Having moved to Peebles in 2002, ‘Stooriefit’ Bosco Santimano gives us his own take on what he feels is the hot topic of the day. This week it’s Trump’s acquittal and the long-term impact it will have on Democracy around the world and on the divisions within the US of A.
After the appalling sight of violence and armed white protestors storming the Capitol building in Washington DC on the 6th of January this year; egged on by outgoing President Donald Trump, many Americans and global citizens assumed, wrongly of course, that this insurrection would be the reason for Trump’s impeachment. Democrats finally decided to act in order to impeach Donald Trump again, since they control both the House of Representatives and the Senate. It was classic American television, a reality show that everyone knew would end in the acquittal of Donald Trump. The West now has lost all moral authority over any claims of fairness, rule of law applied to everyone equally and of course democracy which no longer seems to exist!
Notably two things stood out in this farce of what is called American or Western democracy; the first one is the rich and the powerful always get away scot-free unlike the rest of us. Trumps acquittal will be short lived and very harmful to the US in the long run. Boris Johnson insisted that US democracy remains strong even with the acquittal of Trump, I guess as a privileged former Etonian he knows that he and his mates will always get away no matter the destruction and chaos they cause while in office.
The second fact that stands out is the blindingly obvious “white privilege’ fully on display on our television screens as proof that two sets of laws govern this great country, one for whites and the other for non-whites. Up to this point in American history any black protests was met with violent crackdown by the Police and the judiciary and many innocent black lives were lost or incarcerated. The QAnon white Shaman who became the poster boy of the violent protests was ordered by a Federal Judge to be served organic food for his religious and health beliefs while in a D.C. Correctional facility! After this incident I hope my white brothers and sisters in America and the UK have learned first-hand the meaning of white privilege and why the “Black Lives Matter” movement has gained momentum among young voters irrespective of colour, class or creed. It was so blatant and obvious to see the white controlled machinery allow protestors access to the Capitol building without any reinforcements and backup in place. White mobs were looking to lynch all Democrats and any Republicans that stood in their way of stopping a stolen election! Secularism in the West is losing the battle to right wing groups, social media and politicians. Trump was allowed to get away with murder since he began campaigning for his presidency in 2015, by using racist language and demeaning whole groups of people and countries. This behaviour only accelerated while in office, so why are we pretending to be surprised by the insurrection on 6th January 2021?
Hitler sowed the seeds of hatred against the Jews and minorities long before the Nazis embarked on the mission to exterminate them all by slowly brainwashing the German people. This is exactly what is happening in the US and UK with Brexit! Politicians should be held accountable by law and lies should carry a prison sentence just like the rest of us, it’s that simple. All media outlets should be held to a higher standard and we should bring back the glory days of investigative journalism where the rich and the powerful were held to account.
So where does that leave us as citizens in our fragile democracies? What happens next?
Published in The Peeblesshire News on Friday 21st February 2021.
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