By JENERALI ULIMWENGU

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Thousands of miles away from Washington, millions of people who have never had any interest in American politics stayed glued onto their TV sets just to watch if the inauguration of Joe Biden last Wednesday would take place in the face of a feared Trump-inspired coup.

In the end the inauguration went down without a noticeable hitch, and all the defeated and deflated Donald Trump could do was to promise he would be back and to say he knew Biden would succeed because he, Trump, had laid a solid foundation for him.

Then Biden went to his new office and immediately set about dismantling that ‘solid foundation’ in a stream of executive orders whose effect will be to nix the more ideological pillars of a failed presidency that had really muddled American politics for the last four years.

So now the Americans have gone back to the Paris Accord on climate change which Trump had so arrogantly snubbed early in his presidency, and trashed the impulsive immigration ban on a number of Muslim majority countries.

Rarely has a new president done as much as Biden did in his first day at the office and that shows that he had a number of issues all figured out before he took that oath of office.

That is what you can call ‘hitting the ground running’, a far cry from other politicians who fight like mad to get the job but when they get it they behave like the dog which had been chasing a motorcar and what it does after catching it.

The haste displayed by Biden is totally understandable, seeing as the animus between him and his successor was so thick it could have been cut by a knife, and that many people in his camp were itching to get the governance systems ‘de-Trumpised’ as soon as possible.

There may also be a sense of triumphalism in Biden’s corner. The man has never hidden how much he really loathes the man he has replaced; he thinks Trump is a disgrace to America, and the less what he did in office the better.

It is like a bad dream that you wish to forget about once you awake. I suspect many ‘reasonable’ Americans had rather forget that the White House had ever been defiled by an ogre of such villainous proportions.

It is not possible to ignore the more remarkable public offences that Trump has committed. By breaking with the tradition of more than a century and a half and refusing to attend the inaugural, Trump cemented his persona as a sore loser, prompting Biden to say before the ceremony that Trump’s nonattendance was the only thing the two men agreed on. Blood between two people has rarely been worse.

Whatever the American authorities decide to do with Trump will be a matter of interest to us here on the continent as we will be learning what to do with our Trumps once they are out of power and vulnerable, if ever.

Will Trump be prosecuted for offences related to his taxes? Or for illegal fundraising? Or for criminal perjury in his (and Giuliani’s) statements in connection with the ‘Stormy Daniel’ scandal?

Could it be over the (perceived?) incitement of his thugs to storm the Capitol? Or, over his monumental failure to provide leadership as Covid-19 killed over 400,000 of his citizens while he was touting voodoo medicine and displaying utter nonchalance?

Whatever they decide to do with the man, he does not look like going away completely. He has promised to come back, and he just might just do it.

The American far right has found a messiah, and his influence is extending across the Atlantic taking in the Marine Lepens, Nigel Farrages and Viktor Orbans of this world, extending to the tropics and across the latitudes.

The project to deliver the world to White supremacist fascism should not be ignored or underplayed. We are approaching a time when the resources of the world will not suffice to sustain the contending appetites, and already our fragilised banana republics are being targeted as cites for the Lebensraum of the masters of the world.

A new world order is hatching, and we are none the wiser because our noses are too close to the grindstone; our rulers are either in cahoots with the predators or too preoccupied with amassing their shroud money, or both.

Instead of gazing at the horizon to discover the dust of the hordes, they are too busy bludgeoning their own people because these latter tell them that the emperor is in the nude.

Whatever the Americans do with their weirdo who was recently president, the might of the military-industrial complex will continue operating, and young Americans will continue being sent all over the world to do the bidding of the machine, and in this they will continue using our rulers as their local agents.
That the Oval Office is occupied by a ‘more reasonable’ Potus will not alter much.

Ulimwengu is now on YouTube via jeneralionline tv. E-mail: [email protected]