DILIMAN WAY- WITH HOMOBONO A. ADAZA* -BIDEN, TRUMP AND DEMOCRACY
“People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.” – Alan Moore
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." -Plato
America
is a beacon light of democracy in the world. As some people say, when
America catches cold, the rest of the democratic world gets pneumonia –
that is in a political sense. When Donald J. Trump was elected
American President in 2016, democracy was in grave peril because the man
has no respect for democratic values and institutions – as his vulgar
words and erratic behavior show.
He
is so enamored with himself he succeeded, with his charisma and
demagoguery, to create a cult whose members worship him as a demigod
incapable of being wrong – even if he spews lies in all direction so
brazen that it is almost difficult to think how it is possible for him
to have tens of millions of Americans believing in his lies hook line
and sinker.
But
to an intelligent observer, it is no surprise that someone can create
cults in America because there are many of them in America, in
microcosmic forms – Ku Klux Klan, Manson, Qanon, Neo-Nazis, Proud Boys
and many others. The surprise is the millions of members who embrace the
Trump cult without the need for active recruitment. All they do is
listen to Trump and respond to their own insane and ignorant impulses
which Trump encourages.
The
truth of the matter is that the true believers in Trump are ignorant of
democracy and belong to the lunatic fringe in America. Of course, there
are so many exceptions. Many of them deserted Trump at the beginning of
the 2020 election campaign. More known personalities who did just that
are former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Colin Powell, General
Mathis; Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer who wrote a devastating book on
Trump entitled MEA CULPA; Trump’s niece who wrote a book, TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH: HOW MY FAMILY CREATED THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN
which demolished Trump as a liar, a cheater and a fraud; Trump’s own
National Security Adviser, John Bolton who wrote a book, THE ROOM WHERE
IT HAPPENED, which described Trump as incompetent; John Kelly, resigned
Trump NSA before Bolton who described the White House under Trump as a “bad place to work”; Anthony
Schwartz, the ghost writer of Trump’s best selling book, THE ART OF THE
DEAL, who like the others described Trump as a liar, incompetent,
racist and misogynist; and Mike Pompeo, Trump’s Secretary of State who
still desperately clings to Trump for his own reasons, called Trump once
as “full of shit”.
If
a relative who has a doctorate in clinical psychology, a lawyer who
used to champion your cases, a ghost writer who wrote your best selling
book, and your own close associates describing you as the worst possible
person they know, you must really be a piece of shit – unfit to be
president of your own country.
Poor
loser: Despite Trump’s strenuous campaigning, he lost the election to
Joe Biden by a comfortable electoral vote margin and historic popular
votes. Consistent with his whining even before the election that the
only way he could lose is if he is cheated, he filed cases all over the
place and continues to claim he won the election and was robbed of
victory.
People celebrate outside the Philadelphia convention center in
Pennsylvania after Joe Biden was declared winner of the US presidential
election on 7 November.
Photograph: Chris McGrath/Getty Images*
What
a pitiful sight for a President of the United States of America. He has
not only dishonored the American presidency, he has diminished America
and democracy in the eyes of the world.
Until
now he refuses to concede. He went to court thinking he could win the
cases, all of them were thrown out of court for being baseless,
numbering about thirty four. Leaders all over the world have
congratulated Joe Biden for his victory – Boris Johnson of England,
Angela Merkel of Germany, Emmanuel Macron of France, Netanyahu of
Israel. Only the dictators in the world have not congratulated Joe Biden
– Vladimir Putin of Russia, Xi Jin Ping of People’s Republic of China
and Kim of North Korea. Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security
declared that the 2020 election was the most secured in the history of
America. A number of Republican senators, governors and leading figures
like Chris Christie of New Jersey have already congratulated Joe Biden.
American
media has already announced the incontestable victory of Joe Biden but
Trump refuses to budge. What a miserable sight! What a poor loser!
Back to America:
The election of Joe Biden as President of the USA is a breath of fresh
air not only for America but for all democratic countries in the world.
