“FOOLISH
are those who indulge in foolish actions
Foolish
are those unconscious of their festering words
And
doubly foolish are those with even more foolish reactions”
These words, penned by an
unknown poet, succinctly capture the notion of unintended consequences,
something that in our troubled day and age enjoys painful currency. In the
social sciences, unintended consequences are defined as outcomes that are not
the ones always foreseen, or intended, by an action.
The term was popularised in the
20th century by American sociologist, Robert K Merton, who passed away in the
1960s. One can only imagine what his response would be to US President Trump,
and the unintended consequences of his words and deeds, were he alive today.
Blinded by his vision for a
re-invented – largely white America at the expense of its founding principles –
Trump has energised the world for all the wrong reasons. From his bizarre trade
tariff proposals to pay for Mexico’s wall, to his sexism and to his denigration
of racial minorities, he has taken the fear out of bigotry.
From the war-torn streets of Aleppo
to green card holders, he has raised the ugly flag of Islamophobia. He has
deliberately profiled the global Muslim community by issuing a hold on
immigration, by blocking Syrian refugees and by targeting seven Muslim-majority
countries.
Trump, an unapologetic narcissist,
has falsely informed himself of the notion that refugees – especially Muslims –
harbour a sociopathic hatred for everything around them and that they are,
somehow, a threat to the US. During his campaign Trump even mooted the idea of a
“Muslim register”, evoking bitter memories of World War II when over 100, 000 US
Japanese citizens were interred.
The absurdity of Trump’s worldview
– which has at the stroke of a pen destroyed and devastated the lives of
thousands – has been revealed by the Cato Institute, whose research has shown
that in the past 40 years only three deaths in the US have been attributed to
refugees. In other words, a US citizen in 2017 will have a one in 3.6 billion
chance of being attacked by the foreigners the president so fears.
If that’s not enough, last year
23 people died at the hands of infants playing with guns – twenty-three more
than those who died in the US at the hands of Muslim “terrorists”. In fact, it
was discovered that Americans were more likely to be killed by home-grown
fanatics, errant lawnmowers, angry cows, boiling water, rabid dogs and vending
machines.
If that’s not enough, in this
post-truth era, Trump’s aides have had the temerity to defend something called
an “alternative fact”, which to any sane person is an untruth. YouTube has
provided some entertaining material, although after the inevitable chuckles,
the feeling becomes one of foreboding – more after the sinister fashion of
George Orwell’s novel, 1984, than political slapstick.
Fortunately, there are still good
people in the world. And judging by the
protest and the dissent, the 45th US president has not had things entirely his
own way. Whilst tit-for-tat is not the wisest course, it is significant that
Iraq – the country that has suffered the worst from terror – has threatened to place
a travel embargo on the US.
It doesn’t take rocket science
to understand the unintended consequences in the Middle East. For the already
embattled Palestinian population it will mean the ultimate affront of an
American embassy on occupied soil in East Jerusalem, as well as the prospect of
Jewish extremists being emboldened to seize even more of the West Bank.
And as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
hunkers down in Mosul to make ISIS’s last territorial stand, he will be able to
tell gullible extremists, “I told you so.” And as Al-Qaeda forces reload their
weapons in Yemen and send out the suicide bombers, they will also say, “I told
you so.”
The political hypocrisy that
Saudi Arabia – the country of origin of nineteen 911 hijackers – has been
exempted from the Islamaphobic bans is not unnoticed. Iraqi ambassadors have
told me that the impending military defeat of ISIS will be nullified by the
diplomatic sloppiness of Trump. They say he will not contain terrorism, but
fuel it. The esteemed Brookings Institute concurs with much of this view.
Another unintended consequence
of Trumpism will emerge from the infamous Mexican wall, something supported by Israeli
Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu, facing his own problems due to
corruption, has enjoyed the diversion.
Trump’s Mexican xenophobia might
well be partly informed by a lucrative cross-border drug trade run by
para-military thugs, but it is a double-edged sword. Should Mexico refuse to
co-operate on narcotic policing, California and Texas could soon be drowning in
cocaine.
The other issue is humanitarian.
The Atlantic reported on University of Arizona findings which showed increased policing
resulted in more migrants dying while trying to cross the border. Significantly,
there was no uptick in the amounts of people trying to enter the US, whether
there was more policing or not.
If he ever does lay the
foundations for his infamous Mexico wall, it is a given that Trump will waste
billions of dollars’ worth of concrete and razor wire. He will, say migration
experts, compound crime by encouraging syndicates to traffic migrants via other,
more dangerous routes. As Marc Pierini, the former European Union ambassador to
Turkey and a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, told The Atlantic:
“A
wall can slow someone down. It can compel them to change the route they take.
But when people want to cross, whatever the motivation is, they will find a way
to cross.”
The well-known Palestinian
author and journalist, Ramzy Baroud, posted on his Facebook page that Trump
represented a fierce, unprecedented battle between normal people and the American
elites and their corporate interests.
These men had “hoodwinked”
ordinary Americans to support war, to hate Muslims, Mexicans and migrants. They
had brainwashed the voter to blame the poor for his misfortune, to objectify
and oppress women, to support government misdeeds and wars “in the name of
human rights, freedom and democracy.”
Quoting an Arabic proverb,
Baroud concluded by saying that with Trump the magic had turned upon the
magician, and that by the time the smoke settled, the
US would find itself facing a changed and likely irreversible political
reality.
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