For most of the gods of men masquerading as men of God, religion is a very profitable business. Aside from deceptively mouthing breakthroughs for material prosperity, soothsaying is an extremely popular product to offer a generation with itching ears.
The probability of correctly predicting the winner of a contest between two candidates is 50 per cent. So, the “prophets” take the risk, lying with swagger in the name of God! And so, their profanities continue to be marketed with ebullient theatrics and chest-thumping guffaws.
But for Donald Trump’s wanton mishandling of COVID-19, he would have easily won the electoral college again in 2020. And he would have become the first US President in history to win the electoral college (and thus the presidency) twice despite losing the popular votes. The “prophets” would have touted their capability to decode, like Daniel, celestial hieroglyphics on the walls of America.
After Trump won the presidency in 2016 despite losing the popular votes by about three million votes to Hilary Clinton, he repeatedly referred to his victory as a landslide. It was in his typical display of garrulous exaggeration and shameless dishonesty.
I have followed United States elections with exceptionally keen interest since 1980. In those 40 years, among those who got elected as President, only George Bush (the son) had performed worse than Donald Trump in the electoral college. But Bush having beaten Al Gore in the electoral college by only three votes in 2000, he, at least, beat John Kerry in the popular votes cast during the 2004 presidential election.
Barack Obama twice beat his opponents in the popular votes. In the electoral college, he won 365 and 332 votes in 2008 and 2012 respectively. The masterly Bill Clinton twice beat his opponents in the popular votes, winning in the electoral college, 370 votes and 379 votes in 1992 and 1996 respectively. George Bush (the father) won the popular votes over Michael Dukakis in 1988; he earned 426 of the electoral college votes. With such verifiable and irrefutable data on previous US election results, what was the basis for Trump’s silly tantrums regarding a landslide victory? Such narcissism! Such self-serving revisionism! Such delusion!
A time-honoured tradition of American politics is to be magnanimous in victory and gracious in defeat. Alas, Donald Trump is totally lacking in both virtues; he is reprobately conceited in victory, tragically graceless in defeat. He seemed to have been absent when God was endowing good manners.
If any American could boast about landslides in electoral performance, it should have been Ronald Wilson Reagan. He won 44 out of 50 states, garnering 489 electoral college votes, leaving only 49 votes of the electoral college for Jimmy Carter, the Democratic incumbent against whom he contended. Not once did Reagan fabricate falsehoods against his predecessor in office. His magnanimity kept the word “landslide” from his lexicon. By contrast, scurrilous campaigns of calumny against Barack Obama, mostly oozing from malignant racism, became the obsessive preoccupation of Trump before and after the election; it was his religion.
Reagan settled to work. He found common ground with Speaker Tip O’Neil, a Democrat. Conservative Reagan yielded to public opinion by effecting some divestment from the economy of apartheid South Africa. Reagan was so politically successful that in 1984, he won 49 out of the 50 States, garnering 525 out of the 538 electoral college votes! Phenomenal! Mind boggling!
But after the election, not once did Reagan taunt Walter Mondale. This was unlike the incarnation of uncouth Ajantala who ascended to the presidency in 2016 and thereafter disdainfully goaded Hilary Clinton with endless sleuths of indecorous taunts and insults. Obviously, Trump has a terrible allergy to decency.
Sadly, each lie that Trump told only emboldened him to manufacture a more blatant casuistry. As one Trump’s lie begat another, the escalation of his political shenanigans assumed a religious fervour. Soon, Trump’s seemingly hypnotised supporters locked their brain in an ultra-cold freezer and dug into what Fela Anikulapo called “jooro jaara jooro” dance steps of brainless zombies! They are akin to hibernating animals experiencing the metabolic and neurologic stupor induced by winter.
At the height of his grip on the Third Reich, Hitler’s psychosomatic effect was so total that women experienced orgasmic euphoria just by listening to their Fūhrer! As it was with Adolf, so it is with Donald. Not that Trump has Hitler’s gripping command of rhetorics. Quite frankly, Potus 45 often spoke with the blabbering cacophony of the retarded, a far departure from stirring Reagan or eloquent Obama. Trump’s commonality with the Fūhrer is the convergence of a megalomanic psycopath with an audience of fawning racists and toady xenophobes.
It is easy to forget that some of the worst despots in history ascended to power through the instrument of democratic ballot. Hitler and Trump archetypify such ascension. Incidentally, Trump was never a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Were he to ever try pretending, Trump could never be mistaken for a sheep. Everything about him belongs to the recognizable phenotype of a coyote. He struts like a coyote, growls like a coyote, and feeds like a coyote. In devouring his opponents, whether in business or in politics, he spares no means, no matter how unconscionable, in his predatory and nihilist quest for conquest.
He lies easily, indeed compulsively! He bullies mercilessly, often masochistically. Like a he-goat or skunk, his entrance fills any space with revulsion. But with cold Nietzschean calculation, Trump had undiscerning White Evangelicals to deodorise his foul some stench with ecclesiastical perfume.
Fortunately, it does not end here. Eternity waits! Meanwhile, even on this side of eternity, God needs no trap to bring the arrogant to reckoning. Conceited by its agility atop trees a monkey orchestrates its own fall. The arrogant inexorably ensnares himself!
Trump contemptuously sneered at Biden as “Slow Joe!” He repeatedly disdained him as the worst candidate in the history of politics. Republicans responded with thunderous applause. Soothsaying Evangelical preachers mistook such applause as echoes of God’s endorsement. They had forgotten that God often whispers in a still small voice rather than boom in the decibels associated with a volcano or earthquake!
Only Trump can tell us how it feels to lose to “the worst candidate in the history of politics!” The pain must be throbbing enough to cause the insanity of openly leading a seditious insurrection!
The last laugh belongs to God.
