“…When God wanted to start the most enduring revolution in history, he chose a carpenter’s son…Let there be a return to commonsense and common values…”, Kobina Arthur Kennedy/Kwame Dankwah).
“LIKE FATHER LIKE SON”, THE OLD SAGE WROTE:
Decades before Dr. Kobina Arthur Kennedy went to America, many years before he wrote about commonsense and common values in America, American folk singer and legend, Woody Guthrie, sang these lyrics for the America he loved so dearly, on behalf of African Americans and the Nation:
“I suppose Old Man Trump knows
Just how much Racial hate He stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed That color line
Here at his Eighteen hundred family project”
Dear reader, American folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote those “moving lyrics about Donald Trump’s racist dad.” That scoop is credited to the “literary scholar Will Kaufman”.
According to the report:
“…in 1950, Guthrie… the folk singer…whose balladeering would inspire Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, signed a lease with Fred Trump, father of the current Republican presidential front-runner. Guthrie lived for two years in a Brooklyn apartment the elder Trump owned, but grew upset at the racist policies that the real estate developer used to exclude blacks from his property…”
“Like father, like son”, they sage once said!
From those Woody Guthrie lyrics alone (we imagine those times in the 1950 are the better days Donald John Trump wants to return America), Donald Trump’s own business and social record, including the latest Access Hollywood video tape where Trump talks about assaulting women by “grabbing their pu**y, one does not have to read much of the Bible, or even believe half of it, to understand that Donald J. Trump never was, never will be, like Jesus in any shape or form, whatsoever.
Today, we find Trump, Old Man Trump’s son, doing what the Old man did, and even worse.
Today, Donald is in bed with voter intimidators from North Carolina to Ohio, from Alabama to Pennsylvania, from South Carolina to Virginia.
But that ought to matter for commonsense and common values sake.
By his own “poll watching” words and actions, Trump and his team have been victimizing Blacks, Hispanics, the elderly, immigrants, and the less fortunate, and discriminating against them, compared to people exactly like Donald Trump and his supporters.
Donald Trump, according to reports, has not paid federal income tax in more than 2 decades.
Donald Trump, unlike every presidential candidate over the last 50 years at least, will not show a single tax return to prove he is more charitable than the Jesus of Dr. Kobina Arthur Kennedy.
Donald Trump preachers that Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin is a better leader compared to Barack Obama the democrat; that he, Trump alone, knows more about ISIS compared to US generals and all politicians combined, that they are all losers, pathetic managers and politicians.
Mean!
Vile!
Misogyny!
Diminishing to the US!
Dear ready, those are just 3 words and phrase Mr. Steve Schmidt, a reflective Republican, MSNBC contributor, former John McCain presidential campaign staffer, has just used to describe Donald Trump and his presidential campaign just as we are putting our thoughts on paper for this article.
Here is the faultline!
PROF LUNGU BOTTOM-LINE THIS MOMENTOUS ELECTION DURING THE BARACK OBAMA ERA:
We were not going to further belabor the point after we posted comments on Kobina Arthur Kennedy’s essay, titled “The global elites and the rise of Trump”. For a while, that essay seemed to have disappeared from Ghanaweb, into the internet ether. But, then, just the other day, we can across the same article on a website called Ghanastar.com, this time under the authorship of one Kwame Dankwah.
Thinking we may have two Donald Trump surrogates propagating Trumpian lies, foolish promises, and elite bluster on Ghana-interest media in one shared-voice neither of whom took time to say who actually composed the article, we thought we would follow up with a more detailed response addressed to Dr. Kobina Arthur Kennedy and Mr. Kwame Dankwa (Kennedy/Dankwa) about the “miracle…of…the rise of Trump”.
In our comment on the Kennedy/Dankwah essay and response to Mr. Smart, we noted that when the “Global Elite” finally relocate to Mars or other habitable planet as hypothesized by Mr. Smart, Donald Trump and those people Kennedy/Dankwah describe as “discontented”, will actually pull up the ladder. They will pull up the ladder to ensure that even after “our children…wake up” and succeed in fixing the ruins Trump and company have left behind, “our children” may never be able to get out of their purgatory, no matter how hard they tried, or prayed.
“Trump University” certainly could not save the Africans because there is no scholarship for foundation.
And so, with this over-hang of a momentous American election now just 3 days away, we thought it would be important for is to say more, say more by way of an article from the point of view of just another immigrant from Africa blessed to live in the American of Justice Thurgood Marshall, Congressman John Lewis, President Barack Obama, and so many other good Americans and world citizens, including Civil Rights icon, Rosa Parks, and labor organizer, Cesar Chavez.
Fact is, while 43% of American whites voted for Barack Obama in 2008, during the 2012 election, just 39% did, a decrease, surely.
There is little Donald Trump could do to make his white supporters proud and in the same fell swoop “make America great again” while respecting and honoring Kennedy/Dankwah and the freedoms, goodwill, and success they may/could enjoy in America. That is, unless Kennedy/Dankwah moved to Russia and played poodle and puppet to Vladimir Putin, just like Trump.
