Ashok Dhillon
Nov 22, 20198 min
Watching the Impeachment Hearings over the past few days, and listening to the Republicans determinedly deny the facts underlying every witness’s testimony, regardless of how ridiculous the denials, the Biblical verse came to mind, ‘For what shall it profit a man, if he should gain the whole World, but lose his own soul’ (Mark 8:36 King James Version). It is abundantly clear that neither Trump nor the Republicans put much stock in religious teachings, regardless of their sham public displays of faux-piety, and it is also clear they are willing to destroy America, if that is what it takes, to keep the most unethical, dishonest President and themselves in power. In doing so, they have systematically destroyed much of America’s soul.
While Republicans stubbornly deny Trump’s gross unfitness for the highest Office in America, and in face of all the mounting evidence that proves it daily, the World has no personal agendas to protect (unlike the Republicans) and are therefore quite willing to pronounce judgment on Trump, purely from his historic and daily actions, which even to the most cynical eye are shockingly immoral, unethical, destructive, and undermining of all that the World came to expect of America, as the World’s leading democracy built on the principles of fair elections, freedom, justice, equality for all, and the unbending rule-of-law.
And it is that role, America as the post World War II model global citizen and the moral touchstone (so to speak), that its image has been damaged most grievously by Trump and his truth averse, crime-tolerant Republican lawmakers and supporters.
The World, almost on a daily basis, see the determined Trump and Republican assault on values that gave America its international identity. It watches as they hollow out its most sacred institutions, and make all true things – false; and all falsehoods - the truth; thereby incinerating America’s image globally, with shameless daily displays of hypocrisy, falsehoods, and unconscionable self-serving behaviours that make Third World Countries look respectable and law abiding by comparison.
Under Trump and the Republicans, the wholesale discarding of all morality, normality, and even minimal requirement of proper behavior for the highest officials in the land, has led to a precipitous decline in America’s image and reputation. This diminution of America was registered by the Pew Research Centre survey which showed that of the 25 Nations surveyed - over 70% do not have confidence in Trump as President of the United States – being convinced that he simply cannot be trusted.
With such a damning consensus on the international stage, among the majority of the World’s major nations, America has been diminished greatly, and that decline continues.
Trump has broken international agreements, flaunted the rule-of-law, withdrawn from important multi-national efforts of the most critical issues of the day, concerning all humanity, and in doing so, he has ceded America's preeminent leadership position to the most authoritarian governments of the World - Xi’s China, and Putin’s Russia.
Additionally, Trump has fawned in front of all dictators while alienating long term allies, and has worked diligently to destroy the post WWII American global order.
This destruction of America as the leading model nation was undoubtedly Putin’s greatest success. And where the former great ‘Super Power USSR' failed in defeating America, Putin succeeded spectacularly, through Trump and the Republicans. Never has America, and in its wake the western democracies, been so weakened from within by the skillful manipulations and subterfuge of a former KGB agent, Vladimir Putin.
Trump’s consistently destructive actions have been responsible for America’s rapid retreat from its preeminent position as the ‘Leader of the Free World’, and its greatest ‘Influencer’, to now becoming a rogue nation to the World, taking self-damaging action that greatly boost Russia's global interests.
Today, Xi’s China and Putin’s Russia are the most influential regimes globally, with Trump paying constant homage to them both, openly and frequently, while at the same time orchestrating America’s full retreat from the global stage, both in political and military leadership, and in global commerce and trade.
He assists them openly by withdrawing from competition in their theatres of greatest influence, be it global initiatives like Climate Change and Multi-Lateral Global Trade (in both of which now China leads), or be it in Syria and the Middle East, where Putin now wields the greatest influence, especially after Trump ceded Syria to him by pulling US troops out of Northern Syria, giving the region over to Turkey, while betraying America’s most faithful ally the Kurds, at the same time. The region is now patrolled by Turkish and Russian troops.
After Trump's withdrawal of US troops, Putin now controls most of Syria, through partnership with Assad and Iran and Turkey, and has greater influence in the Middle East than the United States; to a point that even America’s closest ‘friend’ Saudi Arabia is cultivating Putin as an alternate ally.
Additionally, every adversarial strongman, even of rogue states like North Korea, have risen in the World today, because of Trump’s frequent admiration and promotion of them - and even more bizarrely, by his publicly confessed 'love' and friendship for the most brutish-thuggish of them all Kim Jongun.
Trump’s open promotion of global thugs only further tarnishes America’s battered image, as internally, it has become a caricature of a ‘Banana-Republican’ with its leadership acting like the dictatorships that Trump so admires, complete with a blindly loyal sycophantic Republican support base, willing to sell out the country’s interests for the personal benefit of a leader that for them, can never do any wrong.
As one expert witness after another testified at the Impeachment Hearing, with first-hand knowledge of Trump’s wrong-doings, the dictator’s sycophantic base continued to double down on denying them, proving America is no longer a country of law and order, with an institutionally enshrined system of justice and accountability, but a classic case of a ‘Banana Republic’, controlled by one man, a rogue leader with a loyal lawless subversive support base, that cares not for the country’s long-term good, but theirs and their corrupt leader’s alone.
Today’s America is riddled with endemic corruption in its highest offices, as was amply disclosed at the Hearings. And its other Government Agencies have been either gutted, or stuffed with the least qualified but loyal misfits, that make it their daily duty to destroy any competencies left in those institutions.
Some of the most important government agencies have effectively been rendered useless, and most others at the very least, neutralized. And those that are still active have been destroying all public protections dealing with land, water, air, and consumer protections from predatory practices of financial and other unethical businesses.
