Disclaimer: I have a limited understanding of American politics, society, economy, international relations, institutions, demography, etc. I am still very confused about the whole election process in the US and have little idea of how the elections work there. It’s really complicated. However, over the past few years, I have paid attention to American politics especially in relation to India. Even with such limited understanding, I am convinced that Donald Trump, though far from an ideal president is still a much better choice than Joe Biden. It’s up to Americans to decide and vote,but with such one-sided narrative in media in favour of Biden, I think its important to express views in favour of Trump (over Biden) even though it is coming from an Indian citizen. My views will probably be the line of thinking of many Indian Americans and they will vote Republican because of these reasons without admitting it in the public (the silent Trump voters). If liberals find my views offensive, they have the option of dismissing it as an opinion of another Russian bot.
Donald Trump is a troll, a racist, a white supremacist, a bald orange man, misogynist, sexist, homophobe, Islamophobe, xenophobe, bigot and what not. These are some of the adjectives with which Donald Trump is usually exposed to an unknown outsider who has no idea about American politics. This was before he was elected in 2016. After his election, things have gotten worse. The media, celebrities, Hollywood, late-night show hosts and even some scientists, academicians have gone berserk regarding Donald Trump. This phenomenon is rightly labelled by Conservatives as Trump derangement syndrome. This kind of anti-Trump narrative is many times beyond logic, evidence, facts and are mainly reactions to Trump’s statements and tweets. Well, Trump specifically frames his words and tweets for such reactions and these people fall for it, every single time.
Anyway, I am dividing my post into various sections where section-wise, I will deal with the negative aspects, positive aspects of President Trump and in the end, I will discuss why Democrats especially the combination of Biden-Kamala Harris is just the kind of duo India would not like to have in the White House. There are a few positive aspects of Biden as well which I will mention in the end.
Donald Trump: the negatives
- Narcissism & overconfidence: I made up my mind on this after this interview by John Bolton to WION: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=696DSoojiGQ
I have watched Trump’s interviews, debates, his speeches. This becomes quite clear that he is a narcissist and immensely over-confident. As seen in his response to Wuhan virus pandemic. He is not the leader you would want in times of challenge as he might not listen to the advice of experts because of his arrogance and over-confidence. - Indifference to climate change: While my complaint is not regarding the fact that he withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement as that agreement might be disproportionately putting the cost on advanced economies and giving an easy pass to China. My complaint is his indifference regarding the steps that should be taken to tackle climate change. I known there are sections of his supporters who deny the very existence of global warming and climate change, but that should not come in the way to take steps to promote green technologies, economy, research. At the same time, I would like to mention that the green deal the Democrats talk about especially people like AOC is absolute garbage and would destroy economies and livelihood instead of curbing anthropogenic factors regarding climate change.
Solving the problems caused by climate change actually presents an opportunity for new research, new forms of responsible economic, spiritual-yogic societies and above all, the well-being of billions of people and animals around the world of the present and the future. This opportunity should not be at the mercy off or being hijacked by political ideologues. - Money oriented governance and actions: Donald Trump has been a successful businessman. He sees everything as some sort of a business deal. Be its trade deal with India, China or the new form of NAFTA that his government has come with. While this will bring certain benefits to the US, it is problematic in many aspects. For example, if China agrees to accept a favourable trade deal likeable to Donald Trump, he may give concessions to China and even turn blinds eye on its strategic allies like Taiwan, Japan. All though he is going hard on China, we have to see if he does the same when the US-China trade war is over.
- Protectionist Visa policies: The largest beneficiaries of America’s H1B visas are Indians. With Trump’s emphasis on America first, he has restricted visas and made it increasingly difficult for Indians to obtain work permits. While I agree with the need of protecting borders and employing local workforce but the legal immigrants, especially the competent diaspora of Indian Americans and Indian citizens seeking to work in the US benefits the US in forms of taxes, new products, entrepreneurship, new companies, and most importantly world-class human resource for research and development.
