THE ongoing political crisis in the United States of America over the refusal of US President Donald Trump to concede the November 3, 2020, election result in favor of his opponents, former Vice President Joe Biden, should be compelling lesson to all the people of the world about the hypocrisy of Western-style democracy and the hypocrisy over their continuous pratting about the ‘rule of law.’
Biden had described Trump’s refusal to concede as “an embarrassment” although for close observers of the American political system, it is but a fresh demonstration of how rotten and corrupt the entire system really is.
Indeed, Trump’s claim that he cannot concede because he was massively “cheated” is also not something new. Election cheating is as “American as apple pie,” after all.
American journalist Andrew Gimbel, in his 2005 landmark book, ‘Steal This Vote, Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America’ had already minutely discussed the sordid, despicable and yes, criminal manners, by which every US election had been conducted since America became a Republic. And that “revelation” by Gimbel was 15 years ago.
Thus, this latest ‘telenovela’ of a “stolen” election in the United States involving Trump and Biden should not be an “embarrassment,” as Biden puts it; it is rather, the “normal” thing in every US election.
Yet, if there is one accusation by Trump’s camp that should jolt Filipinos to attention is the one involving the “cheating” allegedly perpetrated by Smartmatic, the same company that has been stealing our votes for more than 10 years now.
It is to the credit of American wealth and its prestige as nation that was formed by overthrowing British tyranny that for more than 200 years now, so many people the world over has “idolized” the “American way of life,” forgetting that a “way of life” is particular to the culture and history of each country.
But over the way the US has now become a global spectacle and the “dirty linens” now being bandied about in public, especially by the camp of Trump, this should now remind the peoples of the world that the American political system, nay, even its way of life, is not worthy of emulation after all. The “emperor” has been revealed and yes, Jose, he has no clothes.
The American system is rotten, it is dirty and yes, an embarrassment to any state founded on the belief in democracy and the rule of law.
It is time that we all pursue a political system that truly attends to our particular needs as a people. Blindly “grafting” America’s own would definitely prove chaotic and divisive down the road.