It’s a re-affirmation of the validity of democratic values and
institutions. It is a loud and clear repudiation of racism, a misogynist
orientation, fascistic behavioral patterns, affection for dictatorships
and strong men and isolationism. It is a return to constitutional
democracy and fundamental democratic values.
It
is the dawning of a regime that seeks a return to what is considered
American – civility in words and conduct, adherence to the rule of law,
affirmation of equality before the law, enjoyment of freedoms tempered
by responsibility, a choice of excellence as against the forces of
incompetence and ignorance, and leadership in the world to preserve
civilization dedicated to the survival and elevation of mankind to a
level of excellence.
With
the beginning of the Biden era, one gets to be reminded of Thomas
Jefferson’s articulation in the American Declaration that “We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among
these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure
these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed…” Similarly, with Abraham
Lincoln’s immortal words, “A government of the people, by the people and
for the people shall not perish here on Earth.”
We
also recall the undying dreams of American Presidents - Woodrow
Wilson’s New Freedom, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, John
Fitzgerald Kennedy’s New Frontier and now, Joe Biden’s Back to America.
We fondly remember some lines from American songs like “Land where my
father’s died, land of the Pilgrim’s Pride. From every mountainside, let
freedom ring.” We cannot help remembering the line which defines
America as the “land of the free and the home of the brave”
This
is what Joe Biden means to many observers in the world, return to the
fundamentals – constitutionalism, rule of law, equality among men and
women, justice for the deprived and downtrodden, unity in diversity,
global leadership for democracy in the greater interest of mankind, and
condemnation of all forms of dictatorship and mindless and ignorant
cults.
America defined:
America is not only a land of immigrants; it is also a land of dreams
for people of all colors – black, white, yellow, brown. It is a land of
tremendous possibilities – where a black man like Barack Obama can be
President of the country, Catholics like John F. Kennedy and Joe Biden
becoming Presidents and a colored Asian woman becoming Vice-President
like Kamala Harris.
Indeed,
it is a land of dreamers where the impossible become possible; where
dreams become real and realized. It is also a land of tremendous
intellectual excellence – Justices like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis
Dembitz Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, William Douglas and Robert Jackson;
novelists like Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, F.B. Scott
Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, Robert Penn Warren and Sinclair Lewis; short
story writers like O. Henry and Sherwood Anderson; poets like Robert
Frost, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Toni Morrison,
Christina Rossetti; and men passionately driven by divine incandescence
to better the human condition like Robert Fitzgerald “Bobby” Kennedy and
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I
can go on and on but the list is interminable that celebrates man at
his best, brightest and greatest. As the line of the song Frank Sinatra
sang so well – “that is America to me.”
The man:
Joe Biden is a very simple man going back to the fundamentals. As he
said it so well, he is a President for all Americans, those who voted
for him and those who did not vote for him. He wants to unite America
not divide it. He celebrates the noble impulses of the human being not
the dark forces. This reminds me of what a governor from Mindanao said
when he was taking his oath in the smallest town in his province under
conditions of martial law in 1980, “Partisan politics ends with the
elections. Whether you like or not I am your governor. I will serve all
of you irrespective of party, gender, age and persuasion.”
That
is the politics of the democrat, of an intelligent and well-oriented
President, of a unifier not a divider, of a noble human being skirting
the fringes of divinity in these times when the forces of evil dominates
many of the countries in the world.
He
is for the rule of law not only in America but for the world - giving
everyone hope that massive human oppression, lawlessness and tyranny in
many parts of our planet will begin to disappear for the good of
mankind. For now, these are just words. On January 20, 2020 and days,
weeks, months and years ahead, let us see how Joe Biden translates words
into action. As Joe Biden said, with a Kennedy flourish and flavor, “Let us show them not only the example of our power but the power of our example.”
As they say, the taste of the pudding is in the eating.
RELATED ARTICLE:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/07/joe-biden-win-political-norms-turmoil-trump
*H. Adaza was a former Governor, Member of Parliament, BID Commissioner, lawyer, writer and author of ten books and my contemporary during my undergraduate college years at the University of the Philippines in Diliman,Q.C.,Philippines( 1951-1955).
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