- Lack of intellectual depth: India is at least a 10000 years old living, continuing civilization. Compared to a leader like Narendra Modi who understands India’s civilizational ethos and treat his prime ministership as a service for the nation, Donald Trump hardly has a deep understanding of American culture, history, society. Forget about his understanding of India, world history and nuances of geopolitics and strategic affairs. Leave Trump, even the prominent right-wing American intellectuals like Ben Shapiro rely on the works of a Marxist so-called “historian” Ramchandra Guha to understand India. That’s a failure on the part of both Indians as well as Americans. Indians, especially India’s MEA, MHRD, Ministry of Culture has failed to get the understanding of the true idea of India through to the American think tanks and American society in general. Americans in their ignorance, laziness and indifference have retorted to the usual mediocre Marxist, colonial sources and narratives regarding India. This lack of intellectual depth and overconfidence is the reason Trump would even ask for mediating for Kashmir.
Positive aspects of President Trump
- Most pro-India US president in decades: The US governments over the years have not been pro-India in the region of the Indian subcontinent. Since, the decades of 60s, 70s, the US has always supported Pakistan over India for multiple complex reasons which I will not go into. India, on the other hand, was with the Soviets during the cold war era. For all their faults in form of interventions in Indian politics, media, culture and society, the Soviets did help India over the years during the wars of 65 and especially 1971. In 1971, most famously the US and UK had sent their aircraft carriers to contain and attack India in order to save Pakistan. Soviet sent their aircraft carriers, ships to bloc the US, UK intervention and Bangladesh was liberated.
Coming to 2020. Indian soldiers taught the PLA a lesson for their mischief in the Galwan valley. India lost 20 soldiers while the Chinese side suffered minimum 45, some sources even stating numbers as high as 70-100 casualties. With such humiliation and high tensions (which is still going on), the US sent their two aircraft carrier strike groups in the South China Sea in the Indo-Pacific region. This is a very big move on the part of the US and no president in the past has shown such tangible support to India in strategic and military affairs. The US is also now cooperating with military and communication technologies and is now willing to sell their best military equipment to India (though there is still rooms for improvement). India-US has already signed key agreements such as COMCASA. So, in military, strategic, geopolitical affairs the India-US partnership has progressed far ahead compared to the previous governments of both nations. However, there is still scope for improvements particularly relating to US withdrawal from Afghanistan and their half-hearted actions on Pakistan. The US is putting so much pressure on Iran. But the kind of things Pakistan has done, the whole sanctions, restrictions and pressures should have been applied to Pakistan. Also, Pakistan is still not blacklisted in the FATF which is a mystery to me. If there is a country that deserves to be in the top spot of the FATF blacklist, it has to be Pakistan. The US still has strategic interests with Pakistan and their lack of intellectual depth to understand and study the people and culture of the Indian subcontinent and the lazy, pacifist attitude of Indian officials has prevented the US and India from going extra hard on a terrorist state like Pakistan. India last year made article 370 practically ineffective and also enacted a citizenship bill to grant citizenship to religiously persecuted minorities of neighbouring Islamic countries. Both these steps were viciously targeted by Marxist-Islamist nexus across the globe. From the leftist media to the terrorist organizations to the ISI to the Pakistani PM. These coordinated well-planned gangster politics to harass common Indians on the street reached its peak and culmination in the well-planned Delhi riots by the Islamic fundamentalists such as Tahir Hussian. Amongst all this anti-CAA drama, a lot of “woke” politicians around the world taking a cue from leftist media started badmouthing India, the Indian government and worst of all, even undermining and sidelining the main narrative of the atrocities faced by Hindus in these Islamic nations. Trump and the US government never fell for the woke, leftist trap which I am a sure a Democrat president would have fallen into. The same thing happened with the Labour party in the UK and they paid for it with the British Indians overwhelmingly voting for the Conservatives.
