Enter Trump and real trouble beckons

Days of riots across the US and widespread disbelief demonstrate how results of the November 8, 2016 American presidential election came as an anti-climax. And there is a paradox considering that America is a paragon of fair play. What led Donald Trump to hint at the possibility of poll rigging in advance of the vote? Was he crying wolf to divert attention from the real culprit?

The US’s Electoral College system where only 538 delegates decide who becomes president is open to serious abuse. Contenders with nothing to lose and loads of money like Trump could easily compromise delegates. Don’t be duped by that baloney whites are impervious to corruption; big money rarely loses a contest. If Trump could circumvent America’s hawkish tax system, he is capable of anything.

The US media, ably amplified by local scribes and cartoonists who delighted in putting Trumps rump where his face should have been, did not give Trump a fighting chance. On that score, am not innocent myself, for I confidently posted on social media that ‘there was no danger of Trump becoming president’.

The finality in the declaration of Trump as US president–elect proved me wrong, but I don’t believe the American press deliberately tried to spoil Trump's chances of winning by influencing the way the public finally voted. Trump's differences with the American press were basically ideological.

It was what he stood for and his alarming vision for America that raised hackles. Metaphorically, when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold hence, America must stay healthy. Trump comes across as a quack doctor who does not have the clinical expertise to keep America healthy.

There are probabilities his presidency will be a danger to world peace, order, liberties and human rights. Signs of the times are evident in war-mongering white Americans who subscribe to the philosophy of the Ku Klux Klan tormenting black Americans days after Trump was declared victor.

Trump's mantra of making America great again has, for centuries, been the rallying call for the racist Ku Klux Klan. Ironically, the Ku Klux Klan came into being in 1866 as an underground movement against the Republican Party’s policies that sought to empower black people politically and economically.

Trump's vitriolic outbursts against immigrants and Muslims merely echo what the Ku Klux Klan has advocated all along. In the 1870s, Klan members denounced immigrants, Catholics, Jews and blacks. They indiscriminately bombed black schools and churches aiming to drive them out. There isn’t much difference between the Klan that Trump sympathizes with and ISIS; they are all murderers.

Immigrants in America won’t be safe under Trump. America will cease to be the land of opportunity; the most equal and open society with Trump at the helm. America’s internal tranquillity, the moral basis for its lectures to third-world countries on why they must embrace democracy, is threatened.

If the persecution of immigrants in America is stepped up, it will most likely be met with resistance. In that eventuality, Trump could resort to using heavy artillery against his pet subjects of hate. How would the American security services that are not entirely white react if push came to shove? Trump's quest to make America strong again could easily precipitate its disintegration. Adolf Hitler’s version of greatness nearly crushed Germany.

Trump's idea of making America strong again is to create an all-white American society. The impact of an isolationist American policy on world peace and order will be gargantuan. It will disrupt delicate trade negotiations, agreements and balances between America and the rest of the world. Trump's desire to directly challenge China has its pitfalls and there is no guarantee America would be the victor in any confrontation. Attacks on blacks, Mexicans and Hispanics after Trumps win, and even before he takes over the running of government, are a culmination of pent-up xenophobic inclinations in America.

Frustrated whites believe Trump is the answer to their desire to reclaim what outsiders had taken away from them in terms of jobs, trade and other opportunities; a typical biblical Esau and Jacob narrative.

A Trump presidency portends ill for Africa economically. Trade restrictions, mass deportation of Africans from America who contribute immensely to their economies through remittances from abroad will throttle many third world economies. Kenya, for instance, realised more than Sh156 billon in remittances from abroad in 2015.

What this means for Africa is that there must be a paradigm shift in matters of policy, fiscal discipline, trade and diplomacy. Africa is likely to be entirely on its own. With Africa’s trademark political ineptitude, citizens have two choices; bearing the brunt in silence or rising against those that have condemned Africa to mediocrity.