In little under 24 hours history will be made.
The United States of America (USA) one of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful of all civilizations, will have a new president.
Donald John Trump is not just an ordinary president. The 45th president of the US may rightly, or wrongly be called a maverick depending on the colour of your political jersey. But he is going to be a different kind of a president. There is little to second-guess if he will have the foreign policy and strategic gravitas of Richard Nixon or the economic heft Bill Clinton epitomized.
But he is different, and different warts and all.
To begin with, the self-made billionaire despite all of his foibles is a modern-day US nationalist. He fed on public anger and resentment to anti-US forces within and without his country to race to the highest office. How he did it, is besides the point. But in retrospect he won the elections fairly and squarely. Even the US Congressional Caucuses did not deny him the magnitude of his victory unlike the brief period of squall that followed the 2000 US presidential race.
What he has promised lies at what the US electorate is now keenly eyeing and which though justifiably is keeping the world at its feet.
His tough stances against the laggards in Europe and currency and trade manipulators are a whiff of fresh air. And so is his pledge to cut US corporate taxes to spur the sputtering US economy and give his countrymen what they have always wanted: hope, security and happiness.
His position on illegal immigrants may run up against human rights advocates and other Devils advocates. If so, what is there to stop him when all he is doing is to act within the law. If all other nations can act against illegal immigrants why should America and Trump be singled out as gregarious offenders of some sort?
And even coming to the idea of building a wall. That initiative actually began in China when emperor Zhi Huang Ti devised a way of keeping the very undesirable Hsiung Nu people out of his empire.(The Hsiung Nus’ were China’s illegal Mexicans). Today, the Great Wall of China is feted and glorified as the world’s great wonder instead of being torn down.
And closer to home, both Thailand and Malaysia have agreed to build a wall to sieve out the same kind of undesirables Trump wants out of the US. So, therefore it is not a zany idea.
What is worse is, that the idea of a wall on the Mexican border had actually originated with Hillary Clinton in 2006. Why wasn’t she vilified then?
Before long there will be sometime historic kind in the U.S. And hope and sense of renewal Trump embodies is the perhaps one of the greatest experiments in contemporary American politics.
Faith has returned to America.