The USA has finally started recognizing India as a potential ally in the Indo-Pacific region (again a term recently popularized by the Americans). Both these countries share principles of democracy and rule-based order. Both face common challenges in the form of China. And India is the only country in the world which can ultimately compete with China on multiple fronts: human resource and manpower, manufacturing, army, economy. Although India is still far behind on many aspects, it can still catch-up and play to its strengths. With support from nations like Australia, Japan and the US, India can seriously challenge Chinese expansionism in the region and if the time may come as it to be, can even slap hard the Chinese like it did on the Galwan valley. - Waking up to the Chinese threat: Even before the Wuhan virus pandemic, the USA under Donald Trump has been on a trade war with China. Companies like Huawei are banned. And the US government is finally waking up to the fact that China has been stealing IPs, technologies, jobs, research and all kinds of things from the west. China is an economic giant majorly because of the US. Be it laptops, mobiles, automobile parts, toys or medicines. The Chinese through their trade-distorting practices have monopolised vast sections of trade in the west and killed many other manufacturing clusters around the world. If this wasn’t enough, the Chinese have copied and reverse-engineered critical defence technologies too. All though they are still far behind the western technologies, it now has a vast industrial complex and has brought up huge numbers, even exporting arms and ammunition albeit of sub-par standards around the world. The Chinese debt trap policy is something the US has been warning about to its allies and other nations for a while now. This was all missing from the previous presidents of the US. Many US officials, politicians, media persons, NBA stars are praising CCP and China. The reason being, CCP has deeply infiltrated the USA and its culture through its investments, ideologues and other means which KGB and Soviets used to employ during the Cold War era. The communists are the masters of propaganda and there are many communist sympathizers in various streams of US culture, politics, universities, Hollywood, media. With such a challenging task to counter China, the US needs a president who can call Wuhan virus the Chinese virus. And it’s not racism (Japanese elephantiasis, MERS) but rightly putting the primary blame on China and CCP.
As mentioned in the previous point, the US shifting its attention from Europe and Middle-East to China (and consequently Pakistan) is important for the world peace as the Chinese are looking for world domination in a new form of expansionism, bullying, debt-trap and even colonialism. Example: Baluchistan in Pakistan’s occupation has been handed over to the Chinese under CPEC and it is estimated that the Chinese will be the majority population in Baluchistan by 2050. This means India will face China from the north-east as well as north-west, western regions. Pakistan is so deep in Chinese trap now that its almost impossible for them to act independently. Here, the role of the US becomes important if it really wants to maintain its status of leader of the democratic world. It has back its credentials on the ground and supports democratic ASEAN nations, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia and India. And I have more confidence in President Trump on his anti-China stance compared any previous US presidents who were ignorant and oblivious to the Chinese threat. - No major wars: This is an achievement in itself for a US president. The warmongers and military-industrial complex in the US tried its very best to force the US to attack Iran. But to his great credit, President Trump held back. Compared that to Bush or Obama. Bush’s invasion of Iraq was a disaster and the US now is giving up Afghanistan also. Obama’s regime was even worse. He bombed and killed so many people and practically ruined the Syria-Iraq region. How the hell did Obama get Nobel peace prize is still a mystery. Though considering that even frauds like Mother Teresa have won it, the mystery remains no more.
- Politically incorrect: Trump speaks a lot of nonsense, self-praising garbage. But many times, he speaks “politically incorrect” but truthful words like his bashing of the fake news CNN and leftist media nexus in the US. Or him clearly stating the worlds “Radical Islamic Terrorism”. His recent labelling of Wuhan coronavirus as Chinese virus (though I would have preferred CCP virus) is equally truthful and reflects sentiments of millions around the globe. I wish more leaders give up this nonsense of political correctness and speak truth more often. I don’t mean to say Trump is truthful all the time. He is a habitual liar (or delusional). But he also speaks uncomfortable truths emphatically that no other leader would dare to.
