Now that Trump is President

By Okey Ikechukwu

This column spared no love for the Obama/Biden presidency. In an Exclusive Commentary of December 5, 2020, in the Houston-based USAfrica, titled “Will Biden Impose Alternative Lifestyles on Africans?” my submission was that a Biden presidency should be a source of worry to non-enthusiasts of gay marriage and anti-gay advocacy. The publication began thus: “On January 2021, upon being sworn in as president of the United States, Joe Biden will begin to reconnect with many “globally significant” individuals towards the globalization of new (alternative) lifestyles and values pyramid. ‘The Return of all the freedom enjoyed under Barrack Obama’ is already the mantra of many who are cheering the November 2020 election of Joe Biden as president”.

Let us recall that the Obama administration – where Biden served as vice president for eight years, 2009 to 2017 – threatened Nigeria with sanctions for passing a law against same-sex marriage. “That presidency diligently promoted the same sex agenda and Gay relationships with the LGBTQ+ movement and created a new world for the exercise of those ‘rights’ when in 2016, Donald trump barged in bared teeth and all.”

The problem with the values and tendencies diligently promoted by the Obama/Biden government lay more in the determination of the duo to universalize those values and tendencies than in their mere endorsement. Go back to the teachings of William James about “truth”. He taught his American admirers that truth is whatever “works” for you at any time. That was the new pragmatism that began to smoulder and grow in that period of intellectual explosion that took violent possession of a land of hope, opportunity and enlightenment. It all began after the land got christened as “God’s own country, with more than its fair share of great men and women.

Willian James came along, became popular and told whoever had an ear that “Everything must be measured by its cask value”.  So, whatever works for you at any time, in any circumstance and for whatever purpose is your truth. Take it and run with it. Do not mind those who are babbling about ultimate truth and such things. It is all a question of perspective; and everyone has his own perspective. 

It took more than a hundred years for all of this to mature into the global nightmare it has become today, with the US as the imperator and chief exporter of the nightmare. They speak of human right, without first asking what makes an entity human. Without asking what human values are in themselves.

With Trump’s victory two days ago, the two politico-spiritual currents and counter currents which have been at war in the US for a long time now have come to a new corner of the road. We are now well beyond that point in the progressive development of the argument for expansion of the social space. These are no longer the early days of instalmental gains on minority rights, or the more recent grand campaigns for inclusivity and greater sensitivity towards, and support for, many otherwise less privileged groups and interests.

What climaxed in the US under Obama and Biden, and which Kamala was poised to drive further, was the chorus of submissions driving the view that everyone had the right to whatever pleased him, provided he did not disturb anyone about it unduly.

It did not begin with them, surely. The conscious, deliberate and well funded campaign in defence of Lesbians and gays had grown elaborate flagella over time and changed to LGBTQ. Then it added the plus sing to LBGBTQ, for any stray tendency that may turn up in the neighbourhood. In other words, space was already for the unknown, the unnamed and the unimagined, just in case it turned up.

Listen to what was said on this page shortly after Biden was sworn is as president: “America is back,” said Biden about a week ago. But which America, and whose America, is back? The answer to these questions was given earlier in a Presidential Memorandum, wherein he threatened to sanction countries which are still reluctant to make laws to promote, accommodate and perhaps even expand the rights and privileges of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex (LGBTQI+) people.

The Memorandum seeks a worldwide plan to strengthen the protection of LGBTQI+ rights, in such a way that it would be taken for granted that humanity must now collectively drive a new global priority under this umbrella of rights. But is this continuation of the Obama government’s agenda of driving LGBTQI+ issues willy-nilly as welcome as they are making it seem? Should all mankind tremble and fall in line because an American president has announced that his country would roll out sanctions against other countries which do not subscribe to America’s preferred values?

Can he even do that in US states which are yet to fall in line in this regard? Can he do anything about the legislative federalist orientation of the American State, despite a respected Supreme Court?

The article continued: “What warrants Biden’s presumption? In what way did it make sense to him to pass his country off as defender of humanity and protector of the ideal values? Is America, with its daily murder records in New York City alone, and its many socio-culturally disruptive engagements all over the world, really in a position to speak about guiding the world to greater sanity? By what universal standard was Nigeria rightly classified a “homophobic” country; as was done under Obama, because of the country’s anti-gay law?

Surely a US president who was Vice President when the Nigerian anti-gay law was passed, despite great pressures from the Obama government where he was Vice President, would be out to “call Nigeria to order?”

Biden’s Vice President, Kamala Harris, is as dead set on pro-Gay values as anyone can be. Recall her public position on the matter, including her submission on what to do about homeless homosexuals.

“This column did not, for once, comment on the person of Donald Trump before, during, or after his stint in the White House. He was, in my view, a historical necessity. His tenure as president threw up much about America that needed recalibration and reconsideration, especially along deep fault lines the country was pretending did not exist.

When Biden said: “The United States belongs at the forefront of this struggle – speaking out and standing strong for our most dearly held values”, did he consider that “our most dearly held values” in Nigeria are not American values? Since when did America start speaking for all climes? When Biden spoke of “…enforcing freedoms and promoting tolerance,” does he consider that he is the President of the US, rather than the earth? Does he even look at the overall impact of the US on “rights” with regards to global peace, climate change and morality?

On November 23, 2020, this column carried a piece with the title “Biden and the Global Gender Crisis.” That article observed as follows: “The Obama Government threatened Nigeria with official sanctions, when the National Assembly passed a law against same-sex marriage. The Obama government also refused to sell arms to Nigeria to fight Boko Haram. It also discouraged other countries from selling arms to Nigeria; even as thousands were being slaughtered every day. The argument, then, was that the Nigerian government was not respecting the human rights of the terrorists! …The Obama Presidency stood out in its promotion of gay relationships under the LGTBQ+ movement.”

The same piece raised the following questions: “Why are they talking of making people happy but saying nothing about the true meaning of happiness?” Does Biden’s Presidential Memorandum, wherein he seeks to “… further repair our (America’s) moral leadership…” which also seeks to “reinvigorate our (America’s) leadership on the LGBTQI+ issues internationally…” not showcase a national megalomania that verges on the incomprehensible?

Today, all the investments seeking and securing special treatment for homosexuals and interference with gender distinctions, which are all in line with the LGBTQI+ campaign spelt out in Marshal Kirk and Hunter Madsen’s 1987 Essay, “The Overhauling of Straight America,” stand challenged under a Trump presidency. The above mentioned work, which urged Gays to project themselves in ways that would make the world think of them as normal people who prefer to do certain things differently, was updated years later, in the book “After the Ball: How America will Conquer its Fear of Gays in the 90s.” The latter work mapped out a public relations strategy for the movement. And it is working.” Yes, it is!

Which is why, as said in the USAfrica article: “Oklahoma Senator, Tom Coburn, in 2004, saw the gay movement as a more pressing danger than terrorism. In 2005, James Dobson, Director of Focus on the Family, described the homosexual agenda as including “universal acceptance of the gay lifestyle, discrediting of scriptures that condemn homosexuality, muzzling of the clergy and Christian media, granting of special privileges and rights in the law, overturning laws prohibiting paedophilia, indoctrinating children and future generations through public education, and securing all the legal benefits of marriage for any two or more people who claim to have homosexual tendencies.”

The concerns raised in the aforementioned USAfrica article include the following: “The questions, especially for many in Africa, are: Can someone wake up one day, declare himself a camel, and demand that we accept his new identity and allow him to graze in the public park; or in his neighbour’s garden? Was the Obama Presidency guided by a fundamental distortion of the very concepts of human nature and human freedom? Does a redefinition of what it means to be human, and of what “gender” means, not also mean a redefinition of the notion of “human” rights and new notions of right and wrong, etc.?”

Now that Trump is president, much will change in America. He is out to fight the traditional values of the conservative American State. Religious practices, Big Pharma and all big bad boys and girls are now in the line of fire. While at it, Trump should remember what happened to JFK. He has already been shot at twice.

QUOTE

…This column did not, for once, comment on the person of Donald Trump before, during, or after his stint in the White House. He was, in my view, a historical necessity. His tenure as president threw up much about America that needed recalibration and reconsideration, especially along deep fault lines the country was pretending did not exist.