[Photo: Disappearing Palestine – 1917 to 2024. (Arab Daily News.)] By Mahboob Khawaja, PhD Politics is always a game of pretension. Politicians remind us of inherent lies, deception, embedded greed, and mastery of persuasive propaganda to voters to do good for fellow citizens if chosen for leadership. They possess an irresistible impulse of political power […]
[Photo: Disappearing Palestine – 1917 to 2024. (Arab Daily News.)]
By Mahboob Khawaja, PhD
Politics is always a game of pretension. Politicians remind us of inherent lies, deception, embedded greed, and mastery of persuasive propaganda to voters to do good for fellow citizens if chosen for leadership. They possess an irresistible impulse of political power to grab as their property to set the agenda of actions – the fate and future of millions and millions of innocent human beings to rule as democracy at work. The US professes to be a nation of peace, equality, justice, and freedom. Is it so? After the Joe Biden presidential election, Donald Trump raised a scheme of uproars, confusion, and an attack on the nation’s capital alleging ‘election fraud’ and that he was the real winner. He alluded to several criminal cases as politically motivated, but some of the judicial hearings charged him with criminal acts. Now re-elected, Donald Trump gets ‘unconditionally discharged’ in the NY court hush money case; the other cases are gone with the wind too as he assumes the presidency on January 20th. Could a common citizen of the US be entitled to such favorable treatment?
Concerned global thinkers and informed citizens wonder if it was a joke to prosecute Donald Trump (the former president at the time), or was it a true medium of the travesty of justice to make America “Great” again in despotic reasoning? America risks losing its sustainable democratic future if one recalls the attack on Capital Hill on January 6, 2020. “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” proclaimed George Orwell. It was the failure of the institutional system and people to have allowed Trump to orchestrate such an upheaval. The US Republican Congress supporting Trump should see the mirror and set the course of history straight for future generations. The world needs America for future-making but if its leaders are a sell-out to single-track extreme thinking of Netanyahu, the US could end -up losing its history of national freedom, human rights, and equal justice. Those who get into political power via unreasonable cliches become intoxicated in power not by reason but by political force and money as a means to dominate the masses with wrong thinking and reasoning. Ironically, President Biden will transfer the power peacefully to Trump on January 20th which Trump denied to Biden in January 2020 and alleged a ‘fraudulent election’ outcome. Would he be a Marc Antony or Brutus ( William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar), to deliver the sermon and adore Biden for his courage and leadership or twist the logic of history? Recall, Marc Antony’s funeral oration over Julius Caesar:
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man
Those who elected Trump must be enjoying the creative momentum of American humour irrespective of the criminal record, violent force, horrors, and killings implied against the American people at a climax of great upheaval called ‘domestic terrorism’. Reason unfolds mischievous futuristic catastrophes by men who are feared and questioned for moral and intellectual integrity to change America into a wonderland of experimental democracy claiming liberty, justice, and equality before the law. Truth cannot be made more true by fake statements. Often one wonders, how President-elect Trump would see the occasion of a peaceful transfer of presidential power come January 20th, 2025. Would he reiterate the old cliches of abusive power and come to reason the unreason to which he subjugated America in 2020?
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
Netanyahu felt a terrible sense of helplessness during the unpredictable American presidential election but rejoiced at the re-election of Trump as he had renamed ‘Golan Heights’ as ‘Trump Heights’ – the occupied territory belonging to Syria. The contradictions covered up by the adroit, Trump wants the Panama Canal back, and would it be renamed as “Trump Canal”, and claims to occupy Greenland to be of security necessity, and could it be renamed as “ Trump Greenland”, and not to mention of Canada as a 51st state, ridiculed by the outgoing Canadian PM Trudeau who had a little embarrassing encounter with Trump in Florida. Would Canada be renamed after Trump declares forceful victory? People who make phony jokes could sometimes become a joke in the annals of history.
The history of force is always trivial and endangers the present and sustainable future. “Hell will break” warns President-elect Trump to the Arab leaders and Hamas if Israeli hostages are not freed before he takes office. They “should not have been taken in the first place” reiterates Trump, not understanding how Israel occupied Palestine and continuously bombed the people of Gaza for decades. If time and truth carry any meaning, America desperately needs a new awakening of consciousness and moral soul. Paranoid and politically charged with failure, Netanyahu could re-emerge as a kind of refurbished leader to claim some relevance as Trump blames “Hezballah” for the January 2020 attack on the US Capital. The fictitious blame not only compliments Netanyahu’s psyche but shocks the spirits of dead leaders of Hezbollah targeted by Israel. Was Brutus intelligent or was Antony right to deliver a rational speech on the body of Julius Caesar? Do the masses in America or the Western democracy live in a reality that is not their own except for pernicious consequences wanting a navigational change, reasoned morality, and equal justice for all?
Cynicism about politicians is always endemic and part of the seamless democratic cultures that are constantly progressive and often rebuked by social and political entertainment as an after-dinner joke. The masses have a passion for happiness and progress. Still, they never imagine or do not wish to think that politics is a game of pretense – stage acting best portrayed and fashioned by hired media consultants and advisors to win the political elections and deceive the masses that the “Emperor has clothes.” There is always much evil and good in every society but evil will not diagnose political tyranny, falsehood, and resentment. The cure to evil is honesty, equal justice, freedom of expression, moral values, and righteousness to lead and serve the people. The prospects of global peace, equal justice, and conflict resolution are disappearing after what has been witnessed in Gaza, Ukraine, and other parts of the world. The systems of global responsible governance are broken and the US supporting Israeli war made it dysfunctional and are alleged by the ICC and ICJ to have committed crimes against humanity and genocide in Gaza. If Trump has a vision for change and peace for America, he should know his strengths and weaknesses and be cautious not to foresee the world through the eyes of Netanyahu but come out of the perplexities with clarity of his mind to co-exist with the larger global community. If he believes in making America great again, it would be through peace and not intransigence against Panama, Palestine, Canada, or Greenland. He would have to rebuild his credibility as a leader who can lead despite perpetuated ignorance and rejection of learning from history. It could be a hollow humour coming out of hell to imagine if America or some West European nations had any sense of human rights, to protect the civilians in warlike Gaza or Ukraine and to support the conscientious global community standing for peace, justice, and the end of bogus wars against innocent people.
Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in international affairs-global security, peace and conflict resolution with keen interests in Islamic-Western comparative cultures and civilizations, and is the author of several publications including the latest: One Humanity and the Remaking of Global Peace, Security and Conflict Resolution. Germany, 12/2019.
