It's not like I have nothing to do, nor that there aren't things I'd rather be doing. But, I'm not getting to them, because I have to spend way too much times "explaining" things that can't really be explained.
This week, the allegedly impossible happened: Trump was nominated by the Republican Party as their candidate for president. It's their good right. In contrast to lots of people I know, I'm all for democracy, even though I also know that it means you may get more than you bargained for or that you end up places you never wanted to be. I can live with that, but I don't want to have to live with trying to explain how things like this can happen ... in supposedly the most advanced country on earth ... in allegedly the greatest country the world has ever known ... in purportedly the zenith of Western culture.
My fellow Americans, you know and I know, even if the rest of the world hasn't caught on yet, that there is a massive disconnect between the marketing of a product and the actual product itself. After all, we grow up with exaggerated claims about everything. It's part and parcel of being American. The Greeks may have invented the word "hyperbole", but we filled it with life, everyday life. America is -- let's face it -- non-stop hyperbole.
It's hard to get that if you're not American. It's hard to understand that what is said has little resemblance to the reality it's supposed to describe and that what's shouted at the world shouldn't be taken all that seriously, for the most part. Words mean little in America. We're born pragmatists. It's in our blood: it's not what we say that makes a difference, it's what we do, and when you look at what America has been doing to the world since the last big war, well, you realize there's a reality there that lots of other peoples are having trouble living with. But that's a subject for another day.
Let's face it: the Donald -- the very moniker gives it all away -- is not presidential, and his wife isn't very first-lady-like at all. Oh, I'm not saying anyone else in the eventual race is cutting better figures here, far from it. You just have to realize that cute charm has worn off the American facade. Melania should have done her homework. I know students who almost lost their degrees for less plagiarism than she aired in her very short speech. In today's world of intellectual property, stealing others' words has become a mortal sin. Feigning ignorance, sloughing it off as cavalier, allowing for that much sloppiness at such a critical juncture is, well, inexplicable at best, but trust-eradicating at worst. Why do Americans expect so little of those who are going to represent them to the rest of the world?
And yes, the Donald ... sorry, I got side-tracked ... he's everything we imagine a leader of the free world is not. (OK, he's now got a Boris Johnson from that other wannabe empire flitting through the world distracting attention from serious issues, but that too is another story for another day). He is unstatesmanlike, vitriolic, incoherent, uninformed, and ignorant of history; he is unaware of his own effect on others, easily manipulated, insensitive to others, and of questionable ethics and beliefs. Yes, yes, I know that even the most seasoned politician can be any of these things on a bad day, but this is Trump on his good days. I used to think it was cute and somewhat funny when people made jokes about a senile Reagan getting to close to the nuclear button, but I have to tell you, I'm not the only one in my personal environment who is worried about Mr. I-don't-have-to-think-anything-through-because-I'm-great having such serious access.
You know, and I know, and I've said as much before, you don't live in much of a democracy, but given the wide range of more-than-life-threatening issues on the table, it is really not too much to expect that you'd at least offer someone up for office who gives you the impression he could be taken seriously. Too many of my Trump-supporting Facebook friends are tying to push his "outsider honesty", but a billionaire is never an outsider to elites and having no tact is not the same as being honest. There are too many Americans who simply don't know the difference, and this is the behavior we have come to expect from pubescing adolescents, but not from office holders whom we are supposed to be taking seriously and whose words and actions can cause major upheavals in financial markets or peace negotiations.
A lot of people I know once did -- and still want to -- have a high opinion of America, but between the apparent increase in good old police brutality, the lost-the-plot gun stuff being reported, the obvious über-aggression of US-led NATO, and now the Trump spectacle, it's getting harder and harder to explain to them why they should be taking American seriously. I certainly can't explain it to them, even if I wanted to, because my own head wags and my own jaw drops on a regular basis, but apparently Mr. Trump is what some people envision as the "most powerful person on earth". I get shivers.
Now, I'm fully aware that the other half of the gruesome twosome to be running for office in America has yet to be officially nominated. It's a done deal, though, we all know that. And no one should think it is any easier explaining Hillary to my fellow, questioning-asking German citizens. Yes, they know she's Bill's wife, they know she held political office, they know she was Secretary of State, but it's not like she left a lasting impression on anyone around here. Well, maybe on the politically elite, but I'm talking about everyday people with every problems who have an everyday understanding of international politics. But they know what Wall Street is, and they know what Goldman-Sachs is and they who has close ties to big money and who doesn't and, well, that just raises a whole lot of other questions that, to be quite frank, I have little desire to try and explain, even if I had a coherent explanation to offer.
No, my fellow Americans, you have and you are about to make my life much more difficult than it need be. I can't explain how Americans think, because I'm not convinced myself that a whole lot of thinking is going on over there, at least politically. I don't understand the gun fetish, even if there is an alleged constitutional amendment supporting it. I don't get the massive police violence that we're seeing on the news so often. I don't understand the too numerous killings of unarmed civilians. I don't understand how corrupt and manipulated allegedly democratic processes have become, be they the passing of simple legislation, the refusal to nominate a supreme-court justice, or the curtailing of voting rights, or the circuses you call the primaries. I don't get any of that, and neither do my German friends and neighbors, but I can't explain it to them either.
Personally, I have no vested interest in who you decide to have run or who you decide to field as presidential candidates. One thing I do understand, though, is something I can't explain to them anyway, namely it really doesn't matter in the end who is finally elected president in America: nothing is going to change anyway. Not only do Americans not elect its own president, as the primaries showed this time around, they really have nothing to say about who ends up being candidate. But it doesn't matter in the end. Yes, we all like to act like and think that the President of the United States has something to say, but other than little decisions, like who gets X'd off the kill list or which tie to wear to the press conference, the real decisions, such as whether there's a drone-kill list at all, are made by others. What everyone here knows and has no trouble saying is how badly money has corrupted America's political system, and my only real recourse is to affirm that they're right: America is not politically driven, it is money driven. If the right people or enough people stand to make a profit, it will be done, regardless of the politics of the situation.
Unfortunately, they really don't understand that either. Well, to be honest, I think they don't want to understand it. Nobody wants to think that at bottom it's all about money. My mother taught me, though, that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, well ... I can understand that, even if I have trouble sympathizing with it. But we truly have to ask ourselves what real options do we have?
When you've run out of explanations, the best you can do, I think, is to motivate people to ask questions for themselves, so all I can do is repeatedly admonish my fellow German (and other European friends) to ask the only really relevant "political" question we have: cui bono? (Who benefits?) And that's the question I'm asking myself post-Republican National Convention: cui bono? That's the question everybody should be asking.
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