Keen observers and history students are trying situate President Donald J. Trump at a place in history and are having problems. What is not in doubt is that Trump is the most convincing proof of America’s historical decline. Everyone knows, no empire lasts forever. But empires don’t explode and vanish in an instant. Bit by bit they lose their essence and their vitality; soon they magnify their weaknesses which invites aggression and undermines their strengths. This pattern does not change, no matter where the count begins – be it the Assyrian Empire, ancient Greece, Babylon, the Persian Empire, and the greatest of them all, the Roman Empire. Even the more recent empires like the Russian, the British, the Ottoman and the Japanese were all subject to the same rule.
In the 1940s the British boasted of an empire on which the sun never set. But it was just bold talk. Soon the Indian sub-continent would be let go. After all they had relinquished the control of the American colonies 170 years earlier. Churchill was credited with “Gold Coast will not have independence in our lifetime and in the lifetime of our children,” he said in a debate in the Commons in 1949 as Ghanaians began to prod the colonial government for independence. The ascendance of the United States became inescapable at the end of the Second World War. European powers were thoroughly exhausted. Japan was defeated; the Ottoman Empire had ceased to exist. Everything crystallized in 1956 when President Dwight Eisenhower literally ordered British and French forces to evacuate the Suez with their Israeli cohorts and to respect Egypt’s sovereignty over the Suez Canal. Both powers ate the humble pie. The French never quite forgave the humiliation and it was the reason it sought an independent nuclear umbrella.
Is the United States an empire? The Americans deny the description in so many words and declaim any pretence or aspiration to any imperial ambitions whatsoever. And their liberal history, their disdain for European-style colonialism support their denial. However, their activities when placed side by side their words don’t match. When a nation maintains military forces in more than 120 countries, spends more on defence than eight nations with the highest defence budgets combined, when it takes upon itself the responsibility to secure international sea lanes, when its generals see themselves as pro-consuls when operating outside American shores, it is difficult to escape the empire appellation.
Some Americans strenuously resist the empire idea. President Obama was elected as a peace president, and he seemed unwilling to embrace the idea of an empire and all it entailed. It partly explains why he kept away from Syria, knowing the Americans are tired of fighting in Arab civil wars. Thus even when Assad crossed his red line by using chemical weapons, Obama appealed to Congress for authorisation to use force. But Congress turned him down. Knowing that the average American was tired of getting American forces involved in Arab civil wars as happened in Iraq and elsewhere Obama called off the bombing which pleased the liberals and angered the hawks. Now, Donald Trump is different from all American presidents, ancient and modern. He has no moral compass, he holds no firm beliefs, he has no regard for institutions, he does not believe in democracy, he is termperamentally a dictator, he tags the Press the enemy of the people, money tends to be at the back of his mind in all things, and all his actions tend to be coloured by his undisguised racism. Being one of six Nigerian journalists who reported the defeat of President Jimmy Carter by Ronald Reagan in 1980, I’m familiar with US elections and have had an abiding interest in American presidential candidates ever since.
By the middle of this week, having found no evidence of significant election fraud or rigging, Mr. Trump tried to use his equally amoral Attorney-General to overturn the election results and, literally, execute a coup. He and the right-wing media and Facebook have let loose a vast media barrage to de-legitimize Biden’s victory; the sing-song is that the election has been stolen through vast conspiracies hatched by socialist democrats who hate America. None of these allegations is backed by facts, Richard Pilger who heads the Election Crimes Department of the Justice Department was so shocked by what the Attorney-General Robert Barr was trying to do, he resigned on Tuesday. The Attorney-General was pushing for an investigation of the elections in contravention of the rules the department had followed for more than 40 years.
The desperation Trump has shown seems true to his character. His first move was to get the government of Ukraine to investigate Mr. Biden over an imaginary corruption. The contents of Trump’s phone conversation with the Ukraine president formed the core of the two impeachment charges against the president.
The truth of the charges was incontrovertible and in an earlier Republican-controlled Senate would have resulted in an overwhelming conviction. But the Senate had become as spineless as the North Korean or Russian legislatures. That was the only reason Trump was not removed from office through impeachment.. Until President Barack Obama was elected, all US presidents had been white males, many of whom were not enamoured of African-Americans and black people. But American presidents have tended not to overtly discriminate against black people. Donald Trump is the direct opposite. He is a racist and he never pretended to be anything more or less. His father, Fred Trump, was a very active member of the Ku Klux Klan. He learnt racial bigotry at an early age.
He built his political career by de-legitimizing President Obama by concocting the fantastic falsehood that Obama was not born in the United States. He thus was the originator of what came to be known as ‘birtherism.’ It was ample proof that he hated Obama with enough passion which was what the Republican activists valued in a candidate. This made it possible for him to emerge as Republican nominee in 2016. As nominee he invited his Russian collaborators to hack into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails.
Through 2016 Trump’s campaign seemed to work in tandem with the Russians raising considerable suspicion that ultimately led to the FBI investigations which rankled the president and drove him to dismiss the FBI director which, in turn, led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, Robert Moeller. The Moeller probe discovered at least 146 contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians but it did not nail down any conspiracy, although it found numerous cases of obstruction of justice. The Moeller Report provided enough material to support articles of impeachment against Trump but a risk=averse House passed up that opportunity till the Ukrainian scandal broke.
Trump was recorded to have told nearly 25000 lies in less than four years. He broke numerous laws, paid very little taxes, disrespected women, insulted veterans, called soldiers losers. He was thus a symbol of social disruption, demagoguery and corruption. Rather shocking that he received 71 million votes which indicates that half of America didn’t mind the depraved excesses of Donald Trump.