Jackie Wilson Asheeke
One early slave-holding US president, Thomas Jefferson, once said, “The government you elect is the government you deserve.” That statement is more evident now in the re-election of Donald Trump as President of the United States and Republican control of both houses of Congress. Republicans continue their control of the Supreme Court as well, making a mockery of the symbol of blind justice. The much-praised American tricameral system of checks and balances does not exist, at least for now.
Kamala won only 226 electoral votes (you need 270 to win), and Trump won 295. Remember, there is no direct election for the US president, so the actual number of popular votes for each candidate is less important.
Because I said to my family and friends a year ago that Trump would win the election, I am unsurprised at the result. If Trump had run against the much-maligned, physically failing Joe Biden, he would have won in a history-making landslide. Running against the phenomenal and honorable Kamala Harris, he won convincingly. Obviously, what Trump is selling is what the majority of US voters want. It is my firm belief that far too many of his voters were desperate for a reason not to vote for a woman and a woman of color. Trump gave it to them, no matter how weird, false, and destructive those “reasons” were.
The hopeful part of me whispers in my ear, “This too shall pass.” America will always be a sturdy, if shaken, constitutional democracy no matter what.
The defeated, spiteful part of me sits in the bleachers with hot, buttered popcorn, waiting for the other shoe to drop. This portion of me is prepared to cheer when the closet white nationalists, black and brown pro-Trumpers, lower-educated Trump apologists, and bamboozled working-class masses get hurt by the very man they blessed at the polls. Break out the vuvuzelas!
This election doesn’t directly affect Namibia, so there is no reason for you to waste too much energy on it. Unless you own stock traded on the US exchange, whether it was Trump or Harris in the White House, your day-to-day lives wouldn’t change. Trump knows little about Africa, and that is a good thing. Imagine the mess he would cause if he belly-flopped in African politics and presumed to tell Africans what should and should not be done. Trump and his sycophant advisors probably believe Wakanda is a real African state and cannot name a single leader of an African country. Yikes!
This opinion piece, therefore, is a bit of self-indulgence. I submit that, on the whole, Americans couldn’t care less about foreign affairs, as they are too caught up in domestic turmoil. NATO, the UN, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the never-ending Israeli/Palestinian hate fest and Israeli aggression do not sway American hearts. When the worst reports pop up on the news about something happening abroad, most Americans who bother to watch the news will say, “Oh how terrible. Let’s order pizza for dinner!” Regretfully, most Americans have no concern about something happening to someone else so far away. Anyone who knows the slightest bit of American history would know that this is not new; average Americans have always been isolationist to varying degrees.
Though all the receipts are not yet tallied, in this election season, the candidates likely spent over 17 billion US dollars. The fruits of that massive amount of money took its toll on me and, I suspect, many others living in the Trump States of America. In Namibia, you would not have seen the hourly, daily, weekly barrage of negative campaign ads, droning speeches, staged “debates,” talking heads on news shows, lies about everything, threats hurled back and forth, and insanity politics. The election deluge I just went through was not just for the presidential campaign but also for senators, house members, state representatives, governors, mayors, attorneys general, city councils, school boards, sheriffs, judges, and sometimes for opinions on particular laws. People came to my door to give me campaign literature. I deleted at least six campaign emails daily, and my snail mailbox was jammed with fliers and letters. Double Yikes!
The most significant change in America I have recognized since I came home is that Trump was a laughable tabloid headline fifteen years ago. But now he is the twice-elected President of the United States. Go figure. The man is a documented serial adulterer, found culpable of rape, has massive unpaid debts and liabilities due to his legal woes, is on tape saying obscene things about women, is a proven compulsive liar, might be senile, has frightening mental lapses on camera and in front of crowds, and has been found guilty of thirty-four crimes in a court of law. His white nationalism shows in his many casually demeaning statements about black and brown people. Shockingly, the incoming Commander-in-Chief regularly insults the military! And yet, Trump didn’t lose significant votes for anything he said or did.
During the election, Trump had a lot of vulnerabilities to expose, but those running against him chose whiny, weak-kneed defenses to combat him. They were playing by cerebral, upper income, “gentlemen’s” rules that Trump, a shameless street brawler, had long ago discarded. Trump is not the evil fascist that Kamala called him; that would take more single-minded commitment to an ideology than I think he is capable of. And I don’t believe the next President is evil! I reject his offensive, wild, rambling utterings, because he is not a man to be taken seriously on most of the things that come out of his mouth. He speaks and acts like a “small boy,” as it is meant in the African context. Unfortunately, that small boy has the nuclear codes.
In my view, the next President of the US has no idea how to implement any of his promises and will rely on a transient army of hired implementors of dubious credibility and limited experience to think up something that makes him look good at first glance. He is all about the one-liners and screenshots, not consistent institutional change. I think Trump, like Biden, is a fading old man who cannot read a room full of ordinary people (not just their dedicated followers). And take note Namibia, more than 72 million American voters supported Trump; that is no small number! I believe that Trump said and did everything he could imagine, lie or truth, only to dominate the headlines, and it worked. The new normal for everyone: lies are OK in election campaigning, as long as you win.
Trump is not a complete fool. He will leave most successful Biden programs in place and take credit for their results. The current President-Elect and the Republicans did the same in 2016 with the great Obama programs! Trump will resurrect the Biden immigration law and allow it to pass when he puts his name on it. Illegal immigration will continue to decline with the Biden changes in place. Trump will point to those numbers and claim them as his own. He will never support a national abortion ban (in spite of his promises to religious conservatives) and watch quietly from the sidelines as the vast majority of the States vote internally to allow adult women to make their own reproductive decisions.
