29 Mar 2024
Thursday 7 July 2016 - 12:18
Story Code : 221906

An America in denial

When considering the likelihood of a Donald Trump presidency, we should remember that Americans voted for Richard Nixon twice, for Ronald Regan twice and, what was perhaps the hardest election to swallow, George W. Bush twice. All three should have been hauled to the International Criminal Court for war crimes, or at least impeached. But Americans had no problem voting for them, and then, knowing how stupid and dangerous they were, voted for them again. So in light of that one can easily argue that Americans are quite likely to vote for Donald Trump. These poor choices may be attributed to the fact that Americans in general know so little about the amount of misery that America spreads around the world.

Its a Saturday morning in a small town in the German countryside and everything is closed. The hotel where Fadwa and I are staying stopped serving breakfast a few hours ago but because of the jetlag and exhaustion of travel we slept late and we have to go looking for breakfast elsewhere. The one coffee shop that is open in town only serves coffee and ice cream. The restaurant next door serves breakfast, the girl behind the counter tells us, but she doesnt think it necessary to mention that they too are closed on Saturday. But thank God for immigrants and particularly Turkish immigrants in Germany (a sentiment shared by all Germans later that night when Mesut Ozil scored a defining goal against the Italian team in the European cup quarter final), because there is always a Turkish kebab place open nearby. So we walk in, and even though there is no breakfast on the menu the waiter is reassuring, we make eggs for you, and salad, bread, anything you like, no problem.

Two older gentlemen also in search of a place to eat ended up in the same Turkish place as we. One is an American visitor, the other a German and it doesnt take long before the American says, So how are you dealing with ISIS? Are you prepared for the terrorism in terms of cyber and the whole Internet thing?

We sit right behind them so we can hear the conversation quite well.

Ive been doing a little reading myself, the American continues, and you know that historically Islam has always been bent on destroying the Christian world. And Obama, who is a Muslim, is putting Muslims in key positions in the US to facilitate this outcome.

Fadwa looks at me looks at me in disbelief: This guy is out of control!

But Obama is officially a Christian, the German politely suggests.

Officially yes but for Muslims lying is permitted in order to further their cause of taking over the Christian world.

The German is silent.

Trump is the only one who can deal with them, hes the only man who understand how to fix things.

The German nods quietly.

Trump is a business man so they say he is not presidential but he is the only one who has the right ideas and can change Washington.

But that wasnt the worst of it.

The way we in America view things, the American explained slowly and thoroughly to his German host, Merkel is trying to create one world, much like the Germans tried to do in the Second World War.

He just compared Angela Merkel to Adolf Hitler and todays Germany to Nazi Germany. I am beginning to lose my patience and Im not even German. Will the German gent say something or shall I?

What we want to tell this man, who seems well educated, probably a businessman, is that at this very moment, in airports and seaports around the world millions of refugees from Africa and the Middle East are crammed into waiting rooms and busses and make shift boats in order to find a safe place for their families to live. Families are torn apart, waiting to enter one country, cross another or leave altogether yet are detained, held and too often killed. Israel, the best known though certainly not the only US proxy in the world is keeping millions of Palestinian refugees in camps, committing genocide in Gaza and sending away asylum seekers who traveled by foot from the farthest corners of Africa seeking refuge from violence. Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan and Yemeni cities are in rubbles and all because of American greed and Western complicity. Islam did not cause any of this, Christian, white America and its white, Christian European allies did.

The Levant, which at one time was a place marked by tolerance is now being torn apart by American proxies. Governments in Istanbul, Cairo, the Arabian Peninsula and of course Tel-Aviv create discord in return for billions of dollars from the US government. At the same time one can see the refugees in Istanbul, Beirut, London, Frankfurt, Athens and Paris. Children sleeping in weary mothers arms waiting and waiting for permission to travel. Husbands and fathers in one country, mothers and children in another, countless drowning in the Mediterranean and all because of wars with which they had nothing to do, conflicts in which they hold no interest and regimes they never elected but were forced upon them by some intruding European or American government. Sometimes the parents have a permit to travel but they are held back because a toddler was denied, or a six year old girl was not given the right passport and cannot enter one country yet may not return to another, and all this while all they want is to return home.

I prefer to live in Syria even now, even today over Germany any day, one young Syiran mother waiting at an airport told us recently. All she needs is a permit to drive through Lebanon to get home to Syria. She and her husband are Syrian with German passports but their two-year-old child is not allowed to travel. Palestinians know this all too well as they try to travel from Gaza to Cairo or Ramallah to Amman and from there to the outside world. Families from Mexico and Central America experience this as well, as they too sit in rooms, and quite often in prisons for unlimited periods of time trying to cross into the United States, fleeing economic and political realities that were created by the United States to make Americans richer and make Mexicans, Hondurans, or Guatemalans poorer.

But now we can all rest assured because Donald Trump is on the case. Trump who can barely find Mexico on a map if he had to, certainly not Syria or Iraq has the key to solving the worlds problems. Without making general brush stroke characterizations, one can safely say that Americans have a tendency to keep things simple, too simple: Good-guys vs. bad-guys, us vs. them. Liberals like to believe that Trump supporters are beneath them: uneducated whites that feel disenfranchised, people who feel they have no voice and now at last someone is out there expressing their pain. But this American in Germany was not poor or uneducated, and neither are Trump supporters apparently.

After reviewing exit poll data in 23 states, statistician Nate Silver found that Trump voters median household income was higher than the median in every state, sometimes by a wide margin. In Florida, for example, the median household income is $48,000. For Floridian Trump supporters its $70,000. Likewise, according to exit polls about 44 percent of Trump supporters have college degrees, while this is true for only about one third of Americans in general.

When America voted for George W. Bush the people around the world were disappointed. When Americans voted for him a second time people were angry. Donald Trump is an ignorant, self-absorbed bigot who makes George W. Bush seem like Thomas Jefferson. If Trump becomes president the world will not easily forgive America for giving him the nuclear launch codes.

Thia article was written by Miko Peled for Americna Herald Tribune on July 06,2016. Miko Peled is an Israeli writer and activist living in the US. He was born and raised in Jerusalem. His father was the late Israeli General Matti Peled. Driven by a personal family tragedy to explore Palestine, its people and their narrative. He has written a book about his journey from the sphere of the privileged Israeli to that of the oppressed Palestinians. His book is titled The Generals Son, Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. Peled speaks nationally and internationally on the issue of Palestine. Peled supports the creation of a single democratic state in all of Palestine, he is also a firm supporter of BDS.
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