In fact, Kennedy/Dankwah could go all the back to the trickle-down economy of Reaganomics of the 1980s, to the Voting and Civil Rights era of the 1960s, to the Jim Crow era of the 1877-1954, and to those slavery centuries of 1581 – 1865 (when St. Augustine, Florida, became “the first permanent settlement for slaves “imported” from Africa and when slavery was outlawed with the passage of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution).
Not an iota of respect, freedom, honor, and goodwill would be forthcoming to
Kennedy/Dankwah without the struggles of a multitude of Blacks, Browns, and sympathetic Whites, some of whom died to secure the blessings of those human values Kennedy/Dankwah now enjoy in America, or could enjoy in America, as Africans.
OBAMA’S ECONOMY IS BETTER THAN ONE INHERITED!
With respect to Kennedy/Dankwah’s “discontented” white people, it helps to remind all of them that 11 million Americans were unemployed in 2008, representing an unemployment rate of nearly 10%, the year Barack Obama was first elected president. That year alone, U. S. employers shed 2.6 million jobs, being “…the worst year since 1945…a rapidly deteriorating economy…more significant losses ahead…”, the New York Times reported.
In 2011, noting the “…economy is recovering from one of the longest and deepest recessions since the end of World War II (WWII), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics “Monthly Labor Review” said:
“… The downturn in employment accompanying the 2007–09 recession was notable for its prolonged length, for affecting an especially wide range of industries, and for being deeper than any other downturn since World War II…”
This November, 2016, as the US heads to the polls, annual wage growth has “…surged to levels not seen since the financial crisis, while the unemployment rate dipped to 4.9 percent in October from 5 percent the previous month…”.
So, after pulling the American state out of wanton Bush wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the muddy ditches of economic recession as we’ve noted, it is the hoi polloi, proletarian, and commoner Donald Trump, and his “discontented” supporters, mostly white males, it is they who, according to Arthur Kennedy/Kwame Dankwah, will return America to “commonsense and common values…citizens of their individual countries…Otherwise, there will be more rebellions that will create more Trumps…”.
If an unemployment rate of under 5%, compared to 10% is not a common value in America, what is, Kennedy/Dankwah?
If a health-insured population of 80% is not a common value in America, what is, Kennedy/Dankwah?
AMERICA IS BETTER HEALTH-INSURED:
According one report:
“… In the first quarter of 2016, the uninsured rate among all U. S. adults was 11.0%, down from 11.9% in the fourth quarter of 2015. This marks a record low since Gallup and Healthways began tracking the uninsured rate in 2008. The uninsured rate has declined 6.1 percentage points since the fourth quarter of 2013, which was right before the individual mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act took effect in early 2014 that required Americans to carry health insurance…”
Claiming America for whom, Kennedy/Dankwah?
Fact is, it is Trump who wants to now pull health insurance from under the feet of the more than 13 million Americans who now have health insurance, even as Trump and the entire Republican Party have not shared information on any realistic alternatives, not one, not a dime.
Since its passage, Republicans have continuously bad-mouthed ObamaCare so much that public officials are known to tell young Americans to avoid signing up. (Check Texas Senator Ted Cruz, for example).
And so, by depressing the ObamaCare sign-ons, needless cost increase have now occurred during the 2017 open enrollment season, but still modest for those who are a more flexible with respect to coverage. Still, ObamaCare is affordable from the point of view of the 13 million now enrolled.
What do you understand by values and commonsense, Kennedy/Dankwah?
It is one thing for anyone, just anyone, to fall for Donald Trump’s lies, bluster, and more lies.
But, it is entirely another matter for Arthur Kennedy/Kwame Dankwah, human beings from Africa, persons who surely are/could/would benefit from the long and hard struggles of African Americans and other sympathizers before them, it is entirely another matter for the Arthur Kennedys/Kwame Dankwahs of the world to fall hook-line-and-sinker for lies, bluster, more lies, and faux sense of victimization by racist a sharp talker.
Does Trump or Arthur Kennedy/Kwame Dankwah care about the number of families whose young members can now ride on their parents’ health insurance until they are 23 years old because of ObamaCare?
Does Trump or Arthur Kennedy/Kwame Dankwah care about the number of people who now have health insurance who, before ObamaCare, could not purchase heath insurance at any cost because they had “pre-existing conditions?
Did Donald John Trump and Arthur Kennedy/Kwame Dankwah bother to tally the number of lives saved and misery and heartaches avoided in America as a result of the Affordable Health Care known as ObamaCare?
Nice try telling the lie, Arthur Kennedy/Kwame Dankwah, arguing as if Donald Trump never was, never is, a part of the “Global Elite.”
