Two things stand out to the traditional working class and the young people as prospective culprits for America’s domestic woes. They are cheap imports, for which globalisation and particularly, China is blamed. The other culprit is immigration, in which immigrants are held responsible for pulverizing jobs through provision of their cheap labour that render the traditional white working class highly uncompetitive. Besides, the alleged stealing of U.S jobs, immigrants are alleged to perpetrate violence and this is not withstanding, the violence perpetrated against the original American aborigines, the Red Indians, who were not only, nearly decimated by their earlier guests but leaves currently in squalor in the segregated reserve areas. To this prevailing sentiment of hostility to immigrations and globalisation, Mr. Trump, a political outsider who has made fortune in real estate business lent acerbic demagoguery, denouncing globalisation and making promise to put America first. He accused China of manipulating its currency to ferry its exports cheaply to the United States. He drew attention that the excessive U.S security muscle is pushing the working and middle class to bankruptcy, wondering why richer nations like Japan, Saudi Arabia and even Washington- NATO’s partners in Europe cannot pick the bulk of the security bills or even construct their own security umbrella On immigration, railing against Mexican neighbours as rapists and petty thieves, with a promise to construct wall along the Southern border, in which Mexico will pay fitted to the mass hysteria against immigration. With a persona, as theatrical as own Prof. Soyinka, Mr. Trump tapped into the overflowing red blood of Americas tribal politics. His possible enlightened antidote was the amiable Vermont senator, Mr. Bernie Sanders, the Democratic party aspirant, who had a meteoric rise until was cut short, as was latter revealed by the establishment of his own party, who preferred a notorious Washington wheeler-dealer, Mrs. Hillary Clinton, who fell an easy prey to the anti-establishment populist insurgency. As Mr. Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders inspired a faith-like followership, but without the bigotry and hate-filled vituperations of Mr. Trump’s “deplorable” as Mrs. Clinton called them. The mostly young Americans who championed the cause of the 71 year old “Democratic Socialist”, as Mr. Sanders called himself were believers in the international system, in which the U.S would fully participate but without the imperialist wars and over hyped security concerns that is in itself , at the root of international insecurity. Mr. Sander’s core promise was to revise the U.S excessively rigged capitalism, in which a one percent U.S corporate oligarchy and their political allies sit atop nearly 70 percent of the national wealth. He knew that what ails America and leaves her working class vulnerable is not global trade but corporate greed and elite avarice that elevates the dollars beyond its value and its consequent deification as the sole international currency of exchange. The fact is that in the face of over-sized corporate America and blushful and arrogant Washington elite, the ordinary America hemorrhages in deepening social and economic exclusion. It is in this context that U.S presidential election last November provided Americans with two stark choices of anti-immigration, anti globalisation –right wing populism or elaborate and inclusive national social reform with considerable reduction in Washington international belligerence. When once, the second option was eliminated by the manipulation of the Democratic Party that abruptly ended senator Sanders great run, Mr. Trump was left alone in the field to chatter and bluster his way to the presidency. That he largely sold dummy to his angry voters will become clear in the coming months and years. So how, did Prof. Soyinka failed to grasp this unfolding scenario prior to the U.S election and rather interjected with the drama of shredding his green card, except the outcome of the polls produced his preferred candidate. If he had left hard analysis to make light of an unfolding serious social issue by investing it with the drama of a theatre, why is he bemoaning his stalking “mutants” as he chose to denounce his traducers for following him through drama line Even as a national treasure, which all of us are, in different ways, Prof. Soyinka has no immunity to been interrogated on questions he has raised or decisions he has taken in the public square, no matter how intimately personal, it is.
