AMERICA, as most of us call the United States of
America, USA, is a big country with confusions that match its size. The latest
is the presidency of Donald Trump, whose face knots delightfully when he issues
another threat - it could be to the unborn.
Racism, genderisation of issues, in a country clawing
itself back to global (ir)relevance by isolation, threats of war, lawlessness
within a democracy almost summarise how Trump wants to ruin America.
His idea of "making America great again" is
to exaggerate America's global “victimhood”
thanks to Presidents before him, in particular his
predecessor Joe Biden, for whom he cannot find a word of praise. If Trump has
the powers, he would expunge Biden from a list of American Presidents.
How Trump intends to make or mar America is only known
to him. In a country with huge democratic credentials, Trump is busy ingraining
his lawlessness into his version of democracy. Executive Orders provide perfect
covers for Trump. He is already abusing them because some of the matters he
glibly orders on are constitutional, and altering them would involve States,
Congress, and the Supreme.
His Orders take immediate effect in the manner of a
military officer hauling orders at a parade. Immigrants must leave. Some are at
the borders trying to enter Americans. Would some children qualify as legal
Americans while their parents and guardians may be sent out of America?
The judiciary is weighing in to order Trump’s steps.
When JP Clark wrote, America, Their America, his 1964
criticism of things American and the racism that hides under the cloak of its
over-rated democratic practices, he made it clear that America was essentially
about itself, thorned by racism in itself, and against others.
America, Their America, drew as much applauses as
criticisms against Clark, whose studies at Princeton University ended abruptly,
some believe, as a result of the vapid vortex of racism he countered. America,
Their America is the product his Princeton days.
The deceit that American democracy spreads, blinds the
world to the monstrous human rights records of the USA. America is built on the
blood of the indigenous populations of what became North America, plus slaves
taken mainly from West Africa. The remnants of those populations still suffer
racism that has been blunted by the "successes" of attacks,
massacres, genocides that keep them from the attention of the world. They have
been pushed into forests and reserves.
Loads of literature abound on these human abuses that
could have belonged to darker ages but still replicated in the way the United
States treats others. Words fail to capture these atrocities. Latest accounts
tend to minimise the mal-treatment of the indigenes of North America. They are
even explained with excuses that diseases that arrived with Europeans, the new
settlers, were responsible for the deaths.
Donald L. Fixico in, "When Native Americans Were
Slaughtered in the Name of ‘Civilization’", a 2018 publication, detailed a
series of programmes of annihilation of indigenous peoples to create space for
the new settlers.
“From the time Europeans arrived on American shores,
the frontier - the edge territory between white man’s civilization and the
untamed natural world - became a shared space of vast, clashing differences
that led the U.S. government to authorise over 1,500 wars, attacks and raids on
Indians, the most of any country in the world against its indigenous people. By
the close of the Indian Wars in the late 19th century, fewer than 238,000
Indigenous people remained, a sharp decline from the estimated 5 million to 15
million living in North America when Columbus arrived in 1492.
Doctrine of discovery described as an international
law that authorised explorers to claim uninhabited land in the name of their
sovereign when the land was not populated by Christians, had the imprimatur of
the Vatican which only repudiated the Doctrine in 2023.
In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the bull Dum Diversas,
which authorised King Afonso V of Portugal to "subjugate the Saracens and
pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ", and "reduce
their persons to perpetual servitude", to take their belongings, including
land, "to convert them to you, and your use, and your successors the Kings
of Portugal", Brain Slattery noted in Paper Empires, his 2005 book.
In 1455, Pope Nicholas V issued Romanus Pontifex,
which extended Portugal's authority to conquer the lands of infidels and pagans
for "the salvation of all" in order to "pardon ... their
souls". The document also granted Portugal a specific right to conquest in
West Africa and to trade with Saracens and infidels in designated areas. The
Doctrine has been implicated in slave trade and colonisation.
While the Doctrine seemed to have ameliorated disputes
in Europe, its introduction by US Supreme Court Justice John Marshall in
Johnson v. McIntosh (1823) was disputed. Marshall's formulation of the Doctrine
gave the discovering nation title to that territory against all other European
nations, and this title could be perfected by effective possession.
Trump’s threats to the rest of the world are not new
to America which has run out of ideas about being the world leader, a title and
role that has been vastly diluted by the contradictions of American democracy
that places USA's interests above global peace, and the steady gains of other
powerful nations as the USA receded from involvement in global stability.
Americans chose Trump for reasons best known to them.
They acted much like Nigerians in the choices we made since 2015. Trump wants
to turn round an America tied to his strings, on his own terms. He has no time
for the domino effect that is loading.
Didn't the world watch as President George Bush
invaded Panama City on 20 December 1989, in that operation that spanned over
one month, to arrest Panamanian President General Manuel Noreiga, a CIA
informant, when Bush was the CIA boss?
Noreiga was captured and jailed in America for charges
that included threatening and killing American forces in Panama, narcotics
racketeering, swinging relations with traditional enemies of Libya, Cuba, El
Salvador, Nicaragua, and members of the Warsaw Pact.
The Panama Canal that Trump says he will take over was
also mentioned as Noriega's sin.
Will the world watch again for America to occupy
Panama City and determine the use of the Canal?
Trump feels nobody will stop him; nobody can stop.
Morning Star Online, an English newspaper blazoned Trump’s return as President
thus, THE RETURN OF THE VILLAGE IDIOT.
Finally...
SENATOR Sampson Ekong, Chairman, Senate Committee on
Solid Minerals, has a solid recommendation that the Ministry's capital budget
of N9 billion be increased to ?539 billion. The Naira has suffered!
INDICATIONS are that the Inspector-General of Police,
Kayode Egbetokun, who would go down in history as the first IG not seen wearing
dark glasses, has ordered that policemen (and women) should nor wear dark
spectacles while in uniform. He may need to appoint an Assistant
Inspector-General of Police to deal with the petitions that would flood his
table over this matter.
SECURITY challenges across the country are multiplying
daily. We would not panic. We, however, expect the security agencies to do more
than telling us daily that new groups are being formed. It is simple economics
- the insecurity economy is profitable; the businesses have to open more
branches or new companies to reap the profits.
ISIGUZO is a major commentator on minor issues
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