FOREIGN AFFAIRS COVERAGE week, UNLESS local politics sees a PEFECT STORM br e King!
The past year, this BUMmer has neglected writing about WORLD AFFAIRS&EVENTS. This June with the departure of Miss May and her poetic, romantic and wayward ways -- to Desi, OK! -- Desi will make up for "his negligence" and try to write/update with BORROWED writes, ion WOLD AFFAIRS that matter to me, and I believe, all those who feel we, all citizens of the planet called EARTH, are indeed, a GLOBALISED VILLAGE.
One country where national happenings IMPACT almost every other nation, including Malaysia, is the United States of America. First I must admit I grew up on Cowboy movies featuring John Wayne and Alan Ladd -- and their memorable theme songs like North to Alaska and River of No Return and sweeties like Marilyn Monroe and Angie Dickenson and their shapely, fair and cowboy eye-catching cowgal legs, other parts don't matter.
I start off with what is essentially my SECOND post on the current American Presidency Race to the White House; I guess there is a counterpart Black House somewhere, to my uneducated guess, in North Korea? Sorry I digress.
The most disturbing Race to the White House culminating this November is between the lesser of TWO EVILS -- Donald Trump the Republican versus emocrat Hillary Clinton. It's alike Malaysians' choices, it's between the Opposition's Hard Rock Kopitiam and the incumbent UMNO's Deep BlueC. You know where I stand? I wish the Barian Nasional led by Um-oh-No! greAtings like "May you live in Interesting Times", followed by a C-liau-liau (Tiong Lai!) C for Sea in Kantonis is 'Sei", for the numeral 4! often followed by Liau-liau. If you don't know what it means, please consult your Kantonis fRiend. If you don't have wan, may you live a thousand more years and continue to have CluelessWans for your esteemed PM. (In Desi's DDC, PM can also stand for Post-Mortems....)
So, visiting the greAt USA uninvited by one of TWO options for the Presidency of the sole super-power of the w.w.w. on Donald Trump:~~~
Now
that what once seemed inconceivable has happened, what are Americans
who care about their country, its hard-won values and its leading
international role going to do about it? The prospect that Donald Trump
will secure the Republican party’s presidential nomination at its
Cleveland convention in July can no longer sensibly be ignored or
denied. Revised delegate counts last week
indicated the property tycoon commands a majority going into the first
ballot. It appears only an unprecedented internal party coup, or some
kind of personal meltdown or disqualifying scandal can stop Trump
running for the White House in November as official GOP nominee.
That Trump cannot be considered a fit and proper person to occupy the
office of president should be evident. But if the rumbustious primary
season has demonstrated anything, it is that large numbers of voters are
so angry about the state of their country, so dissatisfied with the
system and so fearful of global changes that they seem ready to suspend
normal, informed judgment. A vote for Trump is a vote against the status
quo. But in too many cases, it is also an immature, isolationist,
tantrum cry for a return to a mythical Fortress America that supposedly
existed before Muslims and Mexicans and other “foreign” influences
arrived on Main Street.
Tensions flare outside Donald Trump rally in San Diego
Faced with such negative electoral dynamics and unable to believe
that Trump could succeed, Democrat leaders in Congress, moderate
Republicans, and even Barack Obama have been too cautious about
confronting him head-on. This is a mistake. The voters’ mood is not
untypical. Every national election brings calls to “throw the bums out”
but the feeling is particularly vitriolic this year. It has been
exploited and manipulated by Trump, crassly and mendaciously
regurgitating the simplistic, know-nothing prejudices and ignorant
half-truths of a saloon-bar boor. As a result, until now, too many
public figures have kept their heads down. Too frequently, his
falsehoods and slanders pass unchallenged.
Much of the US mainstream media seem unable or unwilling to get to
grips with his candidacy. The sort of detailed scrutiny that has
destroyed the ambitions of previous candidates seems lacking. Who
remembers Gary Hart, whose presidential hopes sank without trace in 1988
when his reputation as a womaniser caught up
with him on a yacht called Monkey Business – and the newspapers exposed
all? Who does not recall the media pursuit of Bill Clinton, especially
after the Monica Lewinsky affair came to light?
There are exceptions. The New York Times published an
investigation into Trump’s misogynistic and abusive treatment of women
employees and colleagues. But much of the coverage of his personal and
business life, policy U-turns and self-contradictions, offensive and
gauche remarks, and plain ignorance of the big issues facing the US and
the world has been flaccid to the point of fawning. Even when the ugly
truth is told, it somehow does not seem to damage him.
Fortunately for US democracy, there remain brave souls ready to stand
up for their own and the country’s traditional values and beliefs,
ready to run the gauntlet of Fox television “news”, the mockery of
rightwing shock-jocks, and the merciless pillorying by anonymous social
media nerds. Elizabeth Warren,
a Democrat senator from Massachusetts, is one such. She does not suffer
from undue diffidence. The woman Trump has crudely dubbed “Pocahontas”
because of her Native American family background has been taking him on
in a way that shames less courageous politicians.
“Let’s be honest – Donald Trump
is a loser,” Warren said last week. “And Trump seems to know he’s a
loser. His embarrassing insecurities are on parade: petty bullying,
attacks on women, cheap racism and flagrant narcissism. But just because
Trump is a loser everywhere else doesn’t mean he’ll lose this election.
People have been underestimating his campaign for nearly a year – and
it’s time to wake up.
“Consider what hangs in the balance. Affordable college.
Accountability for Wall Street. Healthcare for millions of Americans.
The supreme court. Big corporations and billionaires paying their fair
share of taxes… The chance to turn our back on the ugliness of hatred,
sexism, racism and xenophobia. The chance to be a better people… Many of
history’s worst authoritarians started out as losers – and Trump is a
serious threat. The way I see it, it’s our job to make sure he ends this
campaign every bit the loser that he started it.”
Warren’s impassioned call for America’s voters to stand up for what
they believe, or in the case of Trump’s supporters, come to their
senses, was long overdue. And it badly needed saying. Trump and his
pernicious brand of divisive, bombastic and racialist politics will not
be defeated by wishful thinking. It is going to be a long, hard fight.
The next weeks and months will see a concerted, well-funded effort to
render Trump respectable. Already, for example, his spokespeople claim
his call to ban Muslims from the US was merely a “talking point”.
Already, the ever pragmatical Foreign Office is advising that the
special relationship must come first. Already, David Cameron is mending fences, congratulating Trump on his success and inviting him to Downing Street.
A
line must be drawn. Illusions must be discarded. The truth must be
told. Trump, with his innate, rich man’s hostility to social justice and
equal rights, with his greedy love of big business and corporate tax
cuts, with his scornful disdain for green policies and climate change
science, with his alarming ignorance of strategic realities in the
Middle East and east Asia, with his cruel and ruthless contempt for the
weak, the less privileged and the vulnerable of this world, with his
foolhardy isolationism and protectionism, with his loathsome
self-adoration, and with his hateful fear-peddling is a menacing
problem, not a passing phenomenon.
Something not dissimilar to the rise of Trump is happening across
Europe, where xenophobic and racist parties of the right are advancing, most recently in Austria last week.
Trump-ism, for want of a better word, is not something with which tidy,
reasonable compromises can be made. It must not be appeased, bought off
or left to fester. The only thing to do with Trump-ism, wherever it
appears, is to oppose it, fight it, and defeat it. As Elizabeth Warren
says, that critical fight must start now.
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