There is an
article in the Today paper on 17 Nov by Agencies with the title ‘Globalisation
must correct its course to address inequality: Obama’ and its content said it
all in Obama’s polite way of saying it. Trump would just show his middle finger
to globalization and he is going to hack it to pieces. These were said by
Obama, ‘The global path of globalization demands a course correction…When we
see people, global elites, wealthy corporations seemingly living by a different
set of rules, avoiding taxes, manipulating loopholes… this feeds a profound
sense of injustice.’ If Obama knew about
these transgressions, what is he going to do about it, or what has he done
about it other than talking cock?
Such
injustice, global elites and local elites living a different lifestyle of
abundance would be quite well accepted by Singaporeans. Singaporeans could not
see any injustice and would accept the calls by the elites to tighten their
belts, to take cheap jobs, while local and global elites party everyday without
a worry about the high cost of living, about high property prices or high
prices of everything, about Singaporeans struggling to find a decent job with a
decent income in the most expensive city in the world.
In the case
of the Americans the orgy of globalization is coming to an end. Trump, the
white angel from heaven has descended on them to lift the gloom from their
miserable lives, from losing their jobs to foreigners. Even Obama is afraid
when Trump appointed a hard line rightist extremist in Stephen Bannon to a top
post. Obama warned of the “rise of nationalistic tribalism…to guard against a
crude sort of nationalism or ethnic identity or tribalism that is built around
an ‘us’ and a ‘them’” thing.
There will
be divisions in the US. Obama said, “In the United States, we know what happens
when we start dividing ourselves along lines of race or religion or ethnicity.
It’s dangerous…Not just for the minority groups that are subjected to that kind
of discrimination or, in some cases in the past violence, but because we don’t
then realize our potential as a country when we’re preventing blacks or Latinos
or Asians or gays or women from fully participating in the project of building
American life.”
Being a
black himself, Obama must be feeling the chill in his spine harking back to the
days of the Ku Klux Klan. There are similarities and also differences in the
way Trump is going to approach globalization and making America great from that
of Obama. One is sustaining the American Empire by foreign intervention and
military bases and starting and fighting wars everywhere. Trump’s form of
American greatness is inward looking, a great country for Americans, and maybe
to hell with the world. It is America and Americans first. It is about charity begins at home, build a
good life for the Americans, foreigners not welcomed until home America is in
order and the Americans get their jobs and their good life.
The orgy of
globalization promoted and praised by the elites is history at least in America
and the UK.
