To think that the world has seen an end to the Trump legacy of democratic aberration with his departure from the White House would have been very comforting but for the cancellation of the March 4 session of the Congress at the Capitol. Those who piously wished the political roguishness, of which the immediate past US president was the most conspicuous advertisement in time of digitisation of information, is dead and buried are sorely wrong.
Trump is back on his trail of disinformation and misleading his followers, the diehard among them being convinced that their president would take over on March 4 about two months after the January 6 attack on the Capitol. In his first public address after his retirement to his massive social club Mar-a-Lago in Florida, he has harped on the same odious tune that he won the election. So the information the Capitol police received on Wednesday that the far-right group known as QAnon pro-Trump conspiracy theorists was supposed to breach the Capitol building once again on Thursday last could not be taken lightly. March 4 is highly significant for the conspiracy theorists because until 1933, presidents of the United States of America were used to be inaugurated on that date.
What is happening in America is really puzzling. A president who has been the only one in the US history to have faced impeachment twice and by all evidence incited the Capitol Hill riot in which at least five people were dead was let go unpunished. Narrow and bizarre politics got the better of truth and fair play although seven Republican senators sided with the Democrats to convict Trump. For conviction 10 more votes were needed in the 100-member Senate.
Now the Republicans will be listening to the music as Trump is all set to stage a comeback and go about his way of derailing democracy. This is disconcerting development particularly for a country like America, thought to be the champion of democracy. What is happening in Myanmar is hardly surprising. The military there is habituated to staging coup time and again. If it takes encouragement from developments in the USA, there is nothing to be surprised. In the last few decades of the past century, banana republics in Asia, Latin America and particularly Africa saw the rise of rogue presidents and military dictators. Donald Trump, a businessman with hardly any bona fide political career, has beaten them all in taking the art of antics, frivolity, deception and lies to a new level.
Had he been convicted, the USA could come clean on the political intrigues now looming large on the horizon once again. When a session of the House in Capitol building has to be cancelled for fear of attack from Trump supporters ---and that too within two months of the first ever such attack and one a half months after takeover by a new administration, the extent of threat from internal terrorism can be gauged. If the only superpower in the world is so vulnerable and so divided within, how can it expect to lead the so-called free world?
The Americans may have to pay for the follies of not only a man they voted to power in 2016 but also for the indecision and lack of resolve to get rid of a wicked leadership. In the ultimate test, the GOP leaders failed to discharge their duties and rise up to their constitutional obligation. The rot began when the business tycoon with dubious records snatched the Republican nomination to run the election against Hillary Clinton. If the four years' administration has not opened the eyes of the GOP representatives of the Congress and Senate to the danger, the fault lies with the country's decline. Not only did he receive more than 74 million popular votes to Joe Biden's 81 million, his radical supporters believe that his win was stolen by election fraud.
America is a badly divided nation and a significant portion of its population is pathologically inclined to the Trump factor ---a poisonous mentality irreversibly wedded to racial hatred, falsehood, megalomania, tyranny and dictatorship. America's return to its long tradition of democracy will not be easy with Trump casting a long shadow on its politics.
nilratanhalder2000@yahoo.com