Francis Key Scott, a lawyer and an amateur poet, wrote the US national anthem The Star-Spangled Banner in 1814. In 1861, Oliver Wendell Holmes added the fifth and last stanza of the anthem in the indignation of the start of the US Civil War. The last two lines of what he added to the national anthem are significant in the context of the current politics in the country. The lines are:
"And the Star Spangled banner in triumph shall wave/While the land of the free is the land of the brave."
The rest of the world has had no problem believing and accepting the United States as the land of the free and the land of the brave. In fact, the rest of the world also believes and accepts that America is the leader of the free world and the world's oldest democracy.Â
Now, Donald Trump as the Republican candidate in the US 2016 presidential election has threatened to destroy these proud claims by showing an ugly face of America that few knew existed because it was hidden in the dark fringes of the country's alt right politics.
Donald Trump has challenged and tried to destroy the heart of the argument embedded in the last two lines of the US national anthem. He started the process of destruction when he chose as his campaign slogan "Make America Great Again." That meant he did not believe in America as majority of Americans and the rest of the world. In fact, he told Americans that their country is no longer respected around the world because it's the current leaders, led by President Obama, are "fools" who have made America, a pushover for the Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Donald Trump said all these to tap into the frustrations of a good part of Americans, in particular, the blue-collar white ones that are facing economic hardships. He needed to get the attention of this large chunk of voters, first to win the Republican nomination, and second, the White House. He thus painted with the broad sweep of the brush, the picture that traditional politics, which he denounced as "political correctness", was at the heart of their misfortunes and America's slide from the First World to the Third World. He held politicians in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans, responsible for this alleged transformation.
The message attracted millions to Donald Trump's campaign like the pin to the magnet. As the party's top leadership watched, Donald Trump, a rank outsider, claimed the Republican ticket in style because his message against Washington's correctness resonated with a huge number of Republicans at the grassroots. Donald Trump picked a few other issues to bring more groups to his core supporters to broaden his base, aware that there were other frustrations in the US electorate that no one had tapped before. The first was the deep contempt among many white voters, mostly blue-collar, that an African American had become the President and was establishing himself as one of the most successful Presidents of the modern era.
Thus Donald Trump introduced the "birther movement" in 2011 to make President Barack Obama's presidency illegitimate by suggesting that he was born outside America. He added another major issue to his campaign by capitalising on the fear among Americans from so-called Islamic terrorism once he announced his candidature for the 2016 election. He thus called for a total ban on all Muslims entering America until "our leaders are able to figure out what the hell is going on out there." He announced the ban programme right after a Pakistani couple had killed 14 in San Bernardino and the Paris attack by ISIS late last year. The totally irrational "ban Muslims" demand saw Donald Trump's support in the Republican Party shoot up.Â
Trump then used the latent frustration and anger in the country against the illegal immigrants. He focused on the Mexicans to make them take the major brunt of his anti-immigration stance. He called Mexicans criminals, rapists and drug addicts and promised he would build a wall on the 1000-mile-long US-Mexico border and make Mexico pay for it to keep illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries from entering the United States illegally.
Trmp embedded these frustrations in his campaign theme "Make America Great Again" by promising economic prosperity to the country by bringing back millions of jobs that he said had left the country because of flawed trade deals by the Obama and Clinton administrations. He believed that by emphasising that jobs had left the country, he would be able to attract blue-collar white Americans in critical swing states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, known as the Rust Belt and the industrial belt in the north where the automobile industries are located that are under economic pressure with "declining industries, aging factories and declining population."
On foreign and national security affairs, Trump claimed he would defeat ISIS which, he said, the Obama administration had helped create by withdrawing from Iraq in 2011. He also energised his base by saying he would bomb the ISIS to a pulp.Â
To humiliate President Obama, Trump eulogised President Putin and praised Russia. He expressed views on America's allies in an unbelievable manner stating that Japan and South Korea should become nuclear weapons states to take responsibilities for which they now depend on the USA and that NATO should also take more responsibilities and not depend on the USA for defence requirements.
Donald Trump's campaign has thus been built on the baser demands and instincts of his supporters like hatred for a black president; hatred for immigrants, hatred for Islam and Muslims, etcetera. He alleged that Hillary Clinton, as the great protector of Washington's evil establishment and political correctness, embodied all the evil that stood in the way of making "America Great Again".Â
America watched as he did all these and became a serious contender to succeed Barack Obama to the White House. The nation also watched that as he took the political stage from a rank outsider towards becoming a political phenomenon, he did not give the country even a vague plan how he would make "America Great Again".Â
No one seemed to remember those last two lines of the country's national anthem, that the United States is the "land of the free" and "the land of the brave" as Donald Trump promised measures against the blacks, the Muslims, the immigrants, the Latinos particularly the Mexicans. Americans did not seem to be bothered that Donald Trump was promising that if elected the President, he would build America in the mould of Russia and use Vladimir Putin as his role model.Â
Unbelievably, a huge number of Americans also believed that the country had become a Third World one that Trump as the saviour would fix. Thus going to the first presidential debate on September 26, he was neck and neck in all the polls but behind Hillary Clinton, nevertheless. When he denounced  Hillary Clinton is evil based on the Benghazi affair, few Americans considered that a Republican-dominated Congress carried investigations after investigations with the zeal of witch hunters and could not make a case against her.
The FBI, an independent investigating arm of the US Government, investigated Hillary Clinton on the email, the other scandal that has been haunting her all along. It did not find any evidence to recommend to the Attorney General to file a case for prosecuting her. The FBI's Director is Republican whose tenure will outlive the Obama presidency. His report reprimanded Hillary Clinton for being extremely careless but as the FBI did not find any evidence that such carelessness compromised any state secrets to the country's enemies, it declined to send the case to court. Hillary Clinton on her part expressed regret to the nation for her indiscretion.
The writer is a retired Ambassador.
serajul7@gmail.com
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M. Serajul Islam
FE Team | Published: October 25, 2016 19:01:39 | Updated: October 22, 2017 07:36:19
M. Serajul Islam
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