It s hard for someone outside United States to contemplate of a political leader getting away with so many alleged wrong-doings in a country bragging so much about the rule of law and democracy, and calling itself a shining beacon on the hill, yet defending and justifying brazen lies and grotesque abuses of power. Yes, I get that Trump has been a bad guy throughout his adult life, who, with money and white privileges, escaped accountability. But I can’t fathom millions of smart people falling into his whims, regardless of the harm they inflict on their nation by bending their consciousness and moral compass. It is not plausible to dismiss the phenomenon as political polarization alone, for the stakes are too high and extremely dangerous to let it go, and assume America would remain America and run business as usual.
I do recall a story in which a student once asked a history teacher as to why millions of highly intelligent German people blindly followed a corporal called Hitler. The teacher paused a bit to answer the question, then asked the student: “How many Hitlers were there in Germany at the time?” Surprised, the student responded, ” Only one Hitler”. “Wrong”, the teacher told the student. “Hitler had duplicated himself into millions more in German society.” I am afraid history is repeating itself elsewhere before our eyes, and if history is of anything to go by, nations rise and fall when political figures like Donald Trump appear on the scene once in a while, and citizens let their guard down. It is happening now in the USA.
Supporters of Trump’s shenanigans argue that bringing Trump to justice was a disgrace to US reputation. Others see this happening as American justice and public institutions rightly fighting back. In this case, one would say the taste of pudding is in the eating. But, let us wait to read how history would record Donald J Trump.
