WHO does Donald Trump really think he is by taking on the whole world?
echoes: CONWAY TUTANI
As if his Islamophobia was not enough, the United States President last week proclaimed that he was withdrawing the US from the Paris climate accord, gravely dampening efforts to curb global warming, saying: “I was elected by the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.” Any louder declaration of insularity than that?
This affectation of ultra-nationalism — this exhibition of what is not real and reasonable — ultimately poses a danger to world peace and prosperity. It also smacks of ignorance because in this day and age, America cannot go it alone, more so in view of the fact that its influence as the world’s sole superpower is waning in the new multipolar world order. America is not the world; and the world is not America, fullstop. Just like Zimbabwe is not Robert Mugabe; and Robert Mugabe is not Zimbabwe, period. Unsurprisingly, our own President — another got-it-alone leader — has professed his admiration for Trump’s approach because it validates his “one-centre-of-power” mantra. Is Mugabe a black Trump? Or is Trump a white Mugabe? One can detect a common temperament between the two.
But then it’s unfair to blame the Americans as such for saddling us with Trump because he lost the popular vote to his opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton by about three million votes; he is only there because of the convoluted rules of the game which place weight on the electoral college system and not on numbers per se, subverting the popular will. Isn’t it clear it’s not only Zimbabwe which needs electoral reform? Although the situations are not exact replicas, Trump and Mugabe have legitimacy issues hanging around their necks like an albatross that cannot be shaken off. This pair has a lot in common.
One does not have to be an avowed anti-American, a person opposed to anything and everything to do with the US to see that Trump represents the worst of American gringoism — involving what linguist Adam Schwartz calls “the active celebration of a White, monolingual (un)consciousness through particular linguistic and cultural performance”; and jingoism — excessive patriotism and aggressive nationalism especially with regard to foreign policy. This is a throwback to America’s dark and evil slavery and imperialist past and has no place in the contemporary world, especially after Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama tried to reinvent or rehabilitate America as more of a soft power moving away from its tag as the policeman of the world, which made the country an object of hate globally.
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Completely lacking a sociological perspective, Trump misses the irony that singling out Muslims will have the effect of alienating them and, thus, radicalise some of them into terrorism. That is why some experts have said the biggest recruiters for terrorism are people like Trump whose profiling of minorities — basically, stereotyping by the government that a person is committing some sort of crime simply because they are of a certain race, culture, etc — is not only unfounded and unjustified, but counter-productive as this makes the so-called Islamic State a welcoming alternative.
Furthermore, it has been established that the refugee population is less likely to commit terror acts than the general population in the US. Trump should not turn a blind eye to the Wild West gun culture in America. Add to the fact that extremists — like the hooligans that have sprouted again at football stadiums in Zimbabwe — are in the tiny minority, there is no justification at all to tar all Muslims with the same brush. If Trump was honest and balanced about it, he would say: “We have enough domestic-bred terrorists without opening ourselves to imported ones.” But he wouldn’t admit this because those homegrown terrorists have been overwhelmingly white supremacists, including the mass killer with Rhodesian regalia who mowed down worshipping blacks in a church last year. Doing that would destroy Trump’s strong support among white supremacists.
This has echoes of when, some few years ago, Zanu PF secretary for administration Ignatius Chombo severely reprimanded ruling party MPs, saying there were now sounding more and more like the opposition because of the probing questions they were relentlessly asking in Parliament about corruption. It’s not surprising that corruption has assumed endemic proportions and there is cover-up after cover-up. South Africa could never reach such levels of decay because President Jacob Zuma does not have the last word as the tone was set by the late former African National Congress president Oliver Tambo when he said: “We must tell the truth even if it coincides with what the enemy says.” Another common factor between the Mugabe regime and Trump: Suppressing the inconvenient truth.
That said, Trump can be described as one of those oddballs with a God complex. Says Wikipedia: “A person with a God complex may refuse to admit the possibility of their error or failure, even in the face of irrefutable evidence . . . The person is highly dogmatic in their views, meaning the person speaks of their personal opinions as though they are unequivocally correct.” These characters with a God complex are found at every tier of society, including at the family level. Who hasn’t noticed that self-anointed, self-important individual who thinks the whole clan rotates around them in the same way all the planets in the solar system orbit or revolve around the Sun? They are so self-absorbed that they just cannot conceive anyone else daring to question them. To them, the clan is an area of control, their sphere of influence. These narcissistic characters believe that everyone should bow down to them. If you approach or phone them, it’s disrespectful, but they can approach or phone you as and when they want, even at midnight. Everything must be on their terms. They believe that they are the best at everything and that everyone idolises them. Bluntly put by the Urban Dictionary, it’s “a psychosis based on uncontrolled narcissism, inflated arrogance and a perceived need to subjugate and/or ridicule other individuals deemed to be inferior or unworthy”.
So Trumps are here, there and everywhere. In law, they have a special term for such acute cases of the God complex. They are called vexatious litigants. Vexatious litigation is legal action which is brought regardless of merit. It may take the form of a primary frivolous lawsuit. Or it may be the repetitive, burdensome and unwarranted filing of merit-less motions. I have had a ringside seat to watch such a God complex-afflicted character perform, much to the chagrin of her lawyers who, of course, have distanced themselves from that client — the same way some of Trump’s advisers are jumping ship — because repeated filing of vexatious litigation by a single lawyer or law firm can result in disbarment as it is classified as abuse of the judicial process. Something is seriously wrong when someone who is not even a lawyer puts themselves above the whole justice system and accompanying court processes — the same way Trump does not believe in the other arms of government. Could it be a combination of ignorance and arrogance?
That said, Trump will be stopped in his tracks, as is already happening with political scandals and legal troubles erupting all around him. Why? Because the US, unlike Zimbabwe, is a working democracy where Trump, even with his God complex, would not grab from Saint Peter the keys to the Pearly Gates, the gateway to Heaven, locking out those not fit to enter and consigning them to Hell.
But, even though politics in Zimbabwe stinks to high heaven, nothing — absolutely nothing — could have prepared me to hear these words from Zanu PF youth leader Kudzanayi Chipanga last week: “I promise you, people, that when we go to heaven don’t be surprised to see Robert Gabriel Mugabe standing beside God vetting people into heaven. Gushungo, you are an angel. Amai Mugabe, you are a wife of an angel so when people enter heaven and when it’s Zimbabwe’s turn, you will be seated there, with secretary for administration Cde Chombo having names, while you will be vetting those whom you know.”
Mr President, the onus is on you to prove that you don’t have a God complex by distancing yourself from such disgusting and distasteful talk. If this does not offend your intelligence, then nothing — nothing at all — can. After all, it’s you who rebuked Tony Blair and George W Bush,saying: “There is only one God!”
Conway Nkumbuzo Tutani is a Harare-based columnist. Email: nkumbuzo@gmail.com