TWO WEEKS IN AMERICA

This time last year, no one gave Donald Trump a beggar’s chance of getting anywhere near the White House. The pundits said that he was a joke. The media wrote him off. No one would have bet a cent in any of Trump’s failed casinos across America that Donald J. Trump could become President of the United States of America.

It is no longer a joke! The next President of the United States of America, the most powerful nation in the world, may very well be a trash talking egomaniac who spews obscenities as much as he openly sprouts hatred, a guy who has run his companies four times into

bankruptcy and has been married to three different women, the latest being a bimbo whose naked photographs are everywhere for everyone to see on the Internet. Melanie Trump is very close to becoming the next first lady of the United States. Wow!

I never thought there were these many crazy people in America who would see in Trump the savior of the land of the free. It just shows you the power of Reality TV and the smart phone. In Reality TV, there is no bad news. Bad news is good news. Donald Trump, the star of NBC’s Reality TV show, “the Apprentice” understands that in the crazy Reality TV world of today, all you need is to be in the news. And so the Donald is swearing, cursing and wagering his fingers at everyone and people are enthralled. He is in the news all the time and white uneducated Americans are clapping and cheering. They think they are watching Reality TV. They do not understand that if this weird fella were to get to Pennsylvania Avenue, it will be hard reality for their children and grandchildren.

Donald Trump does not like Muslims. He cannot stand Mexicans. He is railing against the Chinese and loathes Nigerians. He is constantly barking and running down everything that America has achieved. Listening to this guy, you would think that the United States is on the brink of collapse and has been a monumental failure. You would think that Mexicans, Chinese, Nigerians, Muslims and people everywhere want to tear America down. He wants to build a wall to keep out immigrants and Mexico will pay for it! Yet, the greatest nation on earth has been great because it has borrowed from every culture on earth the skills of all of God’s children, no matter their tribe or religion and has fused all of these talents to form a nation like no other. That is why in nearly every country in the world, almost every young man or woman is dreaming of life in the USA.

I have written elsewhere that the ongoing electoral contest in America is delivering an important lesson to the world on how the democratic process can easily be hijacked in the new world by any con man who is social media savvy. Donald Trump, reputed to be a billionaire is doing very little paid advertising. He is not giving any of his supposed big money to the media which he is manipulating to spread his nonsense everywhere. He has shown how you can take over the world using a smart phone. Much of what Mr. Trump has done in the past year is to send out mischievous tweets now and again and laugh as the media rushes to amplify his obscenities.

The title of this piece may suggest that I have had two weeks of eating the famous American hot dog or enjoying the hustle and bustle and the many languages of people of all nations in New York’s Time Square in summer. To be honest, I love July in the United States of America. I have never been able to get enough of the incredible fireworks that take place on New York’s East River or the Hudson. I like to witness the amazing colors of humanity on the Washington Mall as America celebrates its independence. I like to witness the incomparable nationalism of Americans especially on July 4. Touched by the economic challenges most Nigerians are presently grappling with, I could not experience America this July.

I have however lived on American time this past two weeks.

Courtesy of two TV sets at home in Lagos, one permanently tuned to the middle of the road, CNN and the other to the right wing megaphone, Fox News, I have practically followed every minute of the drama of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland Ohio and the Democratic National Convention In Philadelphia Pennsylvania. I have stayed awake every night to experience the soaring speeches, the choreography of the events, the restlessness of the ever present demonstrators, the ubiquitous pundits and the exceptionally high value production of each of the events.

Yes, I watched the to be first lady, Melanie Trump climb on the stage in Cleveland and shamelessly plagiarize a speech earlier delivered by current first lady, Mitchell Obama. I watched as the Republican first runner up, Ted Cruz got on the same stage and publicly dissed Donald Trump. In any other year, it would not have mattered what happened a week later in the star studded event in Philly. The election would have ended on the stage of Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. But this is no ordinary year. This is the year of the Reality TV election. This is the year of the twitter driven election. This year, it appears no news is bad news. In November, we will find out how true this is.

See you next week.