One of the things that you have to give the Trump
Administration credit for is finding new lows. Just when you thought the
administration could not get any more immoral and incompetent, they find a way
to prove you spectacularly wrong.
During the weekend, far right protesters descended onto the
town of Charlottesville in Virginia to protest the removal of a statue of
General Robert E. Lee, the Confederate General who lead the Southern States to
battle during the American Civil War. The protesters were met with counter
protesters and violence erupted. People were killed and America finds itself at
a bitterly divided point.
This event has been something of an eye opener and for me,
it was an incident that brought out the worst and the best of what I’ve called “White
America.” I stress the point about “White America” because the largest ethnic
groups in the USA are of European ancestry and we have to acknowledge that this
remains the ethnic group that holds the largest influence in what goes on in
the USA and by extension the rest of the world. America remains the country
that sets the tone for the rest of the world.
Let’s remember that we had hope when America elected Barak
Obama to the Presidency back in 2008. I know lifelong Republicans who actually
said, “I am proud of the fact that his name is Barak Husain Obama.” The message
was simple – after 200-years, America had lived up to its promise of being a
beacon of hope for the rest of us – a place where the son of a Kenyan immigrant
could rise to the highest office of the land. While President Obama didn’t
fulfil every hope and dream, he did turn around an economy that was in its
worst state in several decades and he did bring healthcare to millions who couldn’t
afford it. He wasn’t liked by everyone else around the world but he did make an
effort to bring peace to places like the Middle East by being “fair” – so fair
that Binyamin Nethanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister was quite open about his
dislike for Obama and here in Singapore, the powers that be decided to remind the
public on several occasions that “change” was a foreign concept.
Things are different now. The son of an African Immigrant
has now been replaced by the scion of a wealthy family that made its money on
government projects. He inherited office by playing up to the worst in people,
stroking their fears and attacking anyone who wasn’t part his version of the
main stream. Somehow, he made the obvious character flaws (inability to be pleasant,
competent, brave, truthful) into things that the ordinary people could relate
to (it still astounds me whenever people tell me that Trump tells it like it is
when he’s openly collecting money for charity and then using the money to
enrich himself.)
You could say that the events that took place in Charlottesville
was the chance for Mr. Trump to prove to the world that he was more than the
narcistic clown who had conned the American people. Instead, of choosing
leadership and being as tough as he had sounded on North Korean missile
threats, he decided to take the easy way out by condemning the hatred on “so
many sides,” and then said somethings about how “ideally, we should love each
other.”
It didn’t help that David Duke, the leader of the Ku Klux
Klan, an organization that was founded on the premise of destroying black
people, happily got plenty of air-time telling the world that he and his ilk
got Donald Trump elected. More on Mr. Duke’s positions can be found at - https://www.vox.com/2017/8/12/16138358/charlottesville-protests-david-duke-kkk
And
To put it crudely, Mr. Duke had chosen to commit an act of
domestic terrorism and he had gotten away with it and even got the type of air
time that the likes of Osama Bin Ladin could only have hoped for. The clan
members, Nazis and other pleasant people at the protest took their chances to
attack anyone who was of a different skin colour, Jews and even members of the
clergy (which is ironic considering many of these groups consider themselves
Christian. An example of the violence can be found at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2017/aug/13/fatality-car-attack-anti-fascist-white-supremacist-rally-charlottesville-video-report
And
This was perhaps the worst in “White America.” The question
of how this group of people who once claimed to have “saved the world from
Nazis” be the actual Nazis themselves.
Having said that, there were great moments that were
inspiring and saw the best of humanity come out. Let’s start with the most
obvious – political leadership. If Trump didn’t have the courage to call out
the worst in humanity, Governor Terry McAuliffe showed plenty of it when he
told the “alt-right “ that their racism had no place and they were neither
patriotic or American. This is what Donald Trump in a higher office should have
said. The Governor did what a President should have done – told the world that
there was no place for bigotry in a nation founded on the premise of giving
everyone opportunity.
More of Governor McAuliffe’s speech can be found at: http://time.com/4898560/virginia-governor-terry-mcauliffe-church-speech-transcript/
What was especially encouraging was to hear a lifelong
Republican, who served under George W Bush (a President I loathed for his
policies in the Middle East) denouncing the “alt-right” supporters and advisors
of Mr. Trump for being unAmerican -you can hear his disgust at sight of the KKK
and its ilk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO029In3oiI&feature=share
While White America was on the side of the devils, it was
also on the side of the angels. The woman who gave her life was called Heather
Heyer, a White American who chose to stand up to bullies and to fight for the
victims. More on Ms. Heyer can be found at http://buzz.blog.ajc.com/2017/08/13/fundraiser-for-family-of-charlottesville-victim-heather-heyer-nets-42k/
I am emotionally involved in this. While I haven’t been to
America in nearly half a decade and I don’t really do much with America in my
daily life, America is the nation that gave me two great blessings – my stepdad
Lee and his family and my step mum, Nora and her family. These are the families
from “White America” that accepted me and took me for who I am. They helped to
nurture me into the person that I am today. I like to believe that America, for
all its faults, is a land of decent people who accepted people from around the
world as one of their own (I do make the point that it’s the part of America
that accepted people from around the world as their own that prospered).
The families from “White America” that touched me are the
ones that remind me that Americans are intrinsically a decent people and it’s
hard to look the KKK ilk and think of them as being “Americans.” I don’t recognize
them as American and yet I have to acknowledge that they are sitting in
America.
I can only pray that this Nation of Decent people triumphs
over the likes of David Duke and condemns them to the dustbins of history
quickly.
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