Farrukh Dhondy | The Trump agenda: What is the kind of ‘greatness’ MAGA hopes to restore?
“Masters of childish irony,
The ‘Capos’ of our alleys
Would reverse reality perversely
By labelling mountains ‘valleys’
They’d name a black dog ‘Moti’
And a white one would be ‘kaaloo’
A tall girl would be ‘chhoti’
And a hairless man labelled ‘bahloo’
A reminder that names can’t tell
The nature, character or form
All existence deviates from its norm
And perhaps timeless heaven is hell?”
From Ghazal Guzzlers, by Bachchoo
On the 20th of January the world was distracted by some ceremonial in the Unites States of America. So, gentle reader, you may have missed the world-shattering news of the swearing-in of the Myanmar military dictator Donang Ald Trump ti.
This dynamic ceremony was attended mainly by security guards and several shrouded corpses of Donang’s enemies -- tokens of his authority and displays as warnings to would-be “traitors”.
The dictator-in-perpetuity immediately issued several… err... dictates? The Bay of Bengal would now be renamed the Bay of Burma. And China to the north, Australia to the south and India to the west actually belonged to Myanmar, and Donang declared he’d use economic means and military ones if need be to see that these territories, of vital significance to the security of Myanmar, would become vassal states of his great country. He told reporters that China, he’d heard, was controlled by the Chinese, and he would not be tolerant of any such threat from a rival power.
Donang also swore on his first day to close the border with Bangladesh and send the armed forces to seal it. He vowed to deport all Muslims who lived as dependent leeches in his glorious Buddhist country and to send his military farces (sic) to drive any remaining Rohingya from the sacred soil of Myanmar.
And as for this namby-pamby, woke tolerance of women which brought about the illegal establishment of the woman Aung San Suu Kyi as some sort of icon of liberty? All that will be abolished by dictatorial order and women may have to wear the sort of modest cover as in the Islamic nations…
Now we know, gentle reader, that nobody voted for the military dictatorship in Myanmar, but on the other front, the USA, with a full four per cent of the world’s population, did elect President Donald Blow-Your-Own-Trumpet. Two-thirds of eligible voters in the US actually cast a ballot. Of these, approximately 160 million, more than half voted for him in several states which then, through the constitutional process of collegiate votes, propelled Donald Trump to the White House.
For the first time, a convicted criminal has been elected to the presidency of the US. The 80-plus million voters who put him there disregarded the fact that his conviction arose from his fraudulent accounting for hush money he paid to a porn star for adulterous sex with her. Nor do these supporters seem to be in the least bothered that he is a publicly proven liar and a demented advocate of injecting bleach to cure Covid-19 -- among many other absurdities…
The more serious charges he faced, which were dropped when he was elected, arose from inciting the riot of January 6, 2021, when his crazy and violent supporters invaded the US Capitol to prevent the confirmation of Joe Biden as President-elect.
The rioters attacked and injured several police officers defending the US Capitol from the rioters, who denounced and threatened to attack vice-president Mike Pence.
After the riot, more than 1,500 of these would-be insurgents were arrested and convicted for various offences, the most serious of which were assaults on the police, trespass, invasion of Congress, threatening behaviour and assaults on Congressmen.
On the day of his inauguration, Trumpolene signed executive orders pardoning these nearly 1,600 criminals. One of them, who had been filmed wearing a multi-coloured face and a horned headpiece on the day of the riot, appeared on BBC TV on the day of his release. His face wasn’t painted and he didn’t have his horns as he faced the cameras and the interviewer who asked him if he regretted January 6. He said he didn’t. She then asked him why he had pleaded guilty at his trial if he thought he hadn’t done anything against the law. She persisted with the same question a few times. Answer came there none.
Another rioter, pardoned by Trump, refused to accept the pardon, saying that she was guilty of rioting and she felt deeply regretful of the fact that she had participated in a criminal act which wounded several of the rioters, two of whom died during the riot and one police officer who collapsed after being injured in the riot and died after it.
The cry of the Trumpists is MAGA. Do they mean Make America Ga-Ga Again?
Which greatness do they aim to restore? That of Abe Lincoln? Of Martin Luther King? Mark Twain, Melville, Hemingway, Woody Guthrie, Scott Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald. Marilyn Monroe, Alfred Hitchcock, The Platters, Saul Bellow, James Baldwin, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Eisenhower, Toni Morrison, Spielberg, Scorsese -- OK -- Washington, John F, Franklin D and Sinatra --- hundreds in the fields of art, politics, war, music, jazz, film, literature -- that influenced the world and made America known if not “Great”?
Or was it Jim Crow (one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan), John Wilkes Booth or even Hannibal Lecter?... um… Donald Trump???
