I should not be, but I am ...

 

I should not be, but I am ...

Donald J. Trump, the current President of the US (POTUS) is a traditionalist, and also an originalist, a la Robert Bork. All that should have been enough for me to be on the other side of the fence, but I am not.

When I encounter a traditionalist, my wife, everyday a thousand times, I resign myself to my fate, being on the same side of the fence in which she is. If I can do that to my wife, I should be able to do that to Trump, who is far removed from me.

I put up with an originalist, again my wife who is prone to quoting in Sanskrit–the original and the one and only Language of the God, Deva Bhasha–for anything and everything, and whatever I have written in the previous paragraph applies here in spades.

Given the above, I am inclined to think of Trump as someone who values traditions. He does celebrate Thanksgiving, does he not? It is the most traditional holiday that is unique to the US, which is celebrated with gusto in America. It also opens the gates to enjoy free–wheeling commercialism for it marks the start of Christmas season of gift–giving, and helps the US Commerce Department track the trend–the commercial weather–vane, if you please–of the economy of the US, from the remote past to the far future.

Later, when Americans received natives from West Africa, it marked the start of another tradition, that of owning slaves. Trump would welcome changes to the US Constitution (through an amendment) if he could own slaves, I am sure. Of course, he must first work to change the US Constitution to make it easier to amend it, like how easy it is in India.

Trump, if others allow him or when (I did not use ‘if’, please note) he crowns himself a dictator–that would make the US Constitution irrelevant–he can easily re–institute slavery. His alter ego, Mr. Elon Musk would do it for him.

Oops, I think I got it wrong, it should be Musk who would go back to 1948, the year apartheid was instituted in South Africa and bring Trump Back to the Future from whenever it was the first Africans came to the shores of America. When was anyone other than the POTUS spoke in the Oval Office? Musk did just that, holding court, expounding on the true meaning of democracy and Trump merely looked on. Disinterested or confused, he looks the same! One might say, sanctity of the Oval office was breached.

Now, to originalism. 1789 is holier than 1776 in a deeper sense, though not celebrated. That was the year the US Constitution was ratified, through the Great Compromise. Yet, Musk who is from South Africa, knew Trump would much prefer Apartheid in South Africa as it put blacks absolutely where they belong. Indeed, Trump loves Musk and his thinking.

The US has been the only nation two centuries ago that officially treated some humans as less humans, to be precise equal to (not equivalent, but measurably equal to) only 2/3 of the lives of the other standard humans.  

I do not recall all the issues on which Bork sought the US to go back to the original meaning the founding fathers attributed to the US Constitution. This is where he makes an appearance in this write-up. He, for me, was the original originalist. It was on this issue of originalism Bork was denied a life-time seat on the US Supreme Court.

What does the US Constitution say about Native Americans in this regard? Does Trump know? Does Musk? Precisely a century and a half after the US Constitution was made official, an iota of clarification was offered by the phrase, “Manifest Destiny”. Every piece of real estate (Trumps mtier, as he proclaims) claimed by the whites as they marched across the continent became the land of the whites. (Lord Rama, when he conducted his Ashwamedha Yagna, was claiming all the land his horse traversed.)

One should visit the exhibition below the Gateway Arch, St. Louis, on the banks of River Mississippi. The Gateway Arch itself is the symbol of western progression of western values, it is loudly claimed and the museum below shows how it was done.  

Why was the exhibition situated below? That is an innovative use of creating space around what was required for the foundation of the Arch; the earth between the foundations of the two legs of the arch accommodates the exhibition instead of the normal backfill. This is where visitors board a tracked train of two-seater units starts its journey near to the top on one leg, and to descend through the other. I appreciate these innovations that American architects and engineers do come up with in appropriate places! Other nations do too, particularly France, Germany, UK, China and others, but do not tell this to Americans.

That was the detour that I took as an almost life-long civil/structural engineer. Excuse me for that. The exhibition shows how Americans marched across half the width of the American continent, yet not a mention of the Native Americans. When I went through the exhibition, I felt something pinch me, about the natives, but I kept silent as my fellow tourists, all graduate students at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, would have neither understood nor cared.   

Hitler valued the lives of Jews at zero. He had precedence, the “Manifest Destiny”, but took it beyond, way beyond. Americans ignored Native Americans or threw them some table scraps, but Hitler did not. The Jews who were alive at the end of WW II were alive in spite of Hitler. One might say that the Native Americans who survived did so in spite of the originalist’s telling of “Manifest Destiny”.

Taking this cue from Hitler, the descendants of Hitler’s victims now treat Palestinian lives at less than zero value. Each of the dictators around the globe follows this play book – Kim Jon Un, Fattah al-Sisi, Victor Orbn, Recep Tayyip Erdoan, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and others–and treat who make the dictator’s enemies his enemy. There must have been female dictators too, but as I am not a historian I cannot readily name them.

I am sure Trump would be happy, with Elon Musk signalling it for everyone to see and appreciate what he is doing to both forced and illegal immigrants, in emulating Hitler.

Americans would readily add to the long line–sample given above–Donald J. Trump. Check that. As said earlier, it is his handler-in-chief, Elon Musk who should be added. Trump is too much of a simpleton to be cunning. He is a megalomaniac, to be sure, but also an ignoramus.

Yet, Trump is teaching American history to Americans, through the sieve of traditionalists and originalists. What is there not to appreciate and applaud, even for a liberal like me?

Raghuram Ekambaram