DIARY
A
nation stunned – the good old U.S. of A
by
Robert LaFrance
About 3:00 am on Wednesday, November
9th, I woke from a sound sleep and looked at my mobile phone for
news of the U.S. election. The nation I used to admire had elected a bully and
a buffoon and had let loose the fascist stallion. Pity those whose skin is not
quite white.
When I realized that the filthy
election campaign was finally over, I went downstairs and took a shower.
I can’t say I was gobsmacked by the
U.S. election result; the signs were there since FBI Director James Comey
announced that his police were investigating still more Hillary Clinton emails.
During the next nine days, while the FBI were finding out that that none of the
emails was a problem, millions voted in advance polls and millions more
fence-sitters made up their minds to vote for Donald Trump. He should go down
on his knees and thank James Comey.
Perhaps someday someone would
explain to me EXACTLY what Hillary Clinton’s crimes were. We know about Donald
Trump’s hate-filled messages and his treatment of other races, but what did
Hillary Clinton do, exactly? I have asked dozens and all they refer to are the
emails, the Whitewater scandal from decades ago, and the fact that she’s a
woman. “Yes,” I say, “but what exactly and specifically was the crime?” No one
knew.
Anyone who owns real estate in New
Brunswick should immediately put for-sale ads into American newspapers; many
people are very very eager to leave the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave and
emigrate to Canada. (Someone said ‘Land of the Freak, Home of the Depraved’.)
I don’t think I want to talk about
this any more.
**************************
Well, I suppose I had better talk
about it some more and try to understand why a country with so many intelligent
people let itself be railroaded into what happened on November 8th.
If we ever want to know the dictionary definition of the word ‘shock’ we only
have to replay some of those TV interviews from that evening.
CNN, a network that many Americans
consider practically communistic, seemed to interview a lot more Hillary
Clinton supporters than Trump supporters until it was clear that the former
were too shocked to speak coherently. If it hadn’t been such a serious matter,
I would have chortled – yes, I said chortled – at their discomfiture.
Donald
Trump, who emerged victorious that night, reminds me very much of an old
Italian guy I used to read about. According to Wikipedia, Girolamo Savonarola
(1452-1498) “was an Italian Dominican friar and preacher active in Renaissance Florence. He was known for his prophecies of
civic glory, the destruction of secular art and culture, and his calls for
Christian renewal. He denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule and the exploitation
of the poor.” On the rare occasions when he rose to speak clearly, Donald Trump
sounded like that guy.
On the other
hand, he sounded a lot more like a more recent guy, if we can cast our minds
back to Germany in 1933 and before, when the German people saw a guy named
Adolph Schicklegruber (his real name) as their Savonarola who would take on the
big guys. However, it didn’t seem to occur to Americans that their savior, or
saviour if you prefer, was one of the ones who had been exploiting them all
along.
Donald Trump has
no financial stake in all those Trump buildings – towers, skating rinks,
outhouses, whatever – but there’s his name franchised like a Mcdonalds
‘restaurant’. He found tax loopholes that most of those protesting Americans
never heard of and couldn’t have used if they had, and he ended up with tax
dollars that should have gone to the man and woman trying to open a restaurant
in Wilmington, Delaware.
When I was a lad,
I used to spend some summers on my aunt’s and uncle’s potato farm near New
Sweden, Maine, and always found Americans to be friendly and bright, but as in
the Joseph Heller novel, ‘Something Happened’.
We Canadians all
know that if Donald Trump governs the way he campaigned, we – and the rest of
the world – are in trouble. To quote an interviewee, who identified himself
only as Bill from Sudbury, on Anna Maria Tremonti’s CBC radio show The Current:
“I don’t know where everything’s going to go from here, but it won’t be good.”
As Pierre Trudeau said, Canada is a
mouse sleeping with an elephant, and up to now we have gotten along, but if we
can go by his words so far, I would say that Donald Trump will soon be sending
us a message. Let us hope the elephant doesn’t turn over.-end-
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