- Trump triggers Libtards: I am specifically using the word Libtard because I respect genuinely liberal individuals and institutions such as Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Rogan, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Fry, Sam Harris, Anand Ranganathan, Amish Tripathi, Liberal Hindu (Youtube Channel), Arif Aajakia, Tarek Fateh, Rajiv Malhotra, Mohan Bhagwat, Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS). Now compare this to USCIRF, UNESCO, UNHRC or the people such as Ilhan Omar, AOC, John Oliver, Hollywood stars and their counterparts in India such as Javed Akhtar, Sonam Kapoor, Anurag Kashyap, Amir Khan, NDTV, Wire or the so-called useless liberal comedians. I prefer to call them Libtards because they bring bad names to true liberals.
Anyways, Trump is a phenomenon which has triggered libtards the most in the west. Modi and his actions also trigger libtards daily. But in the case of Modi, he never seeks to trigger libtards on purpose. Libtards get triggered because they are, well they are libtards. Trump on the other hand intentionally triggers the whole libtard lobby and mafia. This libtard mafia works around the world in sync. Wire in India will quote Washington Post from the US, John Oliver will use clips from NDTV, Al Jazeera to bad mouth India, leftists from JNU will copy the style of Antifa. These people have become increasingly annoying and even dangerous as evident in Shaheen Bagh and anti-CAA Delhi riots or the recent riots in the US by hijacking the Black Lives Matter protests (I will explain racism in some another post). To expose these libtards, you can logically counter them or you can just trigger them. When triggered, these libtards do all kinds of absurd, illogical things which naturally exposes them to an average person. That’s why Oscar ratings are plummeting over the years, the legitimacy of the mainstream leftist media is an all-time low. And Donald Trump has played a part in this. All though to be fair, libtards have played a much bigger role themselves.
Democrats: America’s INC (Indian National Congress)
Indian National Congress is in a mess. They have lost the plot. They have no idea what India that is Bharat, really is. They may win a few state elections based on the merits of local leadership but they cannot win elections at the centre, at least not till they get their acts together and stop being so woke, far left bordering on the lines of anti-India, anti-Hindu narratives.
The same is true for the Democrats in the US. While the Democrats aren’t tied to a single-family like INC, they are tied to a single, narrow-minded narrative and power circle. That’s why good candidates like Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang were systematically ignored. Tulsi wasn’t even invited to the recent DNC despite gathering so many delegates, chiefly because she single-handedly ended the run of Kamala Harris. And then there is Kamala Harris. Suddenly she has rediscovered her Indian roots. There has been this trend in the US that the anti-India, anti-Hindu kind of Indian Americans who probably dislike Indian culture more than the Pakistanis, people like Kamala Harris, Pramila Jaypal, Ro Khanna are getting into powerful positions in the Democratic party. Probably because being anti-India especially in the Modi era helps them appease the leftists, Islamists, socialists, communists in the party. There are Indian Americans in Republican party also who are disjointed from Indian culture and values but at least they aren’t so openly anti-India. I urge Indians to not fall into this trap. Indian Americans probably already know all this. I would rather put my hopes on people like Nikki Halley or even better Tulsi Gabbard to look for India’s narrative in the US instead of the losers with deep inferiority complex like the ones I mentioned before. By the way, some idiots in the US were targeting Tulsi in the past for her associations with the BJP and RSS. These idiots don’t know that BJP is by far the largest political party in the world. BJP got more votes in the last election than the entire population of the United States of America. These idiots should come out of their little ignorant bubble and moral high-grounds. There are problems with the BJP but it commands and deserves respect for it is the ruling party in the centre and numerous Indian states. Similarly, Punjab Congress commands respect for the support it has of the people of Punjab.
Moving on, there is this squad in the Democratic party. These people are similar to Rahul Gandhi but much worse. The squad consisting of Ilhan Omar, AOC, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib are incredibly annoying, radical, woke. They off-put even the most hardcore Democrat supporters. Donald Trump’s greatest ace is these people and their narratives which has essentially hijacked a significant part of the narrative of the Democratic party, at least in the elections. Bernie Sanders was heavily under their influence and even Joe Biden has not shown any signs to dispel these narratives which at times are justifying jihadi terrorism, antisemitism, anti-Hindu bigotry and even genocides. AOC’s green plan was nothing short of the destruction of the economy, a typical communist plan to grab power, destroy industries, livelihood in the grab of human rights, environmental protection and other rosy ideas that communists sell (Bernie saying Cuba has excellent education policies).
Finally coming to the nominee himself, Joe Biden. Well, I have watched his debates and he was just awful. I mean he is very uninteresting, non-threatening and seems like an agreeable kind of person. This trait of agreeableness may attract some votes. But this agreeableness means he will be arm-twisted by far-left, socialists in his party. He may even be influenced by radical Islamists like Ilhan Omar. If he becomes president, the military-industrial complex might force the US into another war or the pro-China politicians and think tanks may force him to stop acting against China. These are all some undesirable course of events. So, while on the surface, Joe Biden seems to be the nicer of the two candidates, he might be too weak for the job. And the questions regarding his mental health and well-being is serious. Plus his awful debate skills means he will be trashed hard by Donald Trump. All though it may backfire on Trump as it is very difficult to beat down a non-threatening, non-triggering personality like Biden. So, the greatest plus point that the Biden brings is that he is not Donald Trump. Seriously, that’s it. Even if you look at the speeches of Obamas and others who were endorsing him, they were all non-sensing around the anti-Trump rhetoric and vague ideas, adjectives like empathy, racism, white supremacy, bigotry, misogyny. What are his plans for the presidency? No idea. But let’s wait for his debates with Trump. That might bring out something concrete (all though I have serious doubts against it).
Conclusion
There are around 4 million Indian Americans in the US which is roughly 1.2% of the US population. Though small in numbers, Indian Americans are at the top of income groups, job ladders and other socio-economic indicators. However, Indian Americans have for multiple reasons failed to grab the political power and the narrative. They still try hard and struggle to fit into the political sphere and dialogues. To make matters worse, many of them have inferiority complexes for their own identity and these people seek recognition from the white English speaking western politicians, groups, society, media. The same problem exists with many Indians around the globe, the root of which is the continuation of the colonial education system in India which has been hijacked by the Marxists after independence. Indians and Indian Americans need to realise the truth of these inferiority complex ridden Indian politicians like Kamala Harris who have ditched their Indian identities long back. People like these are more damaging to Indian narratives than even the Pakistanis.
Coming to the question of Trump. He probably is not a nice person. He lacks decent moral values. He has botched response to Wuhan virus pandemic. But his policies and actions overall are much better than Obama, Bush especially concerning India. I also think that Modi has got the hold of Trump’s personality and both of them seems like the two best friends. Modi knows how Trump thinks, operates and this can be utilised and should be utilised by Modi government in Trump’s second term.
Coming to Biden. His party has gone nuts, too far off the centre towards left. They have sidelined likeable leaders like Tulsi, Yang. And kind off lost the plot. Their only best chance is because of the Wuhan virus pandemic and deep unrest in society. Without this pandemic, Trump would have smashed Biden. But now, there is a chance. Also, China prefers Biden to be the president. So, the choice becomes obvious. But even if Biden wins, my hope is the deep state of the US have realised the importance of India and threat of China and will force the next president to go on the lines of pro-India, anti-China policies.
As far as surveys saying Biden is in lead is concerned. I don’t give much importance to such surveys. They failed miserably last elections also. The Trump supporters are silent voters as they face a lot of flake for their support to Trump. Many people are attacked just for wearing a MAGA hat. So, don’t be surprised if the polls and predictions fail again.
Originally published on personal blog.
