The
US
Republican Party that gave the world US
President Abraham Lincoln, a civil war
and an end to formal slavery, has given the
world President Donald Trump, elected
on the slogan “Make America Great Again.” I
already had thoughts about him in relation
to our Toronto experience with Mayor Ford in the
article of March 2016. However
Trump has less experience of government than
Mayor Ford. Others have vented
pent up anxieties in more recent and more
eloquent articles than mine in March.
Not surprisingly for a candidate of mixed
messages, outrageous statements with
anti-Muslim and anti-Mexican venom, nobody knows
what will happen. Media disquiet
is only the beginning. Trump’s election is
offensive at a deeper visceral
level.
Amongst
an
almost daily critique of Trump, the Globe and
Mail editors on November16
expressed grave concerns about the apparently
careless approach of Trump towards
Putin of Russia, to the Syrian conflict and to
the hard won anti-nuclear weapons
treaty with Iran. The European Union is already
floundering. There is the
populist folly of Brexit bringing an uncertain
form of departure by Britain. There
are recent elections of pro-Russian presidents
in Moldovia and in Bulgaria - European
member states. Trump plus these Presidents makes
it harder for Europe to
pressure Russia about its occupation of part of
the Ukraine. Then there are the
fundamental changes to heath care made available
in the US with so much difficulty
by Obama a response to the concerns in the
Christian tradition for care for the
poor, the sick, the widow and the orphan:
I can
take
little comfort from the fact that the evidence
at a rational level pointed to
the possibility of a Trump win, see my
re-working of the information in Chris
Hedges’ book in my October 2016 article. Somehow
I couldn’t believe what logic
pointed to. Hedges quoted Rorty’s 1998 book Achieving
our America:
“The
non-suburban electorate will decide the system
has failed and start looking for
a strongman to vote for – someone willing to
assure them [that]… smug
bureaucrats, overpaid bond salesmen and
postmodern professors will no longer be
calling the shots. … Once such a strongman takes
office nobody can predict what
will happen. …
likely all the gains made
by black and brown Americans … and homosexuals
will be wiped out. …”
For a
person
in the Christian tradition, this is the advent
season, which is supposed to be
filled with hope. I know it is possible to call
out the best in people from my
own long-past electioneering when I urged my
community to take its fair share
of group homes and shelters in Toronto in the
face of some hostility. (I lost,
but that issue enjoyed some support. Group homes
and shelters happened.) The
Brexit and the Trump campaigns called out other
human tendencies – the desire
to return to golden ages when “we” enjoyed
prestige and power and decent jobs.
It is small comfort that a return to such a
golden age will not happen. Rather
than dreams of past glory, there are real issues
and needs of the moment to be
faced. Failure to address them will lead to
greater dangers. For example, in
his time Abraham Lincoln began an extension of
the equality notion that forms a
part of several of the great human religious
traditions. That must be
continued. Responding to global warming is a
human survival issue of our time. The
UN Framework Treaty on Climate Change was signed
and ratified in 1992 during
the presidency of George H.W. Bush, but George
W. Bush did not sign the Kyoto
Protocol. The Obama administration made the US
part of the Paris Climate
Agreement 2015 that agreed to modalities of
implementation of the Framework
Treaty. Hopefully, the 2015 Agreement is secure
because the basic treaty has
already been ratified, but undertakings could
suffer from neglect. The Canadian
Christians and aboriginal peoples have a notion
of stewardship of creation and
preserving air and water and wildlife for
tomorrow. The election of Trump could
set back work in these areas.
As I
was
about to despair, I read that the Colombian
peace accord to end this world
region’s longest civil war had been reworked and
signed again by government and
rebels. The negotiators dealt with almost all of
the issues raised by those who
opposed the earlier version that was very
narrowly defeated in a Colombian
plebiscite. This agreement has still to go
through parliamentary processes.
Nevertheless, here were some positive signs.
Setbacks can be overcome. Reason
can prevail. There can still be important peace
agreements that deal with 50
years of conflict. More than that, the world is
a bigger place than the US and
its Trump handicap. Important changes can happen
elsewhere - with help from other
countries like Norway and, in our region, like
Cuba.
The
US may currently
be Canada’s biggest trading partner, but Canada
just signed a trade agreement
with the European Union. Maybe countries other
than the US should ignore Trump
to the extent possible and put our effort into
doing what we can do amongst
ourselves in places other than the US.