Letter from America: US in a state of civil cultural war!

By Ken Mufuka

Former president George W Bush, 1992, articulated the differences between himself and his rival Bill Clinton as a matter of values.

Bill Clinton, a draft dodger, with 22 sexual assault cases waiting for his response, would disgrace the office of president.
Bush called Clinton a bozo.

Surely, Americans would “never vote for a bozo.” American voters saw Bush’s attack on Clinton as self-serving. Using the war cry: “It’s the economy, stupid,” Clinton won the election. Bush went into a depression.
Feeling betrayed, Bush went into silent retirement.
Hillary Clinton, running against New Yorker, Donald Trump, saw him in similar fashion.

Democrats, including former president Barack Obama, declared Trump a scoundrel, unfit to hold public office.

Their secret weapon was an audio revealing Trump as a “grabber of women’s private parts and a scoundrel”. Americans, saw that Hillary’s argument as self-serving; voted for Trump anyway. Betrayed, Hillary went into depression.
Hillary and Obama, however, refused to go quietly into the sunset.

Democrats, who lost the Electoral College by 36 votes, won the popular mandate by 2,5 million. With Obama ensconced in Washington, DC, they encouraged their supporters to “engage”. Supporters opted for “total resistance”.

Civil war of sorts

Democrats have powerful allies; the Republican Party itself is seething with anger at Trump’s takeover of their party. The print and television media, the students supported by the Washington ruling class and the crooked bankers are miffed at losing their icon, Hillary.

They have combined the first three stages of grief, denial, and anger. They are refusing to proceed to the fourth and fifth stages, reconciliation and acceptance.

Their method is evolving, but for now, they are trending towards total war, based on the narrative that Republicans are a modern version of the Ku Klux Klan in business suits. They are painting every Trump nominee to high position as “intolerant, a liar, a racist, a misogynist, a homophobe and Islamophobe and deplorable” the same tactics that lost them the election.
Cable News Network, which picked up a fight with Trump on his first press conference is at it again.

The Judas attack on fellow Senator Jefferson Sessions by Brother Cory Booker was unprecedented. Booker, who all along, was assumed to be Sessions’ friend; even visiting Alabama at his invitation became a turn coat. “If I have to choose between Senatorial norms and my conscience, I will choose the latter.” Some say the Brother has no conscience.
It was a sign of desperation.

Senator Dick Durbin made a bitter follow up attack on Sessions, bringing about memories of an episode in 1986 when Sessions, then seeking a federal judgeship, was run out on accusations of racism.

Durbin sought to recall those moments with painful allusions. Sessions, he recalled, “fiercely criticised sentence commutations of low level non-violent offenders”. Sessions said that such a class of non-violent “offenders do not exist”. Durbin produced Brother Alton Mills, given a life sentence at 24. Mills’ sentence was commuted by Obama.

In a different arena, the CBS (a Televison network) also produced two blacks, Derrick Hamilton and Shabur Shapur, who served 25 years on made-up-crimes. These two brothers were released recently.

Sessions was accused of making up “voter fraud” narratives in order to impose identity cards. These cards are aimed at scaring black voters. There was not a single case of fraud in Alabama. Sessions also denied the history of atrocities committed against blacks.
Sessions will not commit to investigating Russian influence in the election that saw Trump win. Nor will Sessions commit to investigating a US$200 million Trump loan from the Deutsche Bank.

Sessions, of course denies charges of racism. Democrats who saw his two-year Asian grand-baby twitted that he was holding a doll in order to fool folks. Sessions recalled that as a Southerner, from the racist State of Alabama, it was easy to be tarred with the brush of racism. Democrats are hoping that voters will see Republicans as white racists Neanderthals trying to return the country to Jim Crow Alabama. But their emphasis, though laudable, misses the fact that government must serve the majority first, while protecting the weak.

Muslim ban

Trumpkins have a slight advantage, but their opponents are relentless.

Democrat Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, took part in a demonstration at JFK Airport in New York. News outlets insisted that Trump had banned Muslim refugees and immigrants. The offending passage (3 (c)) says that: “I hereby suspend entry into the US, as immigrants and non-immigrants of such persons for 90 days.”

Further news organisations have gone hysteric about Trump’s phone call with the Australian Prime Minister. The Obama government had agreed to accept 1 200 Muslim refugees rejected by Australia. “The hell, I won’t accept this dumb deal.” Trump is accused of impolite language. “We are taken advantage of by every nation in the world, virtually. It’s not going to happen anymore,” he told a prayer breakfast meeting.

False news outlets say that Trump cursed out the Aussies (pronounced as Asses).
The evangelicals associations are meeting privately with conservative radio and television stations. After Trump’s nomination of pro-life Judge Neil Gorsuch, the saints are quietly celebrating. Gorsuch upheld a petition by Catholic Sisters of the Poor, who were seeking relief from Obamacare provision to provide abortion and contraceptive insurance coverage.

David Brooks (and the New York Times) says Republicans have “struck a deal with the devil. It will cost them their soul. Trump’s administration is an ethnic (white) nationalist administration.”