America’s election crisis bad news for the world
It is an irony that the biggest threat to freedom of expression in the US is the very agents supposed to safeguard them.
The contested US presidential election ended with certification of Joe Biden as president by Congress.
Unfortunately, the election resulted in a massive crisis of legitimacy, and destroyed hitherto global acceptance of America exceptionalism.
Tragically, the very institutions tasked with securing America’s exceptionalism by maintaining the credibility of its elections performed dismally. Unsurprisingly, half of Americans have no confidence in the 2020 election.
Blatant hypocricy
The courts across the US, including the Supreme Court, refused to listen to the tens of cases that were filed by aggrieved parties, throwing them out on technicalities.
Kenyans can relate. Kenyan courts refused to listen to election petitions in 1992 and 1997, resulting in violent protests in 2007 when an aggrieved opposition, took to the streets because they did not trust the courts.
The next election in the US will be fraught, as those who lose and feel aggrieved will simply take their case to the streets.
The media lost it. Journalists became political hacks, rubbishing and cancelling, without any investigation, anybody who made claims of election irregularities.
The blatant hypocrisy was a sight to behold. Six months of left wing riots in major cities, left a trail of destruction and death.
The media, all through kept up the narrative that these were ‘peaceful’ protests, while left wing politicians actually encouraged them. Police refused to interfere.
But one day of protests in Washington, that resulted in no damage to buildings and one unfortunate death, despite hundreds of thousands of protestors congregating, has been all the rage in the media.
This fake outrage, egged on by a hysterical media, even found its way into Congress where they impeached outgoing President Donald Trump whom they blamed for “causing a riot.”
Again Kenyans can relate. The kangaroo session that impeached Trump was a rushed event where there were no witnesses, no documents detailing the “case”, and no due process that gave the accused an opportunity to defend themselves.
In the Kanu heydays, this was exactly what used to happen. How did the US sink so low?
With all these developments, the thought control through cancel culture in the US has gone riot, everybody into tunnel thinking and political correctness.
Leftist politicians are even talking of taking right wing supporters to “education camps.”
No, this is not in China! The US is on the slippery road to fascism, where alternative voices are throttled and everybody becomes a cheerleader singing kumbaya to the king.
Why is all this important to the rest of the world? For the longest time, the US has been the last bastion of defenders of democracy globally.
In the US, oppressed people could expect a forceful supporter in defense of democracy, freedom of expression, human rights and good governance.
Its election turmoil has badly damaged this image, its failures to observe its own admonitions to others probably fatal.
Despite the US having been a major defender of freedom of expression and press freedom, the media in that country has behaved exactly like Kanu in Kenya, or Chama Cha Mapinduzi in Tanzania, or National Resistance Movement in Uganda in stifling any voice that spoke out against election irregularities.
The ultimate hypocrisy and shamelessness was tech giant, Twitter, which has banned all voices it disagrees with in America, castigating Uganda for shutting off all social media apps and the internet. Really rich.
The vindictiveness with which American leftists are going after their political opponents would make Hugo Chavez of Venezuela proud.
The US is now officially a third world country. It’s doubtful it will ever regain any credibility to resume its role as big brother.
In the meantime, dictators such as Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, Tanzania’s, John Magufuli, among others have become so emboldened by these developments that they are even telling off the US itself.
Watch the return of the dictator; Mobutu Sese Seko, as the US implosion goes into full flight. — [email protected]