The business and political power people who back Trump are laughing all the way to the bank. The stock market soared when he won. The monied and privileged class, as always, care nothing for the poor, marginalized, angry, disheartened, unemployed, under-educated, debt-burdened people of all colors across America, even though they are the vast majority of the population. Trump is just a tool for them. Those upper-class folks wouldn’t let their daughters anywhere near Trump, wouldn’t invite him to their mansions, and many of them believe he needs to be on a leash of some kind, but they will make more money with Trump in the White House.
I’d bet that most of the masses of enthusiastic younger people cheering hard at Kamala’s rallies were not registered to vote or did not turn out. It was nice to see Taylor Swift, Beyonce, or various movie stars beating the drum for Kamala, but those who follow them DON’T VOTE! Shame on the 18-30 year olds!
I nearly busted my sides laughing at the statistic that 45 percent of Hispanic Americans voted for Trump. They or their relatives, co-workers, neighbors, and friends will be on the first transport out of the US when token mass deportations begin (if the billions needed for such a program can be found). In several places in the US, they will be stopped on the street and asked to show proof of citizenship if they “look Latino.” Again, I refer to my quotation from Thomas Jefferson.
It is my opinion that black and brown immigrants, not working in ICT have never been preferred in the US; white immigrants are ok as long as they speak some English. This is not a Trump thing; it is an American thing. Asians, whether from India, China, the Philippines, or Korea, already find themselves in deep trouble with lower-educated Trump-Americans who are jealous of their tenaciousness, achievements and internal community unity.
I read articles that say that many Serbian, Russian, and Albanian immigrants are in vicious mafias that run drugs, control sex slave and pornography rings, and sell illegal weapons in America. They control significant parts of the crime world as they and their families live their best lives in the suburbs or in their ethnic neighborhoods. And yet, they get a free pass from random visa checks and round-up raids from the US immigration police called ICE because they are ruthless, armed, dangerous, and white. And yet, pro-Trump advertisements said that brown people from south of the US border were responsible for violent crime in the US and that black Haitians were eating people’s cats and dogs. These huge lies are not backed by a single statistic! The numerical majority of people behind bars in the US are white American citizens as are those arrested, charged or jailed for violent crimes. And, yet the Trump lies about this subject worked!
I read a report that said when Trump was President in 2017, unauthorized immigration was around 5,000 people per day. When he left office in January 2021, even with COVID barriers in place, that number increased by 200 illegal arrivals per day. Mind you, these people were caught and recorded by US immigration patrols. There are no records of the thousands that illegally cross the southern border or sneak in through Canada each day and are not caught!
No doubt that uncontrolled illegal immigration from the southern border was a crisis problem for President Biden, but to say there was no problem with unlawful migration when Trump was President, was a lie. But that lie worked.
One American Vice President once said that his office was “not worth a bucket of warm spit.” As it should be, Vice Presidents are extremely limited in their power roles. Constitutionally, they step in if the President is dead or incapacitated. They have power in the US Senate to cast deciding votes and other ceremonial duties. You will see Kamala stand up with dignity in the US Senate on January 6, 2025, and ceremonially certify the election of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. As she has integrity and respect for the law, there will be no riot on the capitol grounds like Trump encouraged four years ago.
Whereas Biden did bring Kamala close to some of his Administration’s policies, and she attended high-level meetings, he and his cabinet made all the decisions. After that, it was her job to follow her boss not to fight with him! And yet, the false advertising campaign that everything Biden did was decided by Kamala, won the day. Kamala had too much grace to separate herself from Biden during her run for the White House; being so loyal hurt her at the polls.
I believe that with either Trump or Harris in the White House, not much would change for tens of millions of Americans. Murderous, deeply troubled white youths would still shoot their classmates and teachers at school with automatic weapons that should be banned (but never will be). Black men and women, not convicted of any crime, would still be executed by poorly-trained, scared, or racist cops regardless of who is President. And college loans will still bankrupt graduates who could otherwise be taxpayers and homeowners with good jobs.
Homelessness in America is something Namibians who have not seen life in urban America can imagine. Waves of human beings of all ages and by the hundreds of thousands live in decrepit municipal housing, run-down motels, abandoned houses, under bridges, in doorways, in parks, in church basements, and beg for money or food at traffic lights. They are numerically primarily white people, and many succumbed to uncontrolled debts, were abandoned by parental providers, have mental illnesses and addictions, and some are very angry. And yet, I rarely heard the “houseless crisis” mentioned during the national campaign by either candidate! The problem of safe, unaffordable housing would have continued even if Harris had won and will increase as the economy for the middle class worsens under Trump.
Inflation was wrongly blamed on Kamala Harris! I think the trillions rightfully spent on COVID are economic chickens that came home to roost under the Biden Administration. But I am not an economist. I have read that in the short term, the rising food prices will get worse once cheap illegal migrant labor is chased away from the American mega-farms that supply the majority of the US’s fresh foods. But it’s a fact that butter that cost me $5.00 per pound two years ago costs $9.00 a pound now, and earned income has not increased. The economic analysis I read says that such price increases would have happened regardless of who the President was and will continue to happen under Trump. The investor class wants higher dividends, and they are increasing prices for the masses so they can get it.
I will not let the current Trump-dominated US political reality affect my minimalist, calm, quiet, suburban life as an editor and author in Biden’s backyard. Meanwhile, America will get the presidency it deserves.
Jackie Wilson Asheeke, an unpublished author, is a former senior editor at the Windhoek Observer, former book editor at Casemate Publishers in Havertown, PA, and current freelance editor and proofreader working with the Howard University Journal of African Studies and several professors and organizations editing collections of essays. She works on memoirs and edits and reviews manuscripts of books pending publication.
jw.asheeke@gmail.com and jackiewilsonasheeke.com
