The country wants what it wants, by Folabi Ogunleye

Summoned by the great hands of fate to join the pantheon of leaders before him who used the historically grand occasion of Inaugural Day to assuage hurt feelings and rally the country to a united cause for the march forward with destiny, the old man stuck to the standard for which he has always been known.

Right off the bat, he was his trademark self, droning on in his familiar breathless monotone. Absent in his address was grace, class or after-fight sobriety, never mind magnanimity in victory. Lost was any inkling of the notion that he is inheriting the responsibility of leading a vastly diverse society. Rather, he cut the tone of a leader who has the absolute support of every one of the over three hundred million citizens of the country now under his watch.

As dignitaries sat and watched him speak, some bemused, others numbed, and many more excitedly, he went on like he was at a magarian rally, weaving and bobbing between banal bombast and casual misrepresentation, in a manner that made you cringe for those among his audience who also love America but are disturbed by his unrefined comport.

Yet the truth is that this man merely knows his people well enough to serve them what they want. And, at least from his perspective, his approach to getting what he wanted has earned him another win, so it makes little sense for him to change tactics. And that is perhaps why it should be expected that he will up the ante on his style by being even more of a pugnacious braggart than he was the last time.

Hence his openings words. “The golden age of America begins right now,” wherefrom the country “will flourish and be respected again all over the world.” The man said this even as he taunted and derided countries like Canada days before, suggesting the annexation of the friendly northern neighbor as American territory – a la ‘America’s 51st state.’ Quite the manner of conduct to earn international ‘respect,’ one might say!

And, never mind that the American sovereignty is secure as the most influential nation in the world, he bragged that America’s “sovereignty will be reclaimed.”

The man knows the diet of his audience, and he simply offers them the red meat that they desire. It is what has propelled his political rocket thus far. He, therefore, is merely the symptom, and not the disease. Far more consequential is the disease of fearful selfishness and bawling gullibility of the American voter who made him leader again. While others hope that the American masses will awaken to the better angels of their nature, he shows up, confident that the fears and insecurities of his fellow Americans remain in place to help his personal interests.

Not in recent memory has an American leader managed to so effectively corral the vulnerabilities of the American voter to selfish political advantage like this man has done. His bet on the fears and the ignorance of the typical privileged American, alongside that of the economically disadvantaged American, continues to pay off fantastically for him. Over and over again, his people have failed to disappoint him. He calls, they beck. He becks, they call. Hate or love the man, he is a great study of human weaknesses and how to mine it for personal gain.

This man knows that it sells like hot cake to finger the ‘other’ for the woes of the local downtrodden. So he ignores the self-serving and destructive roles of the corporate barons like himself in the travails of the struggling American to instead identify Lady Liberty’s “wretched refuse of your teeming shore” as the reason for all of it, lumping them up as ‘criminals, drug dealers and rapists.’ His audience easily lapped it up and savor more of same, and he continues to serve them more and more of it.

None of this is new. It is a recurring decimal in the history of the country. At some point it was the Irish who were the brunt of the deplorable standard of blaming the recently arrived for their woes. It did not matter that they came in search of opportunity and were ready to work for it. Their arrival of the Irish was simply resented by those who berthed the shores before them, who saw them as a threat to their better sustenance. So, any or every Irish of that era was labelled in the worst way possible. Likewise the Irish did to others who came after they arrived America’s shores. And so did so many other cultural groups do to others, too.

It is all those grievances, true or false as many of them are, that the old man showed up to exploit without a conscience. He started it with the 44th president, then candidate, whom he branded as a foreign stooge who was not born right to superintend the affairs of the country. He launched and spearheaded the ‘birther’ campaign of calumny against the man, demanding that he provided proof of local birth, which the latter was forced to submit, unlike any contestant before him. Even then, they ridiculed the birth certificate as inauthentic, and asked instead for the ‘long-form’ certificate, which was also released.

Of course it is all engineered outrage, using real and imagined issues as fuel to rile up the gullible population for political profit that ultimately benefits the corporate barons at the expense of the masses. It is akin to triggering a tsunami with a mid-ocean earthquake, where anything in its path is swept up for advantage – including, but not limited to, the ludicrous gender wars where the excesses of the status-quo played right into the devilish hands of these crafty opportunists.

If you thought he was going to be any different from the man he has always proven to be, or that he would strike a whole new cordial tone following a fractious run for office, you were in for a numbing disappointment. The 44th president’s spouse obviously knew better. Having lived through the worst of this notorious new leader, especially as the wife of the man whom he serially assaulted with disparaging untruths, she spared herself the torment of personally enduring his latest crude performance.

The rest is history. The fact is that the man won, and he won convincingly – ‘tremendously,’ as he is fond of saying. The mandate is his once again to do as he deems fit. And every move he makes so far strengthens his position more than it weakens it, thanks to an American majority who cares more for its immediate gains than the long-term danger of being led by a truculent degenerate who has no respect for anything, or anyone, that does not help shore up his personal advantage as a corporate baron masquerading as a benevolent politician.

Ogunleye is a Nigerian living in New York

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