US President Donald Trump holds a Bible while visiting St. John's Church
across from the White House after the area was cleared of people
protesting the death of George Floyd June 1, 2020, in Washington, DC.
PHOTO | REUTERS
It is not necessarily a case of poetic justice here, but the
abrasive persona of the American president presents a slightly
justifiable serves-you-right moment to anyone watching.
US
President Donald Trump is probably his own worst enemy right now as
American cities burn and the country’s most trustworthy servicemen are
pinching themselves to be sure they are awake and this is America.
When
you have a couple of retired presidents and a posse of distinguished
senior servicemen in retirement saying out loud that the sitting
president needs to show maturity in leadership, you know you have a
problem on your hands.
But the man is not learning a
thing from this witches brew he has cooked up. Just what did he think he
was achieving by walking to that ironical church by the White House to
stand outside the church and hold up a copy of the Bible for cameras…to
say it was laughable is generous.
Indefatigable in
idiosyncratic deed and word, Trump still finds the courage to call on
the military to literally take over, ‘dominate’ and presumably beat the
hell out of the protesters. Sometimes it seems like Trump is bent on
self-destructing, electorally.
But no, apparently these
inanities play out well with his base, which is that tribe of Americans
who must be wondering what happened to their country so that now a
simple lynching of an uppity n***** can kick up such a furore, as if it
were important.
This is not all, Trump has singled out an anti-fascist
organisation, which cannot even be mistaken from its short form, Antifa,
and is now threatening to put it on the dreaded list of terrorist
organisations in the US simply because it has called him out as a
fascistic leader.
This is a movement—even calling it an
organisation is overstating the case—whose main concern is the
vertiginous rise of fascism in many Western countries where
ultranationalist of the far right have been taking over power and
raising the spectre of Nazism.
Trump has every reason
to be afraid of Antifa, because it is the one movement whose members
have seen through him as a fascist who has been working hard to
re-energise the fascistic base that elected him in 2016 and upon which
he hopes to ride to another victory in November.
The
death of George Floyd means nothing to Trump except as an inconvenience
that could cause him to lose that election. For that reason, he shall
not want to do anything that amplifies the political significance of
that terrible death in Minneapolis.
It’s not for
nothing that he invokes the military. He knows he has lost all the
arguments with the civilians except those he has terrorised into
huddling in his corner because Trump has a way of making them fear they
are lost without him. So he has to play the zero-sum game: It’s either
me or nothing.
Let no one think it is beneath this man to think of a power grab if he sees power eluding him. He will whip up something.
A
couple of days ago, he grasped at religion by getting a coterie of his
underlings to walk over to a church he had no intention of entering,
carrying a Bible he had no intention of opening, arrogantly reducing the
church and the Bible as mere props in his pantomime, this man, who
records show hardly goes to church, will see America burn before he
leaves power next January.
So I understand those
understated warnings of a possible coup, which is what Trump is trying
to do when he calls on the military to take over the roles of a civilian
force and impose a martial iron knee on the necks of the American
people until they cannot breathe.
Those who have
followed Trump since he took over power will remember that he has made
statements to that effect. He will not leave power voluntarily because
he believes elections will be rigged against him.
It
may be hard to contemplate what the megalomaniacal billionaire would do
to keep himself in the Oval Office, but there is little I would put
beneath a self-loving man the size of the American president.
To
paraphrase Rev Al Sharpton at the Floyd memorial on Thursday, there is a
knee on the neck of Americans of all races, and all of America will not
breathe properly until that knee has been removed from their neck. In
that knee, Trump is the kneecap.
Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: jenerali@gmail.com
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