Redemption Day In America

One Caribbean Nation.

Redemption Day in America

It took some time to accept the inescapable fact that Donald J. Trump had indeed become the 45th President of the United States. Nothing then or now would suggest that he was suitable for the high office of the American Presidency.

In his review of John Dickerson’s book “The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency,” Washington Post correspondent Jeremi Suri contends that the great Presidents have all provided a parental, protective and consoling role for a very diverse nation. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt all possessed that sense of Presidential guardianship. Dr Suri argues that after national tragedies, even supposedly lesser leaders have ‘projected confidence and hope.’ - Ronald Reagan in his speech after the Challenger Disaster in 1986; George W. Bush at Ground Zero in September 2001 and Barack Obama singing Amazing Grace at the Emanuel Methodist Episcopal Church following the mass shooting in June 2015.

In contrast, says the Washington Post writer, many US citizens feel abandoned because that parental assurance, consolation and protection are completely lacking from the nation’s current leadership.

It was hoped that with time President Trump would pivot and become ‘more presidential.’ Far from, he has grown less empathetic and more divisive. His style of leadership is more authoritarian, less responsible, more venal and increasingly concerned with his own self-interests. By virtue of a lack of character, knowledge, vision and good judgement, he has proven himself incapable of leadership.

What is fundamentally important, however, is the threat Donald Trump poses to the American Constitution and the cherished fundamentals of American democracy.

The US Constitution represents one of the first and finest expressions of the Eighteenth century Enlightenment, regarded as one the most progressive leaps in human thought. Fareed Zakaria noted that the Founding Fathers deliberately made the Presidency weak, particularly in domestic affairs because of the fear of authoritarian rule. Historians have felt that the system of check and balances, limitations on executive power and the existence of an independent judiciary rendered the American people free from the threat of totalitarianism. Yet Donald Trump, a man of few intellectual accomplishments and consummate ignorance, is flouting nearly every facet of the US Constitution.

But a Constitution, no matter how inspired or well-crafted, is only as viable as the people who are prepared to uphold its sacred tenets. There are some powerfully malevolent forces behind Donald Trump within and without the White House.

Firstly, there is the moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party. Then, there is William P. Barr with his excessive belief in an ‘Imperial Presidency’ and there is Steven Miller, a long standing adherent of white supremacist ideology.

African Americans and all persons of colour stand to lose most from a Trump victory on November 3. Trump himself does not believe in much beyond self, but his personal fortune is tied to those who would seek to reverse all the Civil Rights gains made since the 1960s. He is now crudely revising the anti- Obama ‘birtherism’ claims against Kamala Harris, who is of East Indian-Jamaican descent.

Trump is making several efforts to suppress the vote and reduce mail-in or absentee voting, because an expanded vote would appear to favour the Democrats. His most blatant transgression is his tampering with the highly revered American Postal system to slow distant voting, which he thinks might favour the Biden/Harris ticket.

He does not seem to care that a slow post hurts small business, older Americans and army veterans who depend on the postal service for supply of their medications and welfare payments.

Trump may be the first United States leader to have no sense of the guardianship imperative of the American Presidency.

I am suggesting here that November 3, 2020, is Redemption Day in America. As Kamala Harris said in her speech where she accepted being Joe Biden’s running-mate: “This is a moment of extreme consequence for all of us. It’s all on the line… Character is on the ballot.”

Eugene Robinson, MSNBC contributor and Washington Post columnist put it differently. He stated: “If there is another Trump administration, I can’t even begin to think where we’ll be four years from now.”

But a Trump defeat may not itself guarantee the traditionally peaceful transfer of power come January 20, 2021. Trump is already blowing dog-whistles suggesting that if or when he loses, he may claim the elections were rigged and seek to nullify the result of the plebiscite. What then? What if the forces on the extreme right, armed and unarmed, the Q-Anon conspirator theorists and the ‘Religious Right’, decide to contest the result by a show of resistance? Trump, of all people, has claimed that Biden, a practicing Catholic, is against religion, against the Bible and wants to, “hurt God.”

We should not underestimate the forces of evil and Ignorance in today’s world. This is not an age of heroic virtue, profound spirituality, high intelligence or common sense.

Ralph Jemmott is a respected retired educator.

From Barbados today 8/20/2020