Recent happenings in the United States of America got me thinking; especially since the ascension to office, on Monday, January 20, 2025, as the 47th president of the United States of America, of Mr. Donald Trump. But more appropriately right from the party primaries and, later, the presidential campaign that pitted Trump, first against the then incumbent President Joe Biden, and later Vice-President Kamala Harris. Kamala became the Democratic candidate after Biden bowed to pressure from his own party to step aside from running. Right from his first minute in office, President Trump began to trump everything in sight, living up not just to his campaign promises but also to the meaning of his name!
As to the question of what’s in a name, we must now answer, a lot! There is plenty in a name! Google says what’s in a name “means a name itself is not important, and the essence or true nature of something is more significant than what it is called; essentially, a label doesn’t define the thing itself. This phrase is commonly used to suggest that a name is just a convention and what matters is the substance behind it”. In other words, “what something is called can never fully capture the full meaning of what that something is”.
What’s in a name originated from William Shakespeare’s tragic play “Romeo and Juliet” where Juliet argued that the Montague family name, which was the source of conflict, was irrelevant compared to her lover, Romeo’s character. Juliet and everyone else were to find out later, and to their chagrin, that there was, really, something to a name!
To “trump” something means “to outdo, surpass, or get the better of that something”. To “trump” also means “to outrank or defeat someone or something, often in a highly public way” Does that fit into what President Donald Trump was, has been, is and promises to still be all the way? If you still think there is nothing to a name, ask the governor of Ondo State, Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa!
As President Trump trumps everything and everyone in sight, I began to ask myself whether the US is still the democracy it is touted to be. This is, perhaps, the world’s longest-running modern democracy; a people that fought a war of Independence and made their hair-splitting “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” declaration in 1776 in a speech that has never stopped rousing the patriotic zeal and nationalistic fervour of peoples of all colour, in every clime, and through the ages!
Tell me, is the United States still a democracy – with one man, weilding a pen and hauling Executive Order as nuclear bombs right, left, and centre, re-writing history, shredding hallowed tenets, wilfully and whimsically redrawing borders, threatening to eliminate ancient landmarks, and holding everyone spell-bound? Where are America’s famed “strong institutions”? Where is its all-powerful Congress? What’s happened to the theory of separation of powers upheld so loftily by America? Where are the American people themselves, famous for defending their own freedoms and liberties?
Many are already comparing Trump with Adolf Hitler. Demagogues usually start by commanding popular appeal. Hitler dismantled German democracy and imposed his demagoguery and dictatorship through the ballot box and not by making a coup or revolution. The people at first support and hail but by the time they have seen enough to want to pull back from the edge of the abyss, it would have become too late to act.
Some other commentators have likened Trump to the USSR’s Mikhail Gorbachev whose goal was to make the Soviet Union great but his twin policies of “glasnot” and “perestroika” ended up achieving the very opposite of what he intended. Trump seeks to Make America Great Again but will he, like Gorbachev, end up achieving its direct opposite? If he cares to listen he would hear warnings that many of his policies are like a two-edged sword: as he cuts his intended adversaries, so also does he cut himself. You hit them; they hit you back. And because he fights on multiple war fronts at one and the same time, like Hitler perilously did, he forgets the lessons of history. Is he not making the same mistakes that led to Hitler’s downfall?
German philosopher, Georg Hegel, says: “The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history” Says George Santayana: “Those who fail to learn from history are often condemned to repeating its mistakes”. On his own, Karl Marx says “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce” Tragedy or farce – which one do you think is trending with President Trump? Or is it both?
President Trump is fighting on more than two fronts. He is fighting both internal and external “enemies”. He is up in arms against millions of alleged illegal immigrants in his own country; in the process, he runs the risk of disrupting the smooth running of goods and services that will imperil many businesses and hike the cost of living for American citizens. He is threatening to seize countries, territories, and canals, some of which had existed ever before the birth of the US itself! Canada, Mexico, Panama, Palestine (Gaza) are on his radar. He is pulling the US out of international treaties, obligations, and organisations thereby endangering global peace and security.
One man is imposing policies and making decisions whose debilitating and deleterious consequences will be difficult to reverse or repair years, even decades, after he has left office. He has only four years to spend in the White House. The few days he has been there already looks like eternity!
President Trump does things that will be considered unthinkable even in some of the countries he arrogantly and derisively called shitholes. He wears vengeance and vendetta like a badge of honour; he sacks with relish those he branded as personal enemies, and hands over the country to the financiers of his electoral victory, not under the table but in the full glare of all. The things President Trump shoves down the throat of everyone – Americans and foreigners alike – baffle me. But will he get away with all of this?
Gains of centuries of struggle for a better America – and a safer world – have been wiped away with just a stroke of his pen, throwing the World Health Organization, UNICEF, USAID, the International Criminal Court and lots of other multilateral agencies into grief. He is opposed to the promotion of a safer environment for all. He has given notice he would exit arms treaties with Russia that have helped to starve off the prospects of a nuclear holocaust.
As we speak, the humanism of the United States stands threadbare – stripped by Trump’s pen! But in every disappointment, they say, there is a blessing. The revelations coming out of Trump’s scrapping of USAID may be one of such for Nigeria.
Trump, the son of immigrants, is not just trumping everything; he is trampling them as well! To “trample” means “to tread on and crush; to treat with contempt”. That’s exactly what President Trump is doing right now to American citizens; some of whom, ironically, elected him as president. Hundreds of Nigerians have been deported on his orders. That is what he is also doing to alleged illegal immigrants. He has declared “war” on China, Canada, Panama, and Mexico.
The other day I watched the Canadian leader, Justin Tradeau, almost in tears as he roused his citizens to rise up as one man to the Trump challenge. Trump’s threats alone are said to have already started “affecting business and household confidence” in Canada and Mexico. Little Panama, bracing up to suffer what it must, tries feverishly to reach accommodation with Trump over the Panama canal. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has ordered retaliatory tariffs in response to any from Trump. Ordinary Americans, now stirring, are hitting the street with strindent anti-Trump rhetorics. China has announced its own retaliatory tariffs on US goods.
Isaac Newton’s third law of motion says action and reaction are equal and opposite. So we must expect reactions from everyone President Trump tramples. He has said even Europe and the United States’ NATO allies will not be spared.
In a sense, there is a way Trump’s bull in a chinashop may help to offload many of those who, customarily and for decades, rode on the back of the United States; now, they will be compelled to become more circumspect, be more responsible, be more responsive, and be more alive to their responsibilities. I hope Nigerians will be one such people. But if this does not teach Third World countries especially to look inward and become more self-reliant, nothing else will!
Now is the saying, there is no such thing as a free lunch, come alive practically before our very eyes!..
* Former Editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-Chief, BOLAWOLE was also the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of The Westerner newsmagazine. He writes the ON THE LORD’S DAY column in the Sunday Tribune and TREASURES column in the New Telegraph newspaper on Wednesdays. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.
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