The President and his supporters attack daily: truth, justice, rule-of-law, democratic institutions (democracy itself, through gerrymandering & elections tampering), intelligence agencies, expert bureaucracy (now labelled as ‘The Deep State’), and the much maligned and systematically undermined American free-press.
All this has irrevocably damaged what the World, and most Americans, saw as the old USA, the bastion of democracy, fair elections, law and order, justice, and the home of the legendary American free-press.
Now, America is viewed as a hollowed-out version, a mere shell of its former self, what with its entrenched corruption, its two tier economic system, its partisan stacked judiciary, and a despotic President in-residence, that undermines even the Armed Forces Command, and their internal justice systems.
And as Trump increasingly isolates America from its allies and draws it closer to its enemies, its ability to negotiate diminishes greatly. This has been starkly evident in Trump's ongoing efforts to renegotiate relationships with trading partners and with old adversaries. For example:
North Korea is still openly defiant and in full possession of its nuclear weapons – and China is dragging out the trade negotiations till the pressure on Trump to do a deal builds to an unbearable level, and he is forced to sign something, anything, even if it is only a part-of-a trade deal (Phase I).
Remember, this was the man that said, ‘tariff wars are easy to win’? So far he has lost the trade and tariff war, and in doing so, he not only diminished America, but its farmers lost their biggest purchaser, China, to Brazil and others, and Trump has had to resort to writing checks to the farmers to bail them out, from American taxpayer’s money. He claims that the funds are coming from some sort of a mythical ‘tariff monies from China’ revenue stream, which every expert says is not possible, as China isn’t paying for the Trump tariffs, the American consumers are.
Nor is China buying extra ‘agricultural products’ from American farmers as it puts the squeeze on Trump, and on his negotiating teams, to gain further ground. If past ‘Trump negotiations’ are anything to go by, he is going to give away the house without getting anything in return.
Remember North Korea, and it’s much hyped Trump induced de-nuclearization? And Trump declaring that the World was much safer now? Now that he and Kim were in love. Well, Kim Jong-un got priceless recognition globally without giving up an inch, or a single nuclear weapon from his considerable arsenal.
Turkey’s Erdogan made a telephone call to Trump, and got all he wanted in Northern Syria, including the sell-out of the Kurds, without firing a shot or giving up anything. And later, he came to Washington and personally returned Trump’s amateurishly rude letter back to him, with a probable dressing down.
And Israel got more than it had ever hoped for - US Embassy’s move to Jerusalem, and legitimization by the US of Israel’s illegally held Syrian and Palestinian lands - and all America got (apart from a remote settlement in Golan Heights named after Trump) was to be viewed as a ‘rogue nation’ that regularly brakes International Law, by the vast majority of countries of the United Nations.
As for Iran - instead of buckling after the cancellation of the Multi-National Nuclear Agreement and the ensuing crippling sanctions, it started its Nuclear Program again, and now has a greater influence in Syria and Iraq than before. Trump never got a ‘much better Nuclear Agreement’ than Obama, as he had promised, while Iran still has the other signatories to the old Agreement, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China still in the Agreement, trying to repair the Trump damage.
And as to the much hyped Jared Kushner’s ‘Middle East Peace Plan’ (by the most qualified Middle East expert Trump could find - his son-in-law, [pardon the nepotism]), it was laughed off as the silly amateurish attempt that it was. And today the prospects of a Middle East Peace Plan are far more distant than they ever were before, and the bona-fides of the US, as a credible peace broker, is in tatters.
Europe, one of the greatest single trading blocks and free markets, is no longer an unshakable defence ally and trusted trading partner of America’s, but is in fact now most suspicious of Trump’s intents regarding trade and the NATO alliance. In fact most recently, Trump is reported to be instructing his officials to pull the US completely out of NATO. That move, if it happens, will be Putin's dream scenario come true!
Trump’s open pandering to Putin and Russia, at the cost of the Western Democracies has put the Europeans on high alert as to America’s unreliability regarding the defence of European democracies.
Trump’s and the Republican’s consistent denying of the facts that it was Russia that interfered in America’s 2016 election (not Ukraine), made Putin/Russia emboldened enough to try and subvert Briton’s and Europe’s elections, and that has further undermined the trust of all European Leaders in Trump.
American experts in the White House and in Europe, particularly of Ukraine and Russia, have unanimously and unconditionally condemned Trump’s recent actions in withholding military aid in a ‘quid pro quo’ arrangement with Ukraine’s newly elected President that would have personally benefited Trump politically. And Trump’s own man, Ambassador Gordon Sondland confirmed emphatically that it was Trump who wanted the Ukrainian President to announce an investigation into Joe Biden, before the Military Aid would be released, in a quid quo pro deal.
The Impeachment Hearings were globally televised, and were dramatic and damning enough that they left no doubt in anyone’s mind that Trump was guilty of breaking the law in putting his personal interest above that of his country’s. Yet, the Republicans have contorted themselves in more ways than there are yoga positions, to try and deny Trump’s guilt – and ultimately - that is the definition of a Banana Republic - a nation, once respected, is reduced by a few in power to a lawless country that ignores and mutilates the truth, to protect, promote and keep in power, its most despotic and dishonest leader. Trump and the enabling Republicans have significantly diminished America through promoting internal visceral hate and division, and a deeply corrupted foreign policy, and in so doing they have succeeded in destroying its very soul. It is the epitome of 'reverse MAGA', magnified.