One week after Donald Trump's amazing political victory, the world seems to have breathed a sigh of relief, feeling that the drums of war heralded by a Clinton Presidency will be silenced for at least one political cycle. Let us see where we stand and what is to come...
The sheer arrogance of the western media was demonstrated the day after the election when on Wednesday November 9 it became clear that Donald Trump had won. The front pages of the press and the screens of the TV media were festooned with gloom and doom headlines such as "Oh no!" or "Oh my God!", more befitting a crowd of drunken morons at a soccer match. This was not the case in the Russian media, I would add.
Another depressing knee-jerk phenomenon was visible on the social media with multiple calls for the assassination of Donald Trump or to "Rape Melania", a particularly disgusting movement which hopefully ended in some prosecutions.
Supposedly living in a world of globalized values, we see that indeed we live in a world of globalized bad taste, an absense of common decency, morals or good manners, the ability to lose with grace and sportsmanship, all a reflection of the vapid, vacant, voyeuristic society which reality TV and the ability to tap and send nonsense on a keyboard have brought us all.
The victory was a voice speaking loud and clear through Candidate Donald Trump, who aired the feelings of Middle America: jobs, education, communities first; foreign wars, lobby interests and professional politicians: no thanks and no way.
Hillary Clinton did not manage to get a visionary message across and despite coomplaining about Trump's tactics, responded with more of the same, or worse and did not manage to claim the higher political ground or even moral space, instead watching Donald Trump dealing the cards time and again, as he got his soundbites in. She turned an opportunity for putting on a show of political mastery into an ineffective and defensive stance yet without defending anything concrete or sunbstantiating any tangible counter-claims.
A new vector has entered the political arena across the globe and it came with the ability to mass-communicate through the social media, and this is the voice of the common person demanding to be heard not only through Internet channels but also in real life by real people. It is populism versus the political establishment. Populism favors the challenger against the vested interests, champions the have-nots against the haves and Trump was aided by an inexorable tendency to zig-zag, as the pendulum swung and political wasting ran its course, aided by the ineffective policies of the Democrats for eight years which left some 50 million US citizens in endemic and abject poverty, for whom any sort of change could not possibly mean anything worse. Hillary did the rest with her management of the Foundation, with Libya, with Ukraine and with Syria.
Once again, and with a different team on board, it is time to speak the truth and to see whether Washington can come on board in line with the hearts and minds of the international community.
Climate change is an issue which requires first and foremost a comprehensive scientific approach which presents the truth and not theories about what might be, or not. Development of communities and not deployment of military equipment would do far more to end poverty which engenders marginalization, hopelessness and eventually can lead to extremism. Cooperation in the area of science and technology, championing causes such as women's rights, ending gender violence, gender equality, women's empowerment, the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, all make more sense than glaring at each other down the barrel of a gun.
It appears Washington has finally realized that 70 per cent plus of Syrians want Bashar al-Assad as their President and that the enemy is Islamic State and the other gangs of terrorists who have raped women and girls before and after beheading them, impaled boys on stakes and sliced the breasts off women in the streets. Until Trump, the west was blind to that. In the rest of the Middle East, someone has to tell Israel that building colonies on occupied land is not the way to reach a lasting peace agreement, someone has to tell Saudi Arabia and Qatar that they are pariahs who have done a lot of damage by financing and aiding extremist groups. In other words, they are terrorist states because they, directly or indirectly, aid terrorist groups. And the extremists themselves should be engaged with on the political arena, bringing them on board as interlocutors.
It seems that, finally, Washington realizes that the Biden initiative to grab Ukraine's rich shale gas deposits and grab Russia's naval assets in the Crimea have failed, because an illegal coup in Ukraine saw fascist gangs murder Russian-speaking Ukrainians and saw Crimea vote en masse to rejoin Russia. If the British referendum on Brexit is accepted, if the Falklands Islands' vote to remain with the UK is accepted, then Crimea is no different.
Libya...what to say? The African country with the highest Human Development Index was destroyed by Clinton and her Poodles and today is crawling with terrorists, including Islamic State. A comprehensive policy can only be reached in a climate of international cooperation. The same goes for Afghanistan and Russia has been saying this all along.
Finally, if the Warsaw Pact disbanded, why didn't NATO? If NATO promised not to encroach eastwards, then why did it? And what is NATO except an anachronistic cutting edge for the Lobbies, the bully through which their evil tentacles spread themselves? Surely NATO's collective budget of 1.2 thousand billion dollars could be put to better use than inventing fairy stories about the Russian threat and rattling sabres from the English Channel to the Baltic? Has NATO nothing better to do?
This is the world we see at the end of 2016, and for sure it is a better one than at the beginning of the year. Next move, Trump.
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
Pravda.Ru
Twitter: @TimothyBHinchey
timothy.hinchey@gmail.com
*Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey has worked as a correspondent, journalist, deputy editor, editor, chief editor, director, project manager, executive director, partner and owner of printed and online daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications, TV stations and media groups printed, aired and distributed in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, Mozambique and São Tomé and Principe Isles; the Russian Foreign Ministry publication Dialog and the Cuban Foreign Ministry Official Publications. He has spent the last two decades in humanitarian projects, connecting communities, working to document and catalog disappearing languages, cultures, traditions, working to network with the LGBT communities helping to set up shelters for abused or frightened victims and as Media Partner with UN Women, working to foster the UN Women project to fight against gender violence and to strive for an end to sexism, racism and homophobia. A Vegan, he is also a Media Partner of Humane Society International, fighting for animal rights. He is Director and Chief Editor of the Portuguese version of Pravda.Ru.