Trump: Not an American Idea

Reuters photo

By

Sami Jamil Jadallah

No, I am not a diehard Democrat and certainly I believe that President Obama made a big mistake when he shoved Hillary Clinton down the throats of many resisting Democrats and I believe the resistance to Obama’s efforts and Hillary’s personality contributed to the election of Donald Trump.

Donald Trump won the Republican nomination after humiliating and making fools of a long roster of wishful thinking candidates including Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz among others. None of the dozen or so candidates survived the relentless assault of Donald Trump on their personality and politics.

Donald Trump won because he touched a raw nerve among many of the tens of millions of White Americans mainly in poor abandoned industrial states in the Mid-West and poor rural areas around the country.

Many of those voters lost their jobs and their American dream during the Reagan era when the entire American economy, especially the industrial Mid-West, lost its manufacturing base and the failing of both the Republican and the Democratic administrations to recognize the difficulties these families faced, failing to step forward to address not only the loss of jobs for these tens of millions of America but the loss of their American dream and self-worth. With only a high school education, and being middle aged, there was no hope for them in the America of the future.

Those voting for Donald Trump truly believed he would make “America Great Again”, the America they lost, the America that no longer offered them the jobs and dignity of employment. Well, Donald Trump did not make “America Great Again” for them. He sold them a bill of false hopes while doing lots of good for his friends on Wall Street who bailed him out of bankruptcy a number of times.

Actually, nothing much changed in the last two years for those who voted for Donald Trump. Some of the jobs promised came back with hourly rates at a minimum wage, not topping $15/hour, compared to the jobs they lost when with a high school education and working for industrial America when the earnings were around $25-$40/hour.

These jobs are gone forever and those who voted for Donald Trump will never live the lives they expected to have under Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again”.

These folks are unable to make it with such minimum wages and must rely on food stamps and charitable food banks. American industrial and rural cities never recovered and Donald Trump has nothing in the works to address “Rebuilding America Again”. While the numbers of those employed look good the poverty number did not change with tens of millions of Americans below the poverty line.

Many of these communities remained poor, neglected, in ruins, even worse with high rates of drug problems. Following the epidemic of crack, Americans now suffer from the epidemic of opioids, which became the main killer in many American rural communities.

Not only did Donald Trump fail and disappoint those who voted for him, none of the billions he promised to get by imposing tariffs on imports from China, Turkey and the EU will ever reach the ruined towns of rural America.

These billions will not go toward creating jobs that will allow those Middle Aged Americans to recover their dignity and honor by working a job that allows them to have a house and car and allow them to send their kids to school.

Those jobs will never come back and Donald Trump and his buddies in Wall Street will never invest these tens of billions on retraining middle age White Men, nor will he spend that money on training rural and urban youth of Mid-Western cities and towns to have top paying technology jobs. These youths will be lucky to escape the opioid epidemic and early death or life on the streets.

America as we know it, wish it to be, is not Donald Trump, the Zionist demagogue, America the Idea is not what Donald Trump is all about. He has no respect for the office, no respect for the truth, nor any respect for the very ideals that made America an Idea.

A few days ago, John Bolton the patriotic Israeli Zionist, threatened sanctions on the International Criminal Court and its justices, if they ever entertain the idea of filing war crimes charges against Israel or the US. This man represents the country that was the first in the world to introduce the notion of an international judicial system that addresses war crimes.

Mr. Bolton forgot the Nuremberg Trial, the proudest moment in America as ‘leader of the world’. Mr. Bolton forget the US that was a key party in the founding of the United Nations and simply forgot the key role the US plays in the World Trade Organization. Not so surprising. If Trump and his administration have nothing but contempt for America’s constitutional system, it is no surprise it has contempt for the world international order.

The America that went to war to defeat Nazism is the America that sees nothing wrong with Nazi ideas during Trump’s presidency. There is no outright condemnation of Nazism, no outright condemnation of Islamophobia or condemnation of separating childrenfrom their illegal parents.

On the international scene, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, appointing a “Jewish Only” team to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the recent cut of aid to UNRWA and the closing of the PLO’s office in Washington is but an affront to the idea that America can ever be a fair and honest broker in the Middle East.

Previous administrations played a fraudulent game of pretending to be fair when supporting all Israeli illegal actions in the Occupied Palestinian territories and lavishing Israel with tens of billions of military and economic aid to a country with a per capita income that exceeds that of the states that voted for Donald Trump.

The contempt Donald Trump has for America’s institutions and to America’s sense of fairness, justice, and the rule of law certainly disqualified Trump from being an American Idea.

Sami Jamil Jadallah

Sami Jamil Jadallah is a US citizen, an immigrant from Palestine with over 35 years of international legal and business experience in the US, Middle East, Europe and North Africa. He is a Veteran of the US Army and holds a BA degree in political science and economics, a master degree in public and environmental affairs and doctor of jurisprudence from Indiana University.

Active in international and local affairs, Sami is a co-drafter of the Preamble for the Constitution of the One State for All of its People in Palestine and is active in veteran’s affairs in support of their re-integration in American society. He lectures and writes on a variety of topics including terrorism, social, economic and political issues related to the US and the Middle East.

Sami believes that education is the only way to transform the Middle East into a peaceful productive region and calls on all foreign troops to get out of the Middle East, leaving the people to shape their own destiny. Sami is in semi-retirement but fully engaged in voluntary work and engaged in the peace movement in the Middle East.