Martin J. Sabine // Trump - America's Foremost Problem

Notwithstanding the ongoing pandemic and the uprising of the Black Lives Matter movement the biggest problem the United States of America has at this moment is Donald J Trump. The President and Commander in Chief is cerebrally challenged and not fit to hold office; his malfeasance and irrational behaviour would have had a lesser person sectioned under the relevant mental health legislation.

Trump's lack of empathy, knowledge of world affairs  and plain old common sense leave him and the office he holds at the mercy of malevolent countries and operators worldwide. He is a toxic mix of weak moral leadership, racial divisiveness, crass and vulgar rhetoric and an erosion of norms, institutions and trust in traditional values.

His detractors at home are subjected to kindergarten playground bully tactics delivered in a staccato twitter speak, examples such as "Sleepy Joe, Pocahontas, Little Marco" are but a few. This coming from a man with a thousand isles dressing complexion, flyaway hair, small hands and an even smaller brain. 

He’s a TV personality, a failed businessman with many bankrupted companies lying in his wake, he's a serial philanderer, bigot, misogynist and liar. He has a cult following that’s centred around this white power broker persona rooted in white supremacy and racism. Wherever he goes, he carries that role and that kind of persona, but ultimately right now what America needs is real leadership. He is incapable of providing that because that’s not who he is. This in itself should tell you everything you need to know about the state and health of the body politic in America today.

The fact that he officiates via twitter and through stooges such as Kayleigh McEnema the latest "Barbie Doll" press secretary is testimony to his delusional behaviour, I wonder if he grabbed her by the crotch  by way of an introduction? The list of people holding this post includes just one man Sean Spicer who visibly imploded in public under the strain of trying to defend the indefensible, all since then have been women which clearly begs the question, why would they lie for a President who shows nothing but contempt for their rights and gender? 

Trump has also succeeded by implanting his own picks, to manipulate the way the Attorney General's Office and the Department of Justice works in a way that undermines the integrity and professionalism of the lawyers and prosecutors who work there, and in turn subjugated the law into an arena for gaining partisan advantage and settling political grudges. Other Presidents have never asked nor expected their attorneys general to use the vast investigatory and prosecutorial power of the justice department itself to intervene in criminal cases to help political allies, to buy the silence of those who might threaten him, or to discredit political adversaries. That is a dangerous precedent being set in turbulent political times and can upset the fine balance that exists between the judiciary and politicians, a very new world order indeed.

I just hope that come November the people of the United States of America make the right choice and vote accordingly and restore some balance in the world which seems to have been taken over by right wing populism at the moment, it's very unsettling when the world is in the midst of dealing with a pandemic.

Some of you reading this will no doubt accuse me of the same juvenile transgressions in my criticism of Trump well sometimes you have to adopt the tactics of the transgressor to make valid points about their personality traits, but to be honest it's actually because I'm a sarcastic bastard and I totally lack objectivity when it comes to someone like Trump so as they say in America….."bite me".

© M.J. Sabine 2020

Martin Sabine // Strange Encounters

I’m interested in how some bodies are “in an instant” judged as suspicious, or dangerous, as
bodies to be feared, just because we can’t explain something it doesn't follow that we should be
afraid, some judgments in some circumstances can also have lethal consequences. There can
be nothing more dangerous to a body than the social agreement that that body is dangerous.
Look at today's society a real and present paranoia prevails. There’s a real suspicious guy. This
guy looks like he’s up to no good, he’s on drugs or something. This is further compounded by
racial profiling, he looks black. he’s wearing a dark hoodie, now he’s coming toward me. He’s
got his hands in his pockets, he’s a black male. Note the viscous slide: suspicious, up to no good, coming at me, looking black, a dark hoodie, wearing black, being black. The last statement makes an explicit racial overtone as to what we are all seeing right from the very beginning. We are seeing a Black man is already implied in the first description “a real suspicious guy.” Let me repeat: there can be nothing more dangerous to a body than the social agreement that that body is dangerous.

Are we as a society right to feel fear, because a stranger is a dark shadowy figure. I use the word “dark” deliberately here: it is a word that cannot be untangled from a racialised history. To use this word as if it can be disentangled from that history is to be entangled by that history. The racialisation of the stranger is not immediately apparent—it is disguised, we might say by the strict anonymity of the stranger, the one who after all, we are told from childhood, could be anyone. We witness from this example how this “could be anyone” is pointed: the stranger as a figure, points to some bodies more than others. This “could be anyone” thus only appears as an open possibility, stretching out into a horizon, in which the stranger reappears as the one who is always lurking in the shadows. Note; most films use this premise as a precursor to murderous intent. Note also that the perception of others is also an impression of others: to be made into a
stranger is to be blurred. I have since described racism as a blunt instrument, which is another
way of making the same argument. Stop and search, the so called “Suss law” for example, is a
methodology that makes this bluntness into a point: Stop! You are light brown with dark
features, Asian! Your carrying a rucksack You could be Muslim! You could be a terrorist! The
blurrier the figure of the stranger the more bodies can be caught by it. So long as a society we
recognise such injustices exist then we can become clearer when we legislate against it, and as
a consequence stop racial profiling and the demonisation of whole cultures from becoming the
norm.

© M.J. Sabine 2018.

EDITOR'S NOTE

Perhaps a small coincidence, or perhaps great minds think alike. But neither Zaar Riisberg nor Sabine had read each other's contributions. Not quite same theme - still, focus is the same. They both live in countries built on immigration and now watch in horror, as the rhetoric has taken a turn they had never expected. See Zaar Riisberg's offering on the same theme here.