TRUMP IS NO HOI POLLOI – HE IS THE ESSENCE OF THE GLOBAL ELITE:
It takes uncommon chutzpa on the part of African(s) such as Arthur Kennedy/Kwame Dankwah to merely present what Donald Trump says, and then argue further by inference that a person who built office grandiose towers, hotels, casinos, golf courses, who and still appends his “fantastic” name on properties and building owned and used by “Global Elites”, is himself not a “Global Elite”.
It does not make sense!
Clearly Dr. Kobina Arthur Kennedy/Kwame Dankwah has bought unreflectively into the Trump lie-in-a-racket!
When Donald John Trump himself says he can do anything to a woman, including grabbing their “pu**y without their permission because he Donald John Trump is a star, Arthur Kennedy/Kwame Dankwah don’t not see a “Global Elite” in Donald Trump.
This is the same Trump who owned Ms. World and sundry pageants that sent/brought women (and men) from all corners of the world to America, the women to compete for the most elitist crown for women on the entire planet.
Our fundamental take here is this: Between Africans, between Arthur Kennedy and Kwame Dankwah, it smacks of a failure of a certain amount of critical thinking to adopt wholesale a definition offered by another entity, and then apply that same definition to support your positive view about that same individual/entity, when the area under discussion is covered by scholarship, and the literature on the subject is super-expansive.
Go pick a real book on Globalization, Arthur Kennedy/Kwame Dankwah, and come back again.
It is fascinating and weird, all at the same time!
And it is sad!
But at the bottom of all of that are lies, bluster, more lies, and sociopathtic bluster!
As urban scholars, Peggy Noonan does not define “Global Elite” for us, nor should Peggy Noonan do same for Africans who can read.
But Steve Schmidt’s description of sociopath Donald Trump, a 70-year old man who must be nursed by handlers to stay away from his Twitter phone, Steve Schmidt’s account is right on point. That, we must say, is worth a whole lot of social listening and reflection.
Fact!
Donald Trump has been/is being enabled by apologists for Russia’s Putin, all manner of ‘sexists’, ‘racists’, ‘xenophobes’, and so-called Alt Right personalities, among them Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, KellyAnne Conway, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich. They now sit right smack in the center of the Republican Party, spinning lies and more lies, having taken over completely an American major political party.
But that is just general-speak!
Significantly, Mr. Donald Trump has so normalized racism, sexism, and xenophobia for the benefit of his cabal of white supremacists that today, Americans, many of them the children of immigrant parents, are now in perpetual mental anguish. They fear Trump is coming after their parents and themselves, if Trump were ever to actualize the Arthur Kennedy/Kwame Dankwah “miracle”, and win the American presidency.
So, Arthur Kennedy/Kwame Dankwah, tell us what your own definition of “Global Elite” is.
When Trump himself says he can do anything to a woman, including grabbing their “pu**y because he is a star, women many of whom were “imported” from other countries to America to strut themselves on “red carpets” for the pleasure and economic interest of Donald John Trump, tell us, Arthur Kennedy/Kwame Dankwah, tell us that is all talk by a hoi polloi, a commoner, a nonentity.
When Donald Trump uses privacy and tax laws to hide his own taxes, when Trump imports cheaper steel from China for his buildings, when Trump transports clothes from Mexico on American highways he’s not paid a cent in taxes to maintain, when Trump seeks and receives “…funding from Russian investors for his business ventures,…(because)…American banks stopped lending to him following his multiple bankruptcies…”, when Donald John Trump then turns around to say that those same laws and benefits that protect him are unfair to him, Arthur Kennedy/Kwame Dankwah, tell us those are no actions by a “Global Elite” in his own interest and in the interests of his corporations spread all over the world.
Nice try, fellas!
Notes/Sources
1. Kobina Arthur Kennedy/Kwame Dankwah. The global elites and the rise of Trump. Ghanaweb/Ghanastar, 2 November 2016, (http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/The-global-elites-and-the-rise-of-Trump-483195).
2. 1. Will Kaufman | University of Central Lancashire, The Conversation, Woody Guthrie Loathed His Racist Landlord: Donald Trump’s Father, (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-racist-examples_us_56d47177e4b03260bf777e83)
4. Jennifer Bendery, White House and Congressional Reporter, The Huffington Post. Video Shows Donald Trump With Alleged Mobster He Denied Knowing, (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-mobster-casino_us_5819ff2ee4b01f610e3949b2).
5. Louis Uchitelle. U. S. lost 2.6 million jobs in 2008. The New York Times, (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/business/worldbusiness/09iht-jobs.4.19232394.html).
7. Christopher J. Goodman and Steven M. Mance. The 2007–09 Recession: Overview. Employment loss and the 2007–09 recession: an overview, (http://www.bls.gov/mlr/2011/04/art1full.pdf).
8. U. S. Uninsured Rate at 11.0%, Lowest in Eight-Year Trend, (http://www.gallup.com/poll/190484/uninsured-rate-lowest-eight-year-trend.aspx).
SUBJ: Trump African surrogate Kobina Kennedy falls for lies and the ‘unfair’ racket: In Defense of Real Common Sense and Human Values.