Trump: The Last Lashes?

It’s said that crocodiles are experts at swinging lashes to throw you into the water and devour you in a matter of seconds. If they feel cornered, as a desperate final attack, they lash their tails trying to cling to life or, at least, take down all that’s within their reach.

The statements made by President Donald Trump during these last days of the almost desperate end of the campaign seem to imitate those agonizing lashes regardless how crazy they are.

Just when in the United States there are 9 210 852 cases of infected by the new coronavirus and mourning overshadows that nation with 231 003 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, the president dared to ensure that the virus is disappearing and that the country is only weeks away from the distribution of a safe vaccine.

This candidate for the Republican party, in addition to minimizing the serious threat of this coronavirus, dismissed the health recommendations. Not only did he downplay the gravity of the virus, he went against recommended measures such as the use of masks and social distancing. After testing positive for the virus, far from complying with the recommendations, true to his style, he made a media show with the aim of obtaining electoral revenue from his disease.

And in addition to doing so, just days before the election, Trump suggested he could try to fire National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci after he criticized his Administration's handling of the pandemic.

Fauci has criticized the President for dismissing the use of the surgical mask and specified that “a lot of pain awaits us. It’s not a good situation”, in a statement to the Washington Post.

Now, the only thing left is to hope for the common sense of citizens of that northern nation to prevail over the huge propaganda display that Trump has given to elections, especially in the last three days, and also over the many springs and hooks thrown by that ignorant mister, who behaves like the ostrich, hiding his head underground not to see.

Sure, some of the hooks are tempting, but hooks will ultimately sink to the bottom of the throats. Among them, it’s worth mentioning the one who announces substantial financial aid to citizens if he is reelected, as well as the creation of 2 million jobs for Latinos in that country. Remember that in 2016, Trump won only 28% of the Latino vote.

During his four years in office, antidemocratic postures have escalated like a kite blown by authoritarian winds to the detriment of civil society, its rights and freedoms.

And one of the most critical points in this undemocratic rise has been its stance on racism, promoters of the largest demonstrations and protests in favor of racial justice, triggered by murders and police outrages against African-Americans like George Floyd and others.

His threatening and forceful positions have led to an alarming call for his supporters to attend the polling stations today to "monitor" alleged irregularities.

This has unleashed heated states that, according to reports, could lead to intolerable manifestations of violence, and even armed confrontations. No wonder large store chains like Walmart withdrew their weapons on sale from their shelves a few days ago.

Although this encouragement is not illegal, it would be that which has been called “Trump's Army”, with over 50,000 followers, tried to interfere with the voting process or force the stop of a polling station.

This man from the White House, the same man who decided to isolate young children from immigrant parents and other cruelties, has dared to assure that if he loses the elections it’s because there’s a massive fraud at play.

Among its most notorious fiascos in the face of the international community appear, having turned his back on the World Health Organization and breaking apart from the Paris Agreement on climate change, although they are by no means the only ones.

The measures against Cuba, which have also tried to tighten the rope even more in recent times in a vulgar display of lack of humanity, are also the last lashes that seek to strengthen the vote of the anti-Cuban mafia, especially in Florida, one of the so-called hinge-states, that is, decision-makers in the electoral outcome.

A New York Times column urged voters to reflect on Trump and "the exact qualities he radiates that make him a different candidate: swagger, violent mockery of those who question him, slandering remarks about women, dishonesty, and vulgar generalizations about nations and religions. Our presidents are role models for generations of our children. Is this the example we want you to follow?

It would be wonderful, for his country and for the whole world, if the voters of the United States know how to answer this question.

If the American people, as they themselves have had the task of spreading, have educational indicators that place them among the first in the world, they could be able to separate the water from the milk, to outline the most elementary logic of those lashes, which I hope are the last.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff