US Presidential election; Shoot the messenger, but not the message

By Raj Gonsalkorale

Donald Trump appears to be slipping from one election catastrophe to another with relative ease and without anyone else’s help. Besides the scandals that have erupted demonstrating his disdain for women and regarding them simply as sex objects whose mind, soul and body are for sale to anyone who has the ability to pay for it.

As his opponent Hillary Clinton said during the debate, Donald Trump has hurled insults at a variety of people including Hispanics, Muslims, Latino’s, disabled persons and a host of others. Women with any self- respect should surely make their feelings known in no uncertain terms.

With such disparaging remarks about so many, he cannot claim the mantle of being everybody’s President should he gets elected to that high office on November 8th.
Donald Trump has however successfully tapped on to a reservoir of supporters judging by poll results that still gives him in excess of 40% support. These numbers are of course from polls taken before some senior figures in the Republican Party started abandoning their own candidate. The coming days will show the impact of the distancing of the Republican Party from Donald Trump.

However, assuming he will still retain support from a sizeable segment of his current voter base, it is a sizeable vote even if he does not win the election. Besides diehard supporters who will vote for him irrespective of any scandal surrounding him, there seems to be a ground swell of support for him, who either harbor very strong anti- Clinton opinions, or who are genuinely disenchanted with the status quo in US politics and have thrown their support behind someone who they may even loathe but who, in their eyes, is an “outsider” deviating from the norm.

Donald Trump appears to have articulated a theme that seems to have found resonance amongst a substantial number of US voters who see the country being run by leaders who do not deliver anything to them, to improve their lot, but who are everywhere else in the world in the name of justice, democracy and freedom, but where such interventions have left the countries and regions concerned in total turmoil.

Iraq and Libya heads the list of countries in turmoil while almost the entire Middle East region is in turmoil. More than any other country, the USA has to take a Lion’s share of responsibility for the turmoil in the region.

US intervention and interference in the domestic political issues in countries, Sri Lanka being a good example, their intervention in selective application of human rights issues, Sri Lanka again being a case in point whereas Israel and Saudi Arabia have been ignored by the US for gross human rights violations, have left many ordinary US citizens disenchanted with the political establishment of the country. They see Donald Trump as the outsider who could perhaps change the culture of the establishment and US foreign policy and its strategies.

Judging by the latest polls and the general disdain that is engulfing Trump, it is looking extremely unlikely that he will be the President of the United States. However, it would be shortsighted on the part of both political parties, the Democratic party and the Republican party to ignore the message that a substantial number of US voters are sending through Trump that they are sick and tired of US intervention in the domestic political issues of other countries, and their selective involvement in destabilizing those countries at the cost of neglecting their own citizens.