In the television show ‘The Simpsons’, an episode named “Bart to the Future” first aired in 2000. The storyline of this episode revolved around Lisa Simpson becoming the US president in 2016 and dealing with the aftermath of a Donald Trump presidency.
Fast forward to 2016, a year that saw the narrative of a humorous cartoon episode turn into a grim reality, as Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to become president. At his recent rallies, Trump has been observed hypercritically lambasting Joe Biden, the present US president, often declaring him as the country’s worst ever.
The harshness of Trump’s own tenure in office is still fresh in minds, with the temperament behind constant sackings of his appointees begging a question of either incompetence in hiring or arbitrary callousness in sacking them, with both options revealing a dire picture.
It is hard to overlook Trump’s disastrous approach to foreign affairs, such as the mishandling of dealings with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un that eventually led to the development of atomic ballistic missiles, posing a significant threat to America’s west coast. Reminders of this misfortune are the “beautiful letters” from Kim to Trump.
The earlier decision by the government that ‘durable relationships’ had no legal impact now warrants consequences. The kissing goodbye of a potentially democratic state in Afghanistan due to the deal Trump negotiated with the Taliban in Doha, leaving a helpless Biden to evacuate, lived up to this concept.
His mistaken pursuits with Putin that ultimately led Putin to believing that Ukraine would be deserted by the West is hard to erase. It was clear that Trump would throw Ukraine under the bus in a heartbeat if it led to a thriving US stock market. Given that, could Taiwan citizens place their faith in him to safeguard their democracy?
Despite this overwhelming history, analysts still speculate that swing state voters might defy popular sentiment and vote Trump into office. There’s uncertainty as to whether a New York jury will unanimously rule him guilty in his ongoing trials, and even if they do, it’s improbable that any sentence would be served by November. Using every resource, Trump would challenge any conviction up to the point of his own infiltrated Supreme Court. In the unlikely event of his imprisonment, his followers would likely rally to re-elect him and free him.
Trump convinces susceptible audiences that the globe is scoffing at Biden’s presidency, which they seem to accept readily. However, I am unaware of any democracy where it is proposed that the majority of its population prefers Trump at the helm.
In the majority of the world’s democratic countries, Trump is perceived as a horrific mix of incompetence and threat. Yet, in places like Ireland, there are those who quietly support him – based on the naive assumption that Trump is personally pro-life.
A documentary recently shown on BBC TV’s Storyville series, titled ‘Praying for Armageddon’, touches upon this situation and should be mandatory viewing in Ireland. Especially for those who are not certain about a potential Trump re-election.
The documentary exposes either Trump’s real or pretended alliance with certain Christian evangelists who interpret current Middle Eastern conflicts as signs of an impending apocalypse set to happen in Megiddo, Israel. According to this theory, this will be the final battle where Jesus returns to defeat the forces of evil – as prophesied in the Book of Revelation.
If Trump is re-elected, the world’s power will be divided amongst him, China’s president Xi, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. While Trump and Putin utilize extreme versions of religion for political gain, Xi seeks to dismantle or tame all religions to help maintain the dictatorship of the proletariat, causing extreme suffering to Uyghurs and other Muslims, Christians, and different sects.
Democracy is hanging by a thread as it has not since the grim 1930s era of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Imperial Japan looming over the globe. This conjures memories of a time when Franklin Roosevelt strove to create a fairer, stronger American democracy, battling claims of communism reminiscent of Trump’s current critiques against Biden, Obama, and judicial conservatives in the US Supreme Court.
Late in the game, Ireland began to voice its opposition to the brutal extremities of Islamism and Zionism, especially in the shockingly brutal actions in Gaza over the past nine months.
Rather than subtly advocating for the two-state resolution in the Israel-Palestine strife, asserting this stance emphatically does not imply any form of anti-Semitism by Ireland. It doesn’t serve as a commendation for Hamas’s savagery. Together with Spain and Norway, our confession of the validity of Palestinian autonomy is a crucial act of confronting authority with honesty – an action that’s much, desperately needed as the globe faces a depth of adversity not encountered for the past eight decades.