America Unmasked

Elvert Barnes photo

By

Ahmed Tharwat

Since President Trump took over at the Oval Office he has been accused of many things, from being a rapist, anti-women, anti-immigrants, self-centered, a chronic liar, and most recently, after his performances at the NATO meeting and Putin summit in Helsinki, a traitor, some going as far as to condemn him as treasonous.

The news and media networks jumped at this with headlines such as, Trump drama overshadows NATO summit -CNN; European Leaders Worried About Trump at 2018 NATO Summit – TIME; and Trump’s NATO trip: In like a lion, out like a lamb – NBC News.

Charles M. Blow, in his column at the Times, accused him of committing a big crime, his column headline Trump, Treasonous Traitor, in which he went on to say that “Trump is right now, before our eyes and those of the world, committing an unbelievable and unforgivable crime against this country.” Times columnist, Thomas L. Friedman, the globalization messenger and snake oil merchant, thinks Trump has no shame, as he puts dogs do, going on to comment that it is very un-American and a first in American history. “We’ve never had a president with no shame — and it’s become a huge source of power for him and trouble for us.” Really, I know that Mr. Friedman the big idea man, doesn’t just think the Earth is Flat but history too.

Let me go out on a limb here and just say that Trump is actually the first president that reflects real America, he didn’t exactly make America great but he exposed America and our system, truly reflecting the decaying American empire, white racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, anti-black, anti-women, anti-immigrants, and anti-intellectualism.

The difference between Trump, his outlandish policies and his predecessors, is a matter of degree and rhetoric. His immigration deportation policy has been going on for quite some time. According to the Migration Policy Institute over 12 million were deported during the Clinton tenure, more than 10 million during the Bush era, and a little over 5 million under Obama. (Note: these figures contain ‘returns’ – “the confirmed movement of an inadmissible or deportable alien out of the United States not based on an order of removal.” In other words, a return occurs when an apprehended immigrant leaves the U.S. voluntarily before being ordered to do so through a formal removal proceeding – Editor).

America, the country of immigrants, basically doesn’t like new immigrants, from the Chinese, Italians, Japanese, Jews, and now Mexicans and Muslims. America now has what some experts and sociologists call the White Extinction Anxiety. Trump’s racist overtones come from his own personal convictions, he has been a racist all his life. The real problem here is the racist judicial system, racist police that imprison young black men or kill them, education and culture at large that reinforces and propagates white privilege. Trump merely brought it to the mainstream and spotlight, now it is a daily viral video on social media, in the streets, supermarkets and our public parks.

Banning Muslims from entering the country, an action the Supreme Court has finally agreed with, has a deep Islamophobic base in this country, across the board since 9/11 and the establishing of the Department of Homeland (In)security that has been acting mostly without a real legal oversight, singling out Muslims and putting them under constant surveillance.

The Trump phenomenon is a reflection of our decaying political system that has been run by the political elites and corporate oligarchy for years. We are, as Nancy Pelosi puts it, a capitalist system after all. Fewer and fewer oligarchs are accumulating most of the wealth, not just in this country but globally. According to Paul Jay, senior editor of The Real News Network, we live in such a parasitical economic system, capitalists and oligarchs have more money than the world economy put together. Mostly unproductive, they are pancaking and creating world conflicts; from war on terrorism to our now existential enemy Russia and Iran, for the Military industrial complex to flourish and invest.

The Trump/Russia circus is nothing but a cover up to our real problem, we have a global financial crisis and a deep decaying of our political system inherited from Obama, the darling of the left, and its charming articulate mask who surrounded himself with Wall Street jihadists. Now, we have a political system that gives us only one choice: which elite will govern us?

The so called liberal media’s outcries of Trump’s Russian collusion, talking about a Russian attack on our democracy, some politicians comparing it to Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attack; really? This hyper nationalism, where you can hear some media pundits asking for riots in the streets to take America back, Rachel Maddow, on MSNBC accusing Trump of being a Russian asset, others characterizing the Helsinki summit from shocking to disturbing, reflects the underspending of our American exemptionalism that has been the champion of democracy and protector of peace around the world.

We need to wake up and stop reading Trump’s twitter feeds, remove the clown from the stage of our political circus and take a look at our own real problems.

Ahmed Tharwat

Ahmed Tharwat is the Producer and Host of the Arab-American TV show BelAhdan. His articles are published in national and international publications. He blogs at Notes from America, www.ahmediatv.com and his articles appear in national and international publications. Follow him on Twitter @AhmediaTV.