Source: jamaica-gleaner.com
The United States, our dominant neighbour to the north, has had a well-oiled public relations machinery that has left us with perceptions of America not as it is, but how we hoped it would be.
It would be difficult to find one family in Jamaica that does not have at least one close member living in the US. America facilitates remittances on which Jamaica is dependent and provides our largest bloc of tourists.
But who, or what, is America?
America is baseball, apple pie, hot dogs, violence, automobiles, technology, miserable winters and mercilessly hot summers. Is this America not the same America that produced Martin Luther King Jr and assassinated him in 1968? The same America that produced Malcolm X and assassinated him 1965? The same America whose immigrants landed at Plymouth Rock but subjugated black people. The same America that, in the last 50 years, has been in a constant state of war and hostilities?
The reason many people are just seeing America for what it is is because the US has waged war and taken the hostility to other countries. Think World War II, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Syria, Panama, and even our little Grenada. America has always successfully taken death and destruction to somebody else’s homeland. That is the real face of America, not what we fantasise it to be.
Donald Trump was lawfully elected to be the 45th president of the US and came to power primarily with the overwhelming votes of a group whom Hillary Clinton labelled “the deplorable”. This was not complimentary, but how could anything complimentary be said of the person who boasted about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue in New York City and still be elected?
Donald Trump was elected with no political experience, no multinational corporation managerial acumen. This crude, uncouth person who defied all convention would not disclose his tax returns; would not display detailed medical records; and who embraces the hate-spewing white ‘deplorable’. He lost the popular vote by more than two million, but overwhelmingly…
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