IT was a jaded old man called Donald, spewing the same mouthfuls of hate and anger against immigrants and foreigners, I’d heard during his tenure as the President. He’d divided the country with his rhetoric on building walls, both physical and mental, and had finally been thrown out by the voters.
But here he was back, but his thoughts this time, sounded like a broken needle on an old record player, while his opponent Kamala Harris, literally like the old song on boxer Mohamud Ali, ‘floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee!’
It was a knockout. The debate was. But election pundits said that the man on the floor could still win the polls in November. How? Because, all the distasteful things he said, about immigrants eating pet cats and dogs of the American people, and other lies like that were believed by a huge section of the Americans.
They were not bothered about debates, or knockouts or walkovers, they wanted to believe what they already believed in their hearts. They believed in white supremacy, because they had a reserved place in the nation, and did not have to compete with immigrants who were more hard working.
They believed in racial discrimination because it helped them feel superior even if they had no intellectual knowledge but only the colour of their skin to show. And these people looked at the man on the floor and cried, ‘Winner!’ But enough about America. Let’s come home and look closely. Are we surprised to see that we have huge chunks of the same here?
People who want to pick the best seats in school, college, government jobs and now even in the private sector, through trying to get more and more reservation quotas for themselves. People who believe leaders who say their religion gives them the right to rule over others who worship in a different way, even if the others are as Indian as they are.
People who actually believe that their daughters will be wooed and won over by those from another community, not realising that their daughters are discerning enough to shun the advances of any man they dislike. Trump lost the debate to a woman, but that didn’t matter to many who felt that a woman was not equal to me, and so should not occupy the Whitehouse.
Trump was floored in the debate but that didn’t matter to many who looked at Kamala as one of mixed heritage, having both Indian and African blood in her and not a white skin like themselves! An old man lay on the floor beaten, but his thoughts, his policies, his ideas; ones that have divided and polarised a once great nation, resonated in the minds of his followers, so much so, that even as he lay beaten, they cried, “He won!” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
—(bobsbanter@gmail.com)
