It was a rollercoaster without a timeline. Ups and downs, hope and despair, high pulse and pause. It thrilled minute after minute, but it gave no joy. When will it end? Today? Next hour? Or tomorrow? Toilet breaks. Meals were part of the menu. Seat on edge. Heartbeats. Bleary eyes. Deferred appointments. Stolen family hours. No second chance for bed time. Insomnia.
At long last, the elephant staggered and fell. Trump, the Don, came down with a thud. He had finally worn clay feet. What is intriguing is not that he was defeated. The man still has the great following that brought him to power four years ago. It tells us that democracy is not a guarantee in this age or any. We have to fight to keep a freedom. The only people who deserve freedom must fight for it every day, wrote German writer Heinrich Heine.
It was an election as democratic correction. The people voted against indecency. They chose truth over lies, range over rage, solidarity over solitude, propriety over profanity. They pushed against a President that hailed white supremacists, that called a set of humans Shithole, that classified some nationals as rapists. The people rejected Christian hypocrites and a God its prophets had overthrown on issues of abortion, race, gays, et al. It was a victory over vitriol.
Joe Biden’s victory is a statement for commonwealth, for a new attempt at humanity, at a handshake. A time to rescue the climate, to re-energise a world of siblings, to nip bluster, to hit the pause button on the hawks, to remember that we, as a race, gave history the holocaust, carted humans as chattels across oceans, that we groan under income inequality.
The paradox is that some people want him today. They love the demagogue, the temper of hate and division. They love the ‘us versus them’ rhetoric. It shows that democracy is a big tent, and can absorb the bad, and the bad can loom so large that it takes over. Awo fought to save the AG’s big tent from the forces of the right. What Trump did recalls what Winston Churchill said of democracy: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect but all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” It shows democracy is a dilemma for civilization. Ancient Greece abandoned it for tyranny. Germany, Spain, Italy were democracies before they embraced despots in the 20th century. Today, Putin cons his people to make himself a de facto monarch. In the Philippines, Turkey, Poland, we see the rebirth of the strongman after the vote.
Trump worked his crowd into a populist frenzy. He stoked hate. He spoke bile. He cursed. He gloated over losers. He demonised others, tossed about the rule of law, pockmarked institutions; put a soiled finger on sanctuaries of state. No one heard him laugh. His scowls seduced his adherents. His smiles were folksy to his followers. He was a pig grunting triumphantly in a sty. Yet, he was legitimate. He was going to win a re-election if not for the fervour and vigilance of the other side, of the decent quarter on the democratic block.
We must not forget the big chunk of his followers: the evangelicals. But they are the great hypocritical followers. Without them, Trump is no president. These are people who pledge loyalty to the Bible. They say Jesus is love. They say peace is better than war. But they supported a man who abandoned about 500 children on the Mexican border without their parents. They support children unborn but give sacraments to the born ones to hunger and die. They watch blacks suffer and look the other way.
What concerns me more is that they support a bigot like Trump at home and come over to Africa to preach the love of Christ. They are hypocrites of the first order. They are not the prophets of God. They are the pharisaic bunch. They are turning their tradition into tenets of faith. They are appropriating the Holy Spirit. They were not always appendages of the Republican Party, but it started when a few evangelicals launched the Moral Majority, and this was exploited by men like President Nixon, who developed what became known as the “southern strategy.” They summed up the idea in three words: God, Guns and Gays. They knew they would blend the faith and culture of southern whites. They fought over school prayers, abortion, and gays. Rather than work to make conditions to prevent abortion or preach to gays, they build the Trumpian wall. This negates the words of Christ that says, “I come not for the righteous but for sinners to repentance.”
Hence Jesus came a humble God. He did not look down on the poor. Unlike John the Baptist, he embraced grace. While the former was always fasting in an ascetic remove, Jesus was often dining with sinners. The US evangelicals are a shrinking race. They are alienating others. Their lights are not shining. Hence they are no longer appendages to the Party but part of the mainstay. Christian values are not upstream in their agenda. They are now clutching at straws to justify a man who lies, who cloaks murders under the law, glorifies race haters, etc. Trump’s religious adviser Paula White invoked angels in Africa to fight for Trump. Some have wondered where she found the concept of angels from continents. Nowhere in the Bible are angels assigned to countries or continent. Each year the evangelicals come here and are given pride of place by our pastors. But do they ask them why they stand against abortion and not for the love of the living who are not white in their homeland?
They would want to justify their argument that Trump is modern-day Jehu in the Old testament who ousted Jezebel, who they likened inelegantly to Hilary Clinton the feminist. Now that Trump is defeated, I want to know how they could stretch that comparison. Did Jezebel come back as Kamala Harris under the shadow of Biden. What evil man will they compare Biden with. When Obama won, they said he was the anti-Christ. The Bible did not say the anti-Christ would follow redemptive liar like Trump. They are using the word of God with craftiness, privileging culture over scriptures. That is the nature of false prophets. They have negated what French philosopher Blaise Pascal warned against in religion: “There are two equally dangerous extremes: to shut reason out, and to let nothing else in.”
Trump wanted to be king. Americans just reminded him they don’t want monarchs in a democracy. Their first president George Washington warned against such temptations over 200 years ago. Last week, the American people echoed their first leader.