President Donald Trump
Trump Presidency and Core American Values, By Solomon Umazi
By November 2020, barely 15 months away, the United States of America (USA) will again go to the polls to elect their president. Incumbent, President Donald Trump of the Republican Party is throwing his hat into the ring for a second term of four years. It will once again be a battle of wits between the already polarised world who either want unchecked liberalism or restoration of the American values. The world will once again test the resolve of Americans to vote for complete restoration of the battered image of the USA, and by extension, global solidification of the Christian faith.
I claim no expertise in the politics of the USA. But we are all students of history. I make bold to say that the so-called American elite will never appreciate people like Trump until Americans, and by extension, the remnant of the dwindling Christian world, lose their well-cherished freedom founded on the truths of the Bible, and their homeland security.
The priceless worth of freedom is often appreciated when it is absent. Ask any Christian from Northern Africa or Turkey. I am not alone in thinking that only God knows in full why Trump became US president in 2016. It is a fact of history that fewer political analyst and experts gave him a chance than they gave his Democrat opponent, Hillary Clinton. Not even his party members thought that Republicans will be in government with a Trump candidacy today.
I do not buy into many of the narratives for or against his presidency, not even the apocalyptic or demonic versions. At least, I have learnt that whenever we think we know better, we do not know beyond those things we choose to know. We are usually too full of our self-styled knowledge that nothing else is allowed in. Sadly, we have often realized our folly late, after it is obvious that we know less than we wanted to showcase.
For instance, Nigerian Noble Laureate, our own dear Prof. Wole Soyinka placed his American Green Card on the line to drive home his supposed superior knowledge or argument on global politics. It turned out that he made a deadly mistake and Nigerians did not forgive him or give him a chance to renege on his bet – he had to destroy his Green Card as he had vowed.
Recall, that a few years ago, in Nigeria, such disdain held sway over former President Goodluck Jonathan as is on Trump now. He was tagged clueless, weak, and everything unpresidential, even though his undisputable candour and demeanour gave everybody from North to South, East to West, a sense of belonging and security. Then our intelligentsias, the likes of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Pastor Tunde Bakare, former Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi, Soyinka among publicly derided Jonathan and sat on the streets to protest marginal fuel hike and cross-carpeting.
They mesmerized our sensibility with big grammar at various fora and podia in protest and insistence on a “Jonathan must go agenda.” They offered the most ridiculous and cheap to sell mantra ‘then and now’ that a leopard can “change” his skin. They jointly orchestrated the emergence of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015. Now, Buhari has longed proven that leopards do not change their skins.
The clouds are gathering for America. Americans seem to be on the same project of ‘anyone but Trump.’ And I can hear the refrain right here. But I pray history will deny Americans our lot in Nigeria with or without Trump. Take it or leave it, White Supremacy (WS) is real. But the flip-side is something more subtle and disturbing that if allowed to fester, then WS will be ‘moi-moi.’ Humanity is under siege to define its true identity and most logical affiliation – a godless or a godly world!
Today, America represents the strongest voice of a godly world as proclaimed by Christians globally. But to say that American voice has come under very serious attack from within and without is stating the obvious. It can only be part of a seeming secret (so-called illuminati of the sort?) if we cannot detect where former United States President, Barack Obama and Trump each stand on this emerging siege on humanity and the Christian faith. Denying this reality can only be a conscious or unconscious endorsement for the ‘spirit’ of the (New or Old) Age than being truthful as a Christian.
No gainsaying Obama was (is) well-read, but we may be lacking in spiritual discernment if we cannot detect when devils appear as angels of light to undo or corrupt the works and people of God. We should be knowledgeable enough to decipher when someone is politely and “polishedly” insulting our sensibilities. For instance, for Obama to have maintained as an official government position that “Merry Christmas” is politically incorrect to come from the White House to American people for eight years while Muslims got the full dose of their greetings as a politically correct ‘tolerance package’ from the same WH is one of many refined insults from the likes of Obama.
This is not trivial as you might think. Why did a US President come that low on such ‘trivial’ matters like “Merry Christmas,” that can never proceed from Saudi or Iranian government houses or Buhari’s Aso Rock?
Also today, increasing numbers of young girls (teens and under-teens) in North America are confused and protesting why they are addressed as a ‘she’ and not whatever they want. Some of them (at 6 or 16) proudly say they do not know whether they are boys or girls, and you think they are kidding? No thanks to the trumpeting, (nay Obamating) of their human rights to choose between being a boy or anything else except a girl.
Trump has succeeded in repealing the non-gendered washroom law in a public place. These are some of the worldviews that make the likes of Obama a darling when compared to Trump. I know many of us may not subscribe to such indoctrination, but such law-backing policies gave Obama his shine, especially in popular media houses that tolerate everything but the proclamation of Christian faith of USA founding fathers.
We are all sinners before God and Trump is not an exception as has been readily pointed out, no thanks to his unrepentant gutter language and skewed moral dispositions. But we must be guided by the verdict of our Lord Jesus that only the perfect sinless should cast aspersions (stones) on sinners.
Trump may not like foreigners, but his main targets are obvious to his best critics, and those targets know themselves too well. One thing is clear, the Islamic extremists are for once being confronted by another ‘extremist’ to prove that no one has the monopoly of terror or closure of borders to a segment of humanity. To me, Trump fits this description: Tough Responses to Unchallenged Muslim Presumptions (TRUMP).
Reverend Solomon Umazi, The Presbyterian Church of Nigeria, Abuja.
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