Turning Friends into Enemies

Nobody does it better
Makes me feel sad for the rest
Nobody does it half as good as you
Carly Simon - Nobody Does It Better - Lyrics 

A year ago, even just six months ago, in the early stages of her campaign to remain Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel was ripe for defeat. A wave of anti-immigrant populism was sweeping Germany, pushing back at Merkel’s seeming open arms at Middle Eastern refugees fleeing ISIS and Assad. A lot of veteran European poll-watchers would have at best given even money that Merkel could continue her 11 year tenure in Germany’s top spot.

And then he began his presidency, showing the world what a seeming ultra-conservative nationalist/populist presidency could look like. Europe shuddered as they watched Donald Trump implement his rather racist, anti-scientific policies, unraveling in a matter of days treaties and commitments that took decades to evolve and build. They watched as neo-Nazis – the same political believers that almost destroyed Europe in WWII – and their ilk flocked to his side. It was enough to lead France’s Emmanuel Macron to decimate his populist presidential opponent by an almost two-to-one margin.

Lucky Angela Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union party. The European revulsion over the American president made her and her party virtually bullet-proof. It was an intolerable image for Germans with horrible memories of the consequences of extremism. The opposition, voicing Trump-like populist sloganeering, began slip-sliding away. “Mr. Trump’s brand of populism is not popular in Germany. Germans have taken the angry divisions in the United States since his election as a caution, watching warily and condemning demonstrations by emboldened far-right extremist groups, including neo-Nazis.

“Given their history, Germans have shown little tolerance when the [opposing party] Alternative for Germany has overstepped social and historical boundaries, like when one regional leader, Björn Höcke, questioned the tradition of remembrance and atonement for the country’s Nazi crimes.” New York Times, September 1^st. The election for the 19th Bundestag (the German Congress) will take place on September 24^th, and it is the Bundestag that appoints the Chancellor.

But wait, there’s so much more. Donald Trump has alienated Canada like no other president in recent memory, and his pledge to build a wall between the United States and Mexico, making Mexico pay for it, has pretty much added a requirement that any Mexican candidate for national office must declare himself or herself vehemently anti-Trump to have any chance of being elected.

Meanwhile, “Millions of Muslims across the globe — including in countries like India, Indonesia, Turkey, Russia and Pakistan — are celebrating Eid al-Adha, Islam’s most revered observance.

“Known as the Feast of Sacrifice or ‘big Eid,’ it is one of the two major religious festivals of Islam. The other, Eid al-Fitr, occurs at the end of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting.” NY Times. Big Eid is also considered a particularly propitious time for pious Muslims to take their at-least-once-in-a-lifetime sacred journey (hajj) to Mecca, one of the five “pillars” (holy efforts) of Islam. A retracing of the Prophet Muhammad’s footsteps fourteen centuries ago.

Non-Muslims are not permitted inside the sacred al-ka`bah al-musharrafah (The Holy Kaaba) inside the City of Mecca. But at time when U.S. intelligence services need maximum cooperation in the Islamic world to identify and stop terrorists efforts against the West at their earliest stages, doing anything in support of rather clearly anti-Muslim Donald Trump is increasingly deeply unpopular… even among Muslims traveling from the United States and the West. Fortunately for Mr. Trump, most of the local government leaders there are not elected, and the monarchs that rule the region are happy to leverage Trump’s unpopularity to extract pledges of military hardware to keep them in power.

As local coverage by Aljazeera reports (September 2^nd), the talk at the hajj this year is apparently heavily laced with massive anti-Trump rhetoric… spilling into too many individual conversations.  While there are plenty of other topics to focus on – the demise of ISIS, the isolation of Qatar, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Israeli-Palestinian tensions, to name a few, the talk is overwhelmingly about Donald Trump: “Pilgrims say people are irritated, angry, and worried about US president's policies targeting Muslims… American, Canadian and British pilgrims in Mecca this week for the annual Hajj say they are worried about the policies of US President Donald Trump targeting Muslims.

“‘People are irritated, angry, sombre, a little bit worried,’ said Yasir Qadhi, an Islamic scholar who travelled from Tennessee for his fourteenth pilgrimage… No one that I know is happy at the current circumstances or the current administration. No one, not a single person in this entire gathering.’

“As a candidate, Trump proposed barring Muslims from entering the US. In office, he ordered temporary bans on people from several Muslim-majority countries, which have been blocked by courts that ruled they were discriminatory.

“His administration has denied any intention of religious discrimination in the travel ban, saying it is intended purely as a national security measure… But sharp rhetoric about the threat posed by ‘radical Islam,’ which was a central part of his campaign, has also drawn accusations he risks alienating more than three million Americans who practice Islam peacefully.” Not to mention the 1.7 billion Muslims around the world, 23% of the earth’s population, poised to overtake Christianity as the world’s largest religion over the next several decades.

As South Korea and Japan rethink their dependence on mutual defense treaties with the U.S., the Philippines distances itself while cozying up to the new big boy on the block, China, Central and South American political leaders have also announced strong disagreements with America hemispheric policies as well. Sure regional leaders are hedging their bets: “Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Sunday spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump by phone and said that in face of an ‘escalating’ situation with North Korea that close cooperation between their countries and South Korea was needed.” Reuters September 2^nd. “Needed”? Yeah. But local polls in both countries tell you that the vast majority of citizens in both countries do not trust that Donald Trump is remotely reliable, and locals for the most part believe that he is just making the situation that much worse with this fighting words.

And while America retains strong ties with the UK’s conservative government under PM Theresa May, the Tories are themselves slowly losing their popularity in their own homeland… and ties to Trump are definitely perceived as a negative by most UK residents.

Even as Donald Trump is trying to force our “allies” to spend more for global defense, enlisting their help to promote his vision of global stability, public evidence of cooperating with the Trump administration – even as terrorist attacks rage through Europe – is never good news for local politicians desirous of being reelected. The United States, along with North Korea and Israel, is now among the most unpopular nations on earth, isolated and increasingly being required to pick up the entire tab of going it alone. To the majority of those around the world who have voiced their opinions, we have become a rogue, racist, bully-state not to be trusted or admired.

I’m Peter Dekom, and Donald, when it comes to fomenting polarization and divisiveness (domestically and internationally), pushing the United States into its own isolated little corner of the world, nobody does it better!