars? It has been discovered that some of the people
interviewed/polled disclosed that the toxicity of the environment around Trump
coupled with the potential for opprobrious reaction made them give false
responses regarding their choice of president. Therefore, many who actually
planned to vote for Trump said they were not going to vote for him or that they
were undecided.
But this autopsy would not resurrect
the dead horse. Trump would be sworn-in on January 20, 2017, to begin his
four-year term.
Unfortunately, not one immune to
controversy, Trump’s transition committee is already swimming in controversy
with his sons taking a front row. The challenge is that Trump’s vast business
interests, according to him, would be handled by his sons while he is running
the affairs of the United States. But now that his sons are part of the
transition committee, a committee which would have unfettered access to state
information in all ramifications, while at the same time running their father’s
business, how un-conflicting is that?
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