Gordon Robinson | Our fascination with US politics

I’m constantly amused by Jamaicans’ fascination with United States politics.

These days that fascination has intensified into a Category 5 obsession. Friends send me daily anti-Trump messages on Rerun (work it out; it’s comic) plus stories of racist atrocities perpetrated in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. I suspect they’re implying a link between contents.

It’s almost as fashionable as violent dancehall lyrics to characterize Donald Trump as a stupid, misogynistic, narcissistic, despotic racist. To be fair to his more extreme critics, it isn’t a difficult task especially as his words and deeds ensure he fits the bill. But, as usual in this world, nothing is at it appears and the illusion of Trump’s personal “foibles” has distracted most from recognizing the true evil.

I’ve said this before. I’ll say it again. Trump. Is. Not. The. Problem!

The problem is traditional American values and attitudes birthed in genocide, armed squatting followed by forcible land capture then nurtured by slavery, systemic racism and jingoism. So the only legally recognized “pure” Americans (others endure racist pre-fixes to their nationality) know from birth they are inherently superior to all others.

Caucasian invaders soon realized that, despite their natural superiority, their numbers were too low to profitably develop such a vast land so they “imported” free African labour. Descendants of victims of this generational atrocity must now call themselves “African Americans”. But Peter Tosh knew the truth:

Don’t care where you come from,

as long as you’re a black man,

you’re an African!

No mind your nationality;

you have got the identity

of an African

Then, in the second half of the 19th century, White America recognized it needed more than just slave labour. White America needed a higher calibre of indentured servant to develop and protect its lily-white fiefdom so it encouraged immigration, through a racist, tortuous prism called Ellis Island, by people who looked like them. America tricked Europe into believing the philosophy behind their immigration policy was “diversity”.

A closer look at the sonnet inscribed in the Statue of Liberty (a gift from France) exposes the reality its brilliant author clearly recognized. Emma Lazarus’ Petrarchan sonnet “The New Colossus” wasn’t meant to extol USA’s virtuous objective of “diversity’ as many modern American politicians like Nancy Pelosi have contended.

The oft-quoted extract “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free….” is part of the final six lines which are:

‘“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she

with silent lips. ‘Give me your tired, your poor,

your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’”

White America didn’t want competition. Lazarus, a Jew, was well aware of its devious intent. White America knew it couldn’t enslave people whose nations were themselves enslavers and colonialists but needed additional labour as cheaply as possible. It was pellucid that the new “American”, similar to Caribbean’s indentured labourers, would be above the black slaves in white America’s written (Jim Crow laws) and unwritten apartheid caste system.

Lazarus’ warning was widely misunderstood and comprehensively unheeded as disadvantaged Europeans flooded Ellis Island seeking a better life. They soon realised what clock was truly striking. But, ironically, White America was too short-sighted (I didn’t say “dumb”) to prepare for the inevitable backlash. Just like subsequent Caribbean immigrants to UK, these “huddled masses” were asked to do White America’s dirty work in sanitation, transportation, restaurant kitchens etc. This backfired on American purveyors of genocide in the form of organized crime gangs growing out of these lowly service businesses firstly through trade unions and eventually business ownership. These gangs graduated from extortion/protection rackets, prostitution into international drug smuggling and trafficking all accompanied by selective, targeted, extreme violence.

Consequently, a different, more subtle type of corruption took root in White America (more accustomed to direct brutality) until selected segments of White America including Judges, policemen, and bureaucrats found themselves working for the huddled masses.

So you CAN con a conman!

Then other, darker skinned people from closer to home suddenly woke (oops, sorry, “arose from slumber”) and saw opportunity. Poor and disadvantaged from Caribbean/Central America began invading America’s southern borders. Multi-faceted invaders, like pregnant women travelling to USA to give birth to automatic American citizens, were too ingenious for White America, who didn’t need critical thought to capture America by brute force and ignorance, to quickly recognize.

White America’s response was sporadic and, of course, savage. It brutalized black Americans for the tiniest, often imagined, infraction. But the real awakening came in November 2008 when, horror of horrors, a black man was elected President. He, his black wife and daughters, actually slept in the “White House”.

A man with a fake American birth certificate? How. Did. THAT. Happen?

So, it took 250 years but White America finally felt the “time-longer-than-rope” effects of its malevolent short-term development methods. Not only were these black, brown, yellow, red and off-white “non-Americans” finding themselves in positions above their station, they were re-producing at a rate that would soon make White America a minority.

What. The. Actual. Fall. E. T?

This had to stop. White America began by electing Trump who promised to make America White Again. Trump’s grandfather, Friedrich Trump, was a German immigrant who came to USA in 1885, aged 16, and made his fortune during the Klondike Gold Rush by operating a restaurant and brothel in the Yukon. He never forsook his German roots. His three children grew up speaking German. Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was born in the Bronx (1905) and made his fortune during World War II building houses using Federal Housing Administration’s loan subsidies that allowed red-lining. In 1927 he was among seven arrested at a Klu Klux Klan organized protest.

This was Donald Trump’s heritage.

He started by cauterizing the immigrant virus spread by building a wall; incarcerating those who crossed in inhumane conditions; and turning a blind eye to white supremacist rhetoric and atrocities. Like minded white Americans, including in Congress, supported him blindly. They knew his methods were appalling but the mission was their national imperative.

So, again, Trump isn’t the problem. Trump is White America. Those of you fawning upon Joe Biden as saviour should understand the main difference between Donald and Joe. Joe pretends better. Trump’s history is in business as a not-so-benevolent dictator whose word was law for 60 years. Joe has spent 60 years in politics. Joe understands politics and that the political imperative in a Republic is consensus. To achieve consensus you must believably pretend to care about other people’s views. Trump’s history saturated him with political stupidity. Joe’s didn’t.

We can’t ignore Joe Biden’s history. In the 1970s Joe was a vociferous supporter of school segregation. He recently denied this saying he supported busing as a remedy for school segregation but the record proves otherwise.

“I oppose busing,” he said in a TV interview entered into Congressional Record (1975). “It’s an asinine concept, the utility of which has never been proven to me.” During the Democratic Party’s Primary Debates Kamala Harris attacked him on the subject saying she was one of the little girls on one of those buses who was deeply hurt by Joe’s statements. Yet, politics being politics, she obviously sees her best path to the Presidency as hugging up Joe as his Vice President. Sigh.

From 1975-1982, Senator Joe proposed nearly a dozen Bills restricting federal agencies and courts from mandating busing to achieve racial integration in schools. One of my aforementioned friends, faced with this reality, says “Joe has evolved” to which I say “Only species evolve into other species. People don’t evolve. They learn how to hide.”

Of Joe Biden’s sixteen great-great-grandparents, ten were born in Ireland. He’s descended from the County Mayo Blewitts and the County Louth Finnegans. Mayo is a deeply Roman Catholic county with a volatile history including a Great Famine triggering the highest Irish migration (1840s-1880s). The more urban Louth has a similar history beginning with Viking invasion; English takeover; struggles against English imperialism; and Great Famine. Neither included a Black demographic. Throughout the nineteenth century, where large Irish American and African American populations existed, they were often in conflict. The ’twain never met.

This is Joe Biden’s heritage.

The difference between Trump’s and Biden’s immigration policy isn’t easily discernible. Although not as obviously hard-line as Trump, Biden ordered authorities to prioritize apprehending and deporting non-US citizens deemed threats to national security, public safety or border security. Sounds like everybody to me! Trump’s Supreme Court upheld Biden’s “new” policy. Neither gives a flying fig about Jamaica so why are we taking sides?

Peace and Love.

Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com