A View of the American Inauguration from Africa

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On Thursday last week a really important inauguration occurred and a milestone in the development of democracy in Africa. The ECOWAS countries seem to be committed to democracy and Senegal sponsored the inauguration of elected President of the Gambia, Adama Barrow in Dakar and have threatened to use military force if he cannot return.
Adama Barrow defeated the mass murderer, Yahya Jammeh by a clear 3.9% of the vote. Jammeh, while initially conceding defeat, reversed his position no doubt because he knew there was special seat waiting for him in The Hague for the many crimes he has committed against the Gambian people. Alas he would, at least in theory, be in good company with other murderers like Mugabe who only became a villain in eyes of the’ international community’ when he stopped killing Africans (Ndebele in the early 1980s’) and started killing whites in the late 1990’s.  On Friday, a racist, sexist Troglodyte was inaugurated in Washington as ‘leader of the free world’. Like Jammeh, Trump did not win the majority of the electorate which was won by Hilary Clinton who got nearly 3 million more (Those who drafted the American constitution never really trusted their own people and created the electoral college system which was one of the earliest forms of gerrymandering). Unfortunately neighboring democracies like Mexico and Canada will not intervene in the USA to make sure the real democratic winner, Hilary Clinton, takes her proper place as President of the USA. Unlike Jammeh or Mugabe, Trump does not yet have blood on his hands but as the sun will surely rise tomorrow, that too will come. The American people appear to suffer from a dreadful and periodic distemper. Every ten years of so they feel obliged to give the human race a new ‘leader of the free world’ who is progressively more foolish than the last…. Reagan, W Bush and now this creature. Of course, this is a distemper and it passes and in between the Americans give us articulate men who seem to care at least a little for the rest of the species i.e. Kennedy, Carter, Clinton (sort of) and Obama.
Let us pray that the human race survives this man. And for those of you who are eternal optimists about men like Trump who come to power by manipulating the worst of human instincts, take one lesson from the history of the Jews. When a powerful nut case who comes to power based on hate and fear and tells you he is going to do crazy things, it is prudent to believe them… and not to hope for the best!