Rights and wrongs
I recently got into a short-lived but illustrative disagreement with a friend of a friend on Facebook (take note this does not confer friendship status with the aforementioned gentleman — at least based on our exchange).
The disagreement followed a post about Donald Trump’s alleged advancing ill health noted by my proper American friend to which I added the comment ‘Let’s hope he dies soon’ — a little bit harsh, I know, but given his advanced age and well-known closeness to God, statistically likely (without the death wish attached, of course).
For this, I was accused of being ‘fucked up’ and unchristian as well as sticking my ‘fucking nose’ into American politics where it obviously didn’t belong. I didn’t pursue the conversation much further noting that life is too short to argue with people carrying deeply entrenched opinions.
I did, however, point out that Christianity in its more rabid form, is also a focal point for a White Supremacist base whose guiding mantra is hate, not love. I could have also pointed out that both world wars involved nations of mostly White folk who nominally worshiped the same Christian God while murdering each other with purpose in His name.
In light of my first point, I explained I found it difficult to rationalize Trump’s support by Evangelists and White Supremacists without himself seeking these people out as his base. My views on his boy were obviously not well received.
Now, I typically don’t seek to argue with anyone on the internet — certainly not people I do not know but I have another American friend, an expat who positively relishes these kinds of exchanges with racist jackasses but who lately, also stepped back from the pursuit after noting that it was futile.
Trump by his very nature is divisive and the more we come to know about him, the less he can be viewed as anything but a deeply malign influence, not only upon America but indeed, the whole world.
His defence at home by a hard-core coterie of ‘Ever-Trumpers’ is testimony to his highly efficient narcissistic polling to that same base — one could not exist without the other. It’s a kind of mass hysteria advance fee scam where the fan base and Republican senators are so deep in the hole that there is no room for turning back or admitting the fraud even in the light of damning new evidence.
If you add the hypocrisy of the Evangelist Church backing this morally bankrupt individual to save its own power base in America, it’s easy to understand that American politics is largely for sale to the highest bidder at home, and it seems, abroad also — a fact borne out recently by John Bolton’s revelation of Trump’s petitioning of China (another bastion of free speech) to help him win re-election.
They say that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel but apparently, Trump has gone one further in the pursuit of his political survival.
It’s ironic that it took a disease to expose the deeper sickness of the world’s political structures. America is just a very high profile case in point where a sociopath whose agenda is divide and conquer is finally shown for what he stands for — and unfortunately, a large cohort, including the gentleman I wrote about at the start of this article would rather take a bullet for Trump than admit they could be wrong about him.
I personally struggle to understand the systemic flaws, like racism built into the most powerful nation in the world, in the same manner as I struggle to understand those of my own native country Great Britain. Sure enough, much of the wealth in both countries is built on the systematic exploitation of people of colour and conquered resources and their shared history of slavery casts a long shadow.
Do people have the right to protest violently or peacefully against injustice? Preferably the latter always, and only under the most egregious of instances, fueled by outrage and injustice, the former. It seems unfortunate though that mass protest of the like seen in America are easily steered into violence with the help of agents provocateurs and police brutality takes care of the rest. I believe in the Rule of Law in almost every instance since it is the cornerstone of any civilized society, but its imposition should be even handed and restrained.
Sadly, we are witnessing an increasingly asymmetric war where para-militarized police can quickly subdue restive crowds with extreme prejudice. This will not end well.
This brings me to an anecdote told by my father about his time growing up in Hong Kong as the son of a colonial White policeman from a marriage to a Chinese woman — one which lasted until my grandfather’s death in 1977. As one of the first in the colony to successfully marry a Chinese, his father broke with the tacit rule that Chinese women were kept at best as mistresses or servants to the occupying British.
Shortly before the Japanese invasion and occupation of Hong Kong in 39, civil unrest ensued, and many Chinese looters took the opportunity to loot and plunder which was met by the opposition of the police. One such incident resulted in the death of a White policeman shot through a letterbox as he peered into an apartment where looters had holed up.
This action enraged one of his colleagues who summarily rounded up a number of alleged Chinese looters and, taking the law into his own hands, shot them against a wall. According to my father, the policeman in question never answered for his crime, survived the four years of incarceration by the Japanese but never truly came to terms with what he had done, and ended his own life after the war by the slow suicide of alcoholism.
Violence begets violence.
Modern day Hong Kong is struggling to retain the rights and privileges it enjoyed as part of a broader Western style administration under the British but as you can see, it too is fighting an asymmetric war with the mainland Chinese and their own version of the Rule of Law. Unfortunately, the World Police under Trump and the faded Union Jack under Johnson will do little to help the Yellowman in those territories any more than their historical treatment of the Blackman in earlier centuries and other colonies.
It’s easy to call out racism when you see it and treat everyone you meet with equanimity and respect if everyone else is conscious of these simple precepts. Ignorance fuels hatred and ingrains deep seated injustice. Black people in America and every other country’s people stained by the shameful history of racial oppression deserve justice now for without full acknowledgement of the sins of the past, there can be reconciliation and no peace in the future.
