How to lose friends in one easy lesson — by Donald Trump

Some commentators have played around with the words ‘furore’ and ‘Fuehrer’ and even compared Trump to Hitler

Let’s face it. Since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, no American politician has been able to stoke America’s collective consciousness as thoroughly as Donald Trump with his one-point agenda. Send the Mariachis back to where they came from… and make sure no Muslim ever enters the soil of America. Of course, the chaps who’ve already made it can stay… but they’ve got to behave themselves. Predictably, both demands stirred up considerable enthusiasm among his followers who applauded him hysterically. Could this be the Second Coming they’ve been waiting for? Subsequently, perhaps to soften the blow, he stated that it would be only a temporary measure in response to the terrorist threat, like the one adopted during the Second World War when German, Japanese and Italian immigrants were detained and watched.

Trump’s threat was hotly denounced across the spectrum. In the US, his current chief critics include two Republicans, presidential candidate Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, and Paul D Ryan, the House speaker. There is also a Democrat, the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid. The words they used variously were ‘self-defeating’, ‘un-American’ and ‘unconstitutional’. President Obama, always a sober voice in a crisis, put it rather nicely when he said such a move would greatly offend America’s Muslim allies who were involved in the war against the IS. In spite of that, certain right-wing commentators said Trump reflected the electorate’s views more honestly than the party’s leaders. Perhaps they are right.

Worldwide, there was quite a furore, especially in Britain where there is a sizeable Muslim population. Prime Minister David Cameron, another sober voice in a crisis, said Trump’s remarks were divisive, unhelpful and quite simply, wrong. A campaign which has already collected well over 230,000 signatures at the time of writing demanded that Trump be banned from entering the UK. Chemi Shalev, a columnist for the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in a passage wrote: “For some Jews, the sight of thousands of supporters waving their fists in anger as Trump incited against Muslims and urged a blanket ban on their entry to the United States could have evoked associations with beer halls in Munich a century ago.” Some commentators played around with the words ‘furore’ and ‘Fuehrer’ and even compared Trump to Hitler.

Asma Jahangir, the prominent human rights activist of Pakistan, coolly stated that Trump’s remarks were absurd. She added that “this is the worst kind of bigotry mixed with ignorance. I would imagine that someone who is hoping to become president of the US doesn’t want to compete with an ignorant mullah of Pakistan who denounces people of other religions.” According to Yenny Wahid, the daughter of a former Indonesian president, “…In Indonesia we don’t really take his comments seriously.” But the Egyptians and people in the Gulf, the rest of the Middle East and Africa certainly do.

Unlike some of the countries of Europe, which have been embroiled in two horrific world wars and have seen their land invaded, at times devastated or repeatedly bombed from the air, the US was attacked only twice, once in the Pacific island of Hawaii in 1941 and once on the mainland in 2001. Both strikes had specific targets and the attacks were swift and brief. The fact is a country that is the policeman of the world, which believes it has the moral right to do as it pleases to other countries, just can’t handle it when it in turn becomes the subject of an attack. It is highly unlikely the Republicans will finally settle for Trump, though the hate rhetoric will stick in their minds. They will undoubtedly pick one of the others who, by his policy, will not be unwittingly promoting the Democrats’ cause.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 13^th, 2015.

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