My dear African brother, why do you love Pres. Trump? (part one)

Brother: Because as a Catholic knight, I am obliged to defend Christian values and as far as I can see, Biden is an apostate while Trump is the one defending Christian values. As someone worried that what happens in America will finally reach us, I urged my fellow Christians to vote for Trump.

My brother, you know that you are my man, anytime. But on this one, you’re mistaken.

Peter Obi once said that “When the premise of an argument is wrong, the conclusion is also wrong.”

The premise of your argument is so wrong.

First of all, you protecting your Christian values is what Americans call baloney. I won’t waste time on that. Our ancestors will have enough time to query all of you who embrace foreign religions at the expense of ours.

The first point is that you framed the November election in America wrong. It is not about protecting Christian values. This your line of argument is the smokescreen the Trump side uses to confuse people like you who are not deep into American politics. In America, what is actually going on in a fight between those afraid that white dominance and privileges are eroding and those who have come to embrace emerging multicultural America.

They brought in Trump as their last hope of restoring the America that has long disappeared.

And guess what? Trump’s side is the losing side. Even if they close America down so that no new person will come in again, in 30 years, white people will become one of the minorities in America. They cannot do anything about it.

If they like, let them poop bees.

I understand their anxiety. It is like saying that Nsukka people are taking over Nnobi. Nnobi people will be anxious. They will seek to revert things, blame political correctness, wishing to go back to 50 years ago when things were “good.” They will cling to their Ukpaka Ndam and Ichie Abia instead of the new Redeemed and Winners churches cropping up everywhere as a premise to stop the changes they are seeing. Some will even insist that only those who have the ozo title will own a store in Nnobi. That is the kind of anxiety driving Trump’s supporters.

It has nothing to do with Christianity.

Trump is not a Christian. He doesn’t even claim to be one. He only uses the bible as a prop. To him, Christianity is just a costume.

Incidentally, Biden is the one who is Catholic, like you. Unlike you, Biden is an American Catholic. The American Catholics have come to a unique conclusion — the pope can say whatever he likes in Rome, but they will do what works for them and their American constitution.

Those who share the same party with Trump but are appalled by him do so for his utter destruction of American norms. For those who do not know, values are norms that have matured. Trump’s systematic destruction of American norms is so horrifying that another four years of Trump in power will transition into the eroding of American values and laws. It is what scares the people in Trump’s party and non-partisan American civil servants whom Trump has conveniently called the “deep state.”

Because that is what he does best- any complex thing that his simplistic mind cannot grasp, he calls names.

America’s cultural wars like gay marriages, abortions, and others have long been settled. Nobody can reverse any of them. Trump with 9–0 conservative judges in the US Supreme Court, cannot change any of that.

The people who fought and won the battle for gay marriage and abortion rights in America tapped into the same pages of the American constitution that blacks used to fight and win the right to attend the same schools as whites. The same pages that blacks used to fight and win the right not to sit at the back of the bus, the same pages that blacks used to fight and win the right to marry whites.

America is a long story of wars fought… and they are all fought with one purpose — to build a better nation, a fairer nation and a more perfect nation.

Funny enough, it is people who have lived all their lives in a country that never worked that are pointing at America and telling America how to make its democracy work.

That has been our genius in Africa. This is how the Sidney Herald newspaper put it. We admire a civilization whose external trappings we strongly desire, but whose internal workings we have no idea of. We are confusion’s masterpiece.

On the one hand, we abhor groups like Boko Haram. But on the other hand, we express the same level of intolerance in a more sophisticated way.

You are right. Where America is going is where the rest of the world is going. The church is virtually dead in Europe. It is dying in America, despite the mega-churches you see everywhere. I don’t need to tell you what will happen in Africa.

The world is constantly in transition. Those who have headaches are those who have the illusion that they can somehow stop things from changing.

Austria once resisted joining the European Union. They wanted to remain the same. After all, their neighbor, France, has this proverb that says, “the more things change, the more they remain the same.”

But Austria soon found out that for Austria to remain the same, Austria has to change.

It may look confusing, but we, Africans, should stop confusing what is changing with what remains the same.

We cannot stop the world and jump out. The earth is moving at 1000 miles per hour. We may not feel the speed, but it is moving. We cannot stop it even if we poop bees.


For more a visit into the inner workings of President Trump’s head, read The Secret Letters of President Donald Trump


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