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Donald Trump

Hildegarde The Arena—

WE are not equating ourselves with the creator, but there are times when you feel that “a day is like a thousand years.” This is how it feels like right now, we still have another week before all the brouhaha is swept under the carpet, we hope.

Wouldn’t we all dance in the rain if United States of America president-elect Donald Trump were to be inaugurated even tomorrow, instead of their traditional January 20, for as they self-destruct through a myriad political fiascos, they are also dragging everyone in their dog fights, just like what happened with the war on terror.

The US has reached the zenith of dirty and cataclysmic politics, and judging by the way they are doing it, it won’t be long before we see a fragmented Western alliance. Brexit was the precursor, and the European Union does not look good, with right-wing parties set to win elections this year. That means disarray!

And, it is only natural that their major ally the US should follow suit. They have chosen not to admit responsibility for the failure of their systems, choosing rather to apportion blame on traditional targets like Russia and China. But more of that later.

On Tuesday, we also dropped a tear or two when outgoing president Barack Hussein Obama said his valedictory.

Barack Obama

And, what a better place to say goodbye than his adopted home town Chicago — home to so many black people, and also a place that defines African-Americans. They came from Africa on those slave ships, worked in plantations in the Deep South, escaped to the north whenever they could, and Chicago welcomed them.

As usual, international media described his parting message as “emotional”. And how ironic that the cheering crowd was calling on him to do “four more years”, reiterating what he has long been saying: if he had contested, he would have won? So much for democracy!

Although Obama’s political life started in Chicago, propelling him to the White House, the million dollar question is how he has carved his legacy, using Chicago as the backdrop. The challenges faced by many black people in the inner cities made Obama want to run for office.

However, as he said goodbye, he sounded like Argentina’s Eva Peron when she sang, “Don’t cry for me Argentina.” He might have told the chanting crowd, “By almost every measure, America is a better, stronger place”, than it was when he got into office in 2008, but why is the city that produced the first black president producing grim murder figures for 2016? What happened in the past eight years Mr President, which gave rise to the #BlackLivesMatter?

USA Today of December 1, 2016 put it thus: “Mired in a level of violence not seen in nearly two decades, the nation’s third largest city recorded its 701st murder on Thursday, reaching a stunning milestone before year’s end. Chicago has seen the number of killings increase by about 58 percent since last year (2015), according to police department data. The city is on pace to record the most murders in a year since 1997, when the police department reported 761 killings. Chicago Police have also reported more than 3 300 shooting incidents in 2016, an increase of about 49 percent compared to the same time last year.”

It was also paradoxical that as Obama was doing his goodbyes, judges in South Carolina were also sentencing white supremacist Dylann Roof to death for the cold blooded murder of nine black church-goers in 2015. We recall when the president sang the timeless hymn “Amazing Grace” at the victims’ memorial service.

Amazing that Roof was resolute about his pathological act: “I felt I had to do it and I still feel I had to do it.” Meanwhile, Obama was telling people: “By almost every measure, America is a better, stronger place.”

Such contrasts in the land of the free, and all we can do is point to the ironies, for we know that he remains an American president, for American people, dealing with American challenges.

But Obama’s real parting shot is Russia.

Wow! There was no way he could have left the world stage without showing President Vladimir Putin that the US calls the shots on the global arena.

I might have overstretched my mind a bit, but what is going on right now in the US and the accusations and counter-accusations against Russia is nothing, but bitter-sweet revenge after Putin upstaged Obama on September 11, 2013 in a New York Times op-ed titled “A plea of caution from Russia.”

The war in Syria and American exceptionalism were central. By March 2014, Russia, which was a member of the G8 was kicked out, but by end of 2016, it had proved its mettle in the Syrian issue.

Below are excerpts from President Putin’s op-ed:

“Recent events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.

Vladimir Putin

“I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria. We must work together to keep this hope alive, as we agreed to at the Group of 8 meeting in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland in June, and steer the discussion back toward negotiations.

“If we can avoid force against Syria, this will improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It will be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical issues.

“My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust . . . It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”

President Putin touched on a raw nerve, and for daring this, Russia had to pay dearly, so they think. It was even more painful for the Obama administration when readers appreciated the Russian leader’s intervention.

Lynn Nadel of Arizona remarked: “It’s perhaps sad for us Americans when the President of Russia makes more sense than our own political class. He hit the nail directly on the head with his analysis of American exceptionalism. While not denying that the American idea, as embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, is exceptional, it is also the case that much has happened in the 200+ years since we started, and that as a country we are very far from the ‘perfect union’ envisioned. Our sense of exceptionalism, pandered to by all political parties, provides an excuse for meddling in other countries’ affairs, and for refusing to look beyond our borders for good ideas about such things as health care, maternal leave policies, and more. If we were doing extremely well in these areas perhaps our exceptional claims would stand up, but who is willing to make that argument now.

“Chances are the reaction to these words from President Putin will be ignored, or even outright rejected —but I hope our own President Obama, whom I greatly admire, will use this opportunity to recalibrate how Americans see the world. We indeed are exceptional, but so are the Norwegians, and the French, and the Peruvians, and just about every culture that has carved out its own part of our universe. There is certainly evil in the world, but it cannot be the job of any one country to police the world, and to impose its ideas about how things should and should not be everywhere on this multi-cultural planet.”

Questioning American exceptionalism is costing Russia. Initially, they were accused of meddling in the US election by hacking their systems. The absurdity is that this is the home of Silicon Valley that created the Internet in order to create an advantage for Hillary Clinton, and make Trump lose the election. Seventeen intelligence agencies had to release this information, a fortnight before Trump’s inauguration. Were they sleeping on the job, or they actually wanted Trump to win?

What is bewildering is how the Russians could hack into the Democratic Party systems, and still enable Clinton to win the popular vote, but could not do the same with the Electoral College.

In the past week or so, the Obama administration continued to throw more punches at Russia, which has maintained its innocence, maybe because countries spy on each other. When they expelled 35 Russian diplomats, they expected Moscow to retaliate, and it didn’t. But the hacking story did not die.

Coincidentally, as Obama headed to Chicago on Tuesday, CNN became the only network to have an exclusive story that ran for hours, without being picked up by other networks. Russia was in the detail again, but this time as Trump’s nemesis.

They claimed that they had impeccable intelligence information, where Russia information that could compromise Trump. Come on! Why did the breaking news take place before Obama’s address in Chicago? Was this a face-saving act?

Now that both Russia and Trump are trashing the latest allegations, what more should we expect from the Obama administration? What other trumped-up allegations are in the offing, and will Russia continue to be flogged?