“I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it’s for or against.” —Malcolm X, activist and minister
The legal corners seem to be closing on U.S. former President Donald Trump it is amazing only to the untutored and otherwise unaware about how America has always worked for White males of all statuses, especially the elite ones and thus how much support he continues to have. Like the nontruthful and nonmoral teflon guy Trump is, he may beat this rap too in a society designed for people like him demographically, always above the law no matter the declarations said otherwise- no one is above the law. We shall see.
The point is we live in societies , this case America, and world now of no truth as well as nonmorality. We even freely lie about ourselves let alone about and for others. Our consciousness becomes not only seared but no more as we pursue a cause for lust or/and fortune and fame no matter the big or little lie we use to get it. We are as we self lie, rude and cruel to others freely while smiling and boasting how nice and kind we are as people of faith or of some golden moral principle. Or we just lie out of habit: no conscience reason except it is convenient or/and easier to do than to tell the truth and risk hurting the feelings of others or/and do harm to our own egos and reputations.
People running to support Trump at this point are not creating a new custom of non-truth and truth- denial. They are making a widespread public norm in America and elsewhere in the world of a strand of a tendency always there but now becoming dominant. It is the same mentality which for years caused so many in the past as well as present to deny genocide against native peoples and the stealing of their lands, the enslavement of Africans and other peoples such as Indian and Chinese contract workers, the mass rape of women ,the shaming treatment of the disabled, and denying the real roots of wealth and poverty.
But, now, the number of people willing to back up Trump at this point when his guilt as a traitor to the country he sworn to God to lead and protect and to vote for Congress men and women to support his lies is something to behold as a symbol of the nontruth and denial of the truth which has now gripped the country. It is an attitude and a growing value let alone norm and a way of behaving, being nontruthful , that needs to be struggled against in our daily lives as Americans and wherever such grotesque forms and contents of Americanization are unconditionally emulated as pathetic mass consumerism.
And this can be done as much of the world is turning a critical eye towards America rather than a blind eye towards it as the global power dynamics continue to shift from North to South and from West to East with Americans and Europeans plus Australians and Canadians losing their historical hegemonic grip in world affairs with their usual threats to force Non-Westerners into compliance at home and abroad.
Perhaps this trend of critics outside America willing to tell America the truth of what this White Supremacy nation and other historical dominating western nations are really all about is what is needed. It brings to mind the recent response of South African Foreign Affairs Minister Dr. Natalie Pondar to the pro-Ukraine American rhetoric of U.S .Secretary of State Blinken during his recent visit to her country and those international venue remarks of Indian External Affairs Minister, Dr. S. Jaishankar on the same Russian-Ukraine conflict matter indicative of the dismal failure of Americans and other Westerners to persuade Non-Westerners to support Ukraine.
As the prestige of America continues to erode as our dirty linen accelerates to hang outside for all to see including our deepening public indifference to allowing our government and ourselves to be so nontruthful as well as nonmoral , it is not only essential for external critics like global human rights and governance bodies and nations and individuals within them to hold the feet of America to the fire but to make sure they don’t acquire such nontruthful and nonmoral dirty cruel hearts and schemes in the process. We are, afterall, at that juncture in these choppy global times to develop new values and norms of being truthful and ethical rather than following traditional ways of dishonesty and truth denial in how we are between each other as nations as well as individuals. We will not end inequalities, wars and the systemic bigotries which underlay both until we allow the sustainable socio- political and economic cultural infrastructures in all our nations and global sources of governance and human rights to make real outcome differences in how we develop our values and identities as human beings all made in the image of God and thus basically as the brothers and sisters we all are to each other and for one another.
