Mr Tsipras said what drew his attention to Trump after he had become candidate was the cavalier way he said, during his utterly divisive campaign, that he was going to build a wall to shut out Mexican immigrants and, to boot, transfer the bill of the proposed wall to the Mexican government to pay. Despite this unconventional Trumpian wisdom, expressed crudely by an unconventional candidate seeking American votes, Mr Tsipras, wisely and with great caution, did not rush, as many of his European colleagues did, to condemn Trump’s emergence as the president elect. He did this, hoping that Trump, the candidate, now president elect waiting to translate into the new tenant of the White House, would be wise enough to build bridges instead of walls to foster unity and promote international relations.
Like Tsipras, I did not know much about Donald Trump. In bookstores that I’d checked in vain for his biography and from street vendors who also hawk books, the glimpse I had of any of his books did not persuade me to invest my money. I am not a fan of motivational books and I was not in the least interested in how Trump and many people like Trump made their money. So the much I know of this maverick, new American president I learnt from his campaign, his vile and incendiary rhetoric on the rostrum, his bombastic showmanship which was akin to a theatrical buffoonery.
With nothing else to go by but the unedifying character of the Trump whose victory in the presidential election, upset all the book makers’ predictions and caused global consternation, I cannot find the basis for the optimism of the Greek leader. Like Tsipras, a lot of other people have begun work on how to normalise this funny American business, called democracy, that threw up a candidate like Trump who, to quote an angry David Remnick, “seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right.”
It seems to be more out of genuine embarrassment, as opposed to genuine conviction, that you hear people express hope – and what a forlorn hope – that Trump the candidate, would be vastly different from Trump the president; that campaign sound bites are different from governance. That when confronted with the reality of office, Trump, the misogynist and the racial bigot who slammed the Black as he slammed the Hispanics, who slammed the Muslims as he slammed the Jews and other minorities – would morph into a Trump the considerate, the decent gentleman and the saintly ally and friend of the downtrodden, the vulnerable and the weak, the same specie of humanity that he took sadistic delight in mocking whenever his dark mood and fancy took hold of him. That will be the day.
That is also the hope of the out-going President Barrack Obama, one of the most decent men to occupy the White House – a man full of grace and dignity, a good heart and a generous spirit. More out of frustration, than conviction, Obama seeks to allay the fears of American allies in NATO, in NAFTA, at the UN and the citizens back home, a large swathe of whom are on the street protesting, that Trump, the president, would definitely work for the progress of the citizens and the world at large.
President Obama wants to believe that Trump genuinely and sincerely wants to succeed as president. He does not believe that anybody would assume leadership as president and seek to alienate people, make people sad and angry and exclude them instead of embracing them and run an inclusive system. This is the message this first ever Black-American president is carrying with him on his farewell and thank you tour.
Let’s hope the U.S. allies in Canada and Mexico, all of them members of the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, get consoled sufficiently for now. Trump had made it known he would scrap NAFTA on assuming office and set back an ambitious programme that has so far demonstrated how free trade increases wealth and competitiveness. Farmers, manufacturers and workers, to say nothing of the average family in the USA, are the major beneficiaries of NAFTA which is one of the biggest free trade zones in the world. But Trump wants it out.
He wants it out because he does not believe in free trade. He hates globalisation because it promotes free movement of people and goods across international borders and it promotes trade liberalisation. It is difficult not to pity Christine Lagarde, the International Monetary Fund, IMF, managing director, who has been rattled by Trump rhetoric into giving an unsolicited lecture on the virtues of trade liberalisation; the need to create more jobs, promote inclusiveness and make all parties to profit in a trade relationship. She wants Trump to understand and appreciate that modern economies must promote inclusiveness to ensure growth and sustainability. Ordinarily, this should not be difficult for a hundred level Nigerian student of economics. Trump whose bachelor’s degree is in economics would have been a first class student of Lagarde if he was not consumed by forces of nativism with convoluted sense of nationalism, the type that gave rise to Brexit now hanging fire.
It is the same sense of native nationalism and a recourse to isolationism that is at the bottom of the urge for Trump’s USA to exit from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO. True, the USA has borne the bulk of the expenses of the organisation but the solution does not lie in dismantling the body but in putting a more efficient machinery in place to get other nations to pay their dues. But on good days, the USA has enjoyed the leadership position in NATO as well as the United Nations. It is not for nothing that it has become the policeman of the world.
Given his character trait, it is not necessarily for the good of the country that Trump has vowed to shake up NATO. For the heck of it, he would like to do it. As the most powerful leader in the world, he will, because he can. And why not? But that can spell doom for global security.
No matter the assurances of President Obama and other well meaning leaders who are giving hope that the Trump presidency may turn out to be what the world needs at this material time, there is, honestly speaking, no silver lining. His appointments so far give a frightening signal that he means to implement his election pledge to the letter. One of them, Steve Bannon, chief strategist and senior counsellor, stands accused of being anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry from his days as editor of Bretbart News, reputed to be part of the grand conspiracy against decency and morality and which helped generously in the promotion of hate speeches that resonated with the odd Americans who voted for Trump because they felt nostalgic for the days of white supremacy.
Remnic, the editor of The New Yorker has the last word on the tragedy that has befallen the greatest democracy in the world. He says: “There is no reason to believe that Trump and his band of associates – Chris Christie, Rudolph Giuliani, Mike Pence, and, yes Paul Ryan – are in any mood to govern as Republicans within the traditional boundaries of decency. Trump was not elected on the platform of decency, fairness, moderation, compromise and the rule of law; he was elected in the main, on a platform of resentment. Fascism is not our future – it cannot be; we cannot allow it to be so – but this is surely the way fascism can begin.”
[ad unit=2]
