By Vishwamithra –

“If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.” ~ Ravindranath Tagore

Donald Trump may be a very crafty snake oil merchant. He may be a unique fellow in branding others in the most insulting and despicable fashion. But he simply does not understand the basic human condition. He has been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, nurtured, nursed and sustained by the most hideous aspects of unadulterated capitalism; cocooned in an extraordinarily luxurious lifestyle with occasional escapades with the likes of Epstein & Company, he was elected to the highest office in the most powerful country the world has known.

Trump, in his late seventies, is now huffing and puffing through the last lap of his lifespan. His current preoccupation is not the well-being of those who placed him there. His obsession is his own legacy. Indulging in the craziest of all indulgences, when Minnesota is in flames, when two of her patriotic persons met their respective ends at the end of ICE-agents’ guns, Trump is boasting about the construction of his White House Ballroom. Nero who fiddled while Rome was burning may have looked a pious ruler in the presence of Trump’s rule in his intrinsically, maddening rage.

The Mainstream American fora, buttressed by her ever so active social-media is willy nilly normalizing  this demon-like, insensitive conduct; by not comprehending the profound layers of this social dynamic, they are sweeping the dust under the proverbial carpet. They are attempting to micro-analyze an extraordinary social phenomenon from cushy studios of their television and radio stations; the whole gamut of American mindset has come to accept a dangerous and  harmful social development without paying due regard to the long-term effects on the very susceptible levels her psyche.

Those who are close to the throne, those whose very office and postings are wholly dependent on the whims and fancies of the one at the top, are enabling the decaying process that does not seem to know any brakes or retardation mechanics. Coming colors are no good. Unless and until some definitive measures are applied with all their force and mite, the spiraling down would not decelerate. That indeed will be a catastrophe.

What’s been happening in Minnesota now and other major cities whose political power resides in the hands of Democrats, is not only a malignant symptom of the ailment. It is the disease itself. By appealing to the latent feel of the White majority, Trump and his immediate cohorts may have, in the beginning, found a way to appease the reverse discrimination notion of American whites. Maybe the very election of Barack Obama, though it seemed at the very outset as revolutionary and groundbreaking, sent a chill down the white spine of American man.

One must not lose faith in the wonder of the American Constitution and its exceptional appeal and the uncommon characteristics of governance principles it enshrined. The present generation in the first half of the twenty first century can disprove the inherent meaning of Oscar Wilde’s quotation made in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Wilde said thus: ‘America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between’. Both George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde suggested that America rapidly progressed from a raw, unrefined state (barbarism) to excessive luxury and moral decline (decadence) without developing a stable, nuanced civilization in between, highlighting its unique, fast-paced cultural evolution and focus on material wealth over traditional societal structures, a sentiment that often reflects critiques of American exceptionalism and consumerism.

An unimpeded and rapid growth of material wealth and with mass accumulation of national treasures surpassing all records yet recorded in human history, America, only 250 years old, is indeed a beacon to other developing countries. In her presence, other European nations looked puny and irrelevant; tempests lost their force and Europe as a continent, both materially and politically, fell by the wayside. But that was a couple of decades ago. Nevertheless, affluence in personal and national property is not necessarily followed by moral decline in a society. Yet it is evident and palpably relevant that the United States of America with its unique Constitution, a document that defined and shaped the development of her character and vast opulence, is at a crossroads owing its current convoluted condition to that same document.

Donald trump, the current President, unlike any of his predecessors, has opted to stretch the envelop, so to speak, and test the wisdom and brilliance of its own authors. He chose to exercise the powers of Presidency to the limit. One can understand if he did that in order to serve, We the People. No, on the contrary, he is doing it to expand his own ego with a clear and unbridled intention of passing down that authority and power of office to his own kith and kin.

But, in the exercise of his legal and presidential powers, Trump has managed to move the needle forward; his momentum may carry the country and himself more towards tyrannical ventures but where it all ends up in the final analysis is anyone’s guess rather than a scientific conclusion.

It is in that context that one must observe and deduce the very sociopolitical evolution America is journeying in the early part of the twenty first century. A paradigm shift of monumental proportions has occurred. Its current premise is dangerous, driven by both harmful substance and entangled processes. On the one hand is the manifest suppression of freedom of expression and assembly, which is ensured by the first Amendment. On the other is Trump’s flirtation with annexation of foreign lands such as Greenland and regime/leadership changes in Venezuela. It may be represented by the mass media as a universal embarrassment for the USA for its President is making a mockery of himself and her people. But the deep-rooted premise of his public conduct cannot be discarded as an outlier of Presidential pronouncements.

Against such a confusing backdrop and a provocative stance adopted by the so-called leader of the free world, what options are available for the American public? A serious dilemma that he has never experienced now confronts the average American. His plight is made even more salient in that his own representatives, both in the Senate and the House of Representatives, have failed to meet the grueling tests of honesty and resilience. The Republican majorities in both Houses seem to have taken the easy way out. Being threatened by the guillotine of being primaried, the people’s representatives have abandoned those who voted them into power; they have chosen to seek shelter in their own power cocoons.

Yet some stark realities are evident. Those who were killed by federal agents in Minnesota are white American citizens. One, a mother of three and the other a male nurse. They were attendees at two separate protests in Minneapolis. They were merely exercising their basic right enshrined in the American Constitution, the great document that began with ‘We the People’. That document defined and granted the American people with a three-pillar governance system: The Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. No American President, perhaps with the exception of Richard Nixon, challenged the limits of the Executive. Donald Trump has chosen to go further than Nixon.

After being rightfully elected President for the second time, Trump elected to stretch his powers, may be beyond what he is empowered to do so. The Supreme Court may have given him some leeway as far as immunity goes, but he continues to challenge every norm of the previous Presidents and show the world that he is a different guy. He is one of those Banana-republic kind of leaders who think that political power gives him everything and with no constraints. In order to extend his presidential reach to the outer limits of executive powers, Trump has appointed a Cabinet whose exclusive function seems to be satisfying his own ego and narcissistic ambitions.

Furthermore, the Republican majority in Congress lends him significant flexibility to wield executive power, thereby strengthening the presidency. Yet with the burning flames of Minnesota engulfing the mindset of television viewers in their own drawing rooms, Trump decided to extend his superficial superiority in the international arena, firstly by engineering a leadership change in the sovereign state of Venezuela and secondly declaring his intentions to annex Greenland to the United States of America.

Causing a moment of despair to the US, Trump, the other day, made one of the most embarrassing speeches ever made by a US President. Rambling from the beginning to end, he exhibited his total lack of class and dignity. His hunger for power knows no bounds.

That is the macro context in which Donald Trump needs to be judged. Fighting his own citizenry at home, he seems to be flying without any wings. When such men reach the end of their flight, it could be too harsh to behold and too pathetic to narrate. Yet the reasonableness of the average American could take a stand, without any fear or favor. The appeal of the Democratic Party should be towards that reasonable man, white of non-white, in America.

*The writer can be reached at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com