I, Trumpenstein
4th April 2016 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
Just when you think business tycoon and GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump can’t say or do anything else to embarrass the nation or shock the American people, he always manages to come up with a little something to stir the pot.
Last week, clearly peeved about the bombings in Belgium getting the lion’s share of media time, Trump decided to take the bull by the horns and right the proverbial ship by telling MSNBC host Chris Matthews that women who undergo abortions should be punished. Despite the candidate’s shameless attacks on female political candidates, celebrities and journalists alike, some people were still shocked that his comments reflected such a warped view of women in the 21st century.
And try as he did later to downplay his remarks, it is difficult to discard his comments which give us all a glimpse of how his brand of domestic policy would impact women, people of color and the poor.
What some people still can’t seem to grasp is that for the segment of the U.S. population that controls nearly all of the nation’s wealth and is used to calling the shots, much has not changed in America over the past 200-plus years. Some of the legal barriers to citizenship, liberty and justice have been removed by the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court but in many ways there has been very little substantive progress in the way the nation and its wealthiest and most powerful 1 percent run the show.
They still get away with keeping the minimum wage extremely low and paying workers at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder slave wages. They still get away with creating barriers to block historically disadvantaged populations from exercising their right to vote and severely limiting their life chances. And they still get away with filling the Halls of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court chambers with men and women to do their bidding and to run America in a manner that makes it very clear to people all over the world that women, people of color, immigrants and the poor have absolutely no rights which the 1 percent are bound by law, religion or custom to respect.
Unlike the creature brought to life by Dr. Frankenstein, Donald Trump is neither a figment of someone’s imagination or a freak of nature. He is the direct result of centuries of deceit, political chicanery, skulduggery, manipulation and dogged determination to maintain the status quo by any means necessary.
I suspect that while some members of the “party of Lincoln” view Trump as an embarrassment to the fold and cause for alarm, those in the 1 percent camp might see Trump as the silver bullet, the perfect candidate to bring about the collapse of the federal government and an opportunity for those who control the nation’s wealth and its resources to create the kind of all-white, Christian republic inhabited by white male landowners and their hand-picked concubines that would make men like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington proud.
If life ever truly imitates art, we might find clues about what the 1 percent have in mind for the rest of us by watching films like The Hunger Games, Divergent and The Matrix.
We should all bear in mind that no one could conceive of the Nazi regime in Germany, the apartheid regime in South Africa and the ethnic cleansing and bloodshed taking place in Eastern Europe and parts of the Middle East before these things actually began.
We should all keep ourselves and the people we love informed about the things happening around us and what they mean to us. We need to organize ourselves, identify, groom and elect people who are not afraid to stand up for us in local, state and federal government and cherish the right to vote. We also need to do everything in our power to deal with those in positions of power and authority who abuse that power and authority to deprive us of our constitutional and human rights.
In addition to being card-carrying citizens of the United States, we are members of a larger family, the human family. As such, we should conduct ourselves in such a way that confirms that we understand why “think globally, act locally” is more than just a clever slogan for a T-shirt or bumper sticker.
We should also remember that the creature brought to life by Dr. Frankenstein is no match for hordes of informed and determined citizens armed with the truth, a just cause and a sense of purpose.
All power to the people.
This article originally published in the April 4, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
