Thumping Trump’s Trumpet: Alas For American Democracy
By Nilantha Ilangamuwa
16 December, 2015
Countercurrents.org
The United States of America, the so-called global policeman and proponent of democracy is now facing a challenge from within its own borders. And it is not before time. America deserves what is happening to her as she is responsible for the deaths of millions who died for nothing throughout the history of the arbitrary actions of the USA.
The history has taught that American democracy’s most notable contribution is the distortion of the true principles of democracy.
The project of democracy is a circle containing tragedies and farces. But the leaders and bureaucrats have portrayed it as a necessity for achieving the lasting peace of humanity. However, history has proved that the foreign policy makers of the USA have mostly ignored the peace but focused on how to disable the targeted nation in such a way so they can steal the natural and human resources. Countries which have no natural resources became targets in the latter part of the project after China successfully increased her share of the international market through those countries.
If there was no enemy an enemy had to be created. It had to be portrayed as the most dangerous threat to the world. Once the propaganda satisfied the justification bombs fell, but most of those killed were innocents. It was America that made popular the phrase, collateral damage. Then once enough innocents were killed a targeted figure was captured or killed in order to justify the mayhem. The killing of Saddam, the extrajudicial killing of Bin-Laden and then Gaddafi revealed the true colours of the project. So, they called it establishing democracy through the people’s power. However, neither democracy nor peace was achieved in the project. This is the painful reality of America’s foreign policy.
The odyssey of the Republican campaign is now letting the people of the USA have the chance to taste the results of the global project domestically. The campaign can open the gates of the White House to the self-funded candidate Donald J. Trump while proving the stage of the farce of the repeating history as noted in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon by Karl Marx.
Most of the daily shows and other cooperate media outlets were either shelling Trump or ignoring the coverage. But he is continuing his messages. Despite the “warning” to constrict his thoughts, he has become the forerunner of the Republicans. The true answer to the question of American democracy was born there.
True, Trump is not a usual politician. He has a tendency to say whatever comes to mind. Not a good thing for any politician. Trump is not talking to the people but to himself. It seems he has understood the values of talking to himself in the public discourse after becoming a man who can handle the election campaign without an external financial support. Anyone can easily ridicule him, but the complexity is much larger than we think. The whole drama appears to be a comedy, but it is revealing the other side of the story.
Being an open minded person and expressing whatever come to his mind, while receiving ovations from his “voters”, Trump has taken the American Democracy to an abyss of eclipse and showed the world its true stunning face.
The balance sheet is that Trump is not the malady of the failed system, but a symptom. Today there is Trump, tomorrow there will be hundreds of Trumps who will start playing their trumpets if the hegemonic culture of US political imperialism continues.
However, this may not be the last straw of the contention between plutocracy and corporatocracy.
Nilantha Ilangamuwa edits the Sri Lanka Guardian, an online daily newspaper, and he also an editor of the Torture: Asian and Global Perspectives, bi-monthly print magazine. He is the author of the just released non-fictions, “Nagna Balaya” (The Naked Power), in Sinhalese and “The Conflation”, in English. He can be reached at [email protected]