Louis XIV, the 17th century French king, reportedly said “L’etat, c’est moi” – the state is me. The king believed that he ruled by divine right. We have a situation in the United States today where a president seemingly believes that he has the same power, a president who believes that he is not just above the law, but that he is the law.
Interestingly enough, we have a state of affairs in Ontario, where the provincial government looks like it is following Trump’s lead. With regards to Trump, never has so much damage been done to so many people, in so many places in so little time! In less than two years, he has brought the world and the environment to its knees. Walking away from climate change and global warming, Trump is also facilitating the rise of highly destructive hurricanes and other environmental disasters.
The playbook he has used is not an unfamiliar one. Strategies such as divide and conquer, fanning the flames of racism, telling big lies over and over, and cuddling up to dictators like Russia’s Putin, pay dividends. Some say these are the actions of a mentally deranged individual. Not so fast. Trump is a demagogue, a would-be dictator, a psychopath, an amoral person but that does not necessarily make him deranged.
The question has often been raised – were Hitler and Stalin deranged? I think not. The climate was simply right for Trump to take over – imbedded racism, the poor and marginalized feeling ignored, the religious right emerging stronger, and Russian interference in elections and cyber warfare played into Trump’s hands. The rise of nihilism, which is a rejection of the established social order and the abdication of moral principles, led by Trump, became increasingly apparent. Nihilism is not new. It was espoused by the 19th century German philosopher Nietzche, who claimed that “God is dead”.
In political terms, the strong with their “virtues” of power, cunning, and ruthlessness, like Trump, take advantage of the weak with their virtues of trying to do the right thing – the master/slave mentality. Truth is proclaimed to reside in the supreme ruler. Anything or anyone else is fake, not to be listened to or believed. Newspapers and journalists, who don’t toe the line, become the enemy. Laws which interfere with the dictator’s plans for total control are ignored or thrown out. Judges are appointed to the Supreme Court who strongly support the dictator or president. The fostering and protecting of corruption become the norm, gangland style. The abnormal becomes normal. Does this all sound familiar?
Certain buzz words and phrases are frequently used, such as – we are all the same; everybody does it; it’s human nature; circumstances alter cases; might is right; it’s the law of the jungle; if you can’t beat them, join them; the ends justifies the means. This evolves to mob psychology and “the crazies” taking control. Moral equivalency is put forward in which each side claims the moral high ground in issues.
It cannot be right for a President who took the oath to serve and protect his people to say that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose any voters. It cannot be right for a President to use the office of President and the White House as his private family business enterprises to balloon their riches to millionaires and billionaires, many times over. It cannot be right for a President to be so racist as to deny the rights of minority Hispanic citizens and refuse to renew their U.S. citizenship passports. It cannot be right for a President to split up families and wrench children away from mothers and fathers, and put them in cages, many of whom will never see their families again. It is not right for a President to start trade wars with other countries including allies like Canada, creating unnecessary tensions, economic hardships and worldwide confusion. It is not right for a President to break with long standing institutions like NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) who have kept Europe and the world a much safer place for almost 70 years.
As a result, dictators like Putin in Russia and Kim in North Korea are making their moves to continue to destabilize the world. Why has President Trump cuddled up to these individuals instead of trying to protect his people? The enquiry into Trump’s collusion with Russia leading up to his election should soon provide some answers
President Trump continues to trump up his propaganda that the US economy is the best ever, taking credit for these “accomplishments”. This is obviously a good line for his base who believe it, those who gain from it like the rich, the dreamers among us for whom money is the be all and end all of life, and the poor who always seem to be out of money. Trump ignores the fact that when President Obama took over the Presidency, 80,000 jobs were being lost monthly. He turned the economy around, boosting employment rates, salaries, and the GDP to almost record levels, and doing it in spite of the continuous blocking of his initiatives, by Republicans in the Congress and Senate.
What has Trump actually done for the economy? He has racked up a record deficit that stands now at almost one trillion dollars! Yes folks, you heard me right. One trillion dollars! That is one thousand billion. The government is spending a lot more money than it is taking in. This is a tremendous burden for current and future generations. In exchange for this, the rich have been rewarded with large tax cuts, the middle class given crumbs and the poor as the bible says, continue to be poor. In fact when inflation is taken into account, the standard of living of the middle class has gone backwards under Trump. In economic terms, studies show that the middle class were better off in 2000 than they are now.
Trump’s system of “trickle down economics” has been known for generations to be a failed policy. What it does basically is to reward the rich with huge tax cuts which they plow into their own investments, hide in offshore banks and money laundering, and quite often fail to pay their taxes. We are yet to see the President’s tax returns. This leads to the progressive pauperization of many. Studies have shown that increase in the level of income inequality has a negative long term effect on the level of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita. It seems that the money being carried from the rich to the poor must be in a leaking bucket. The International Monetary Fund has also stated that there is no trickle down effect as the rich get richer.
In terms of jobs, Trump tries to provide for the unemployed by resurrecting jobs in defunct coal mines, adding to air pollution and global warming. In a modern, scientific, cyber world, the poor have to dig deep into coal mines to pay for food to make a living. Do the rich really work harder than the poor? Is Trump not a fortunate son with a crooked background and multiple affairs? Did his base, including the religious right, not know that when they voted for him?
Yes, we do live in interesting times. Folks, how much money do we need to be happy? In our time, if you believe the President’s lawyer Rudi Giuliani, “truth isn’t truth”, “facts are in the eyes of the beholder”. As one of the President’s spokespersons said, to counter facts, there are alternate facts. The loyal support that President Trump continues to get from his base including the far right, the religious right, the Young Republicans, and the KKK, makes the future truly frightening.
As the walls close in on Trump and his corrupt family and cronies the emperor will soon lose his clothes. His supporters, be they our brother, sister, friend or foe, and Republicans in Congress and Senate, will have to face the truth surrounding the downfall of a tyrant and the part that they have played in it. The White House is leaking from all sides. Trump is desperately trying to rally his supporters with politics of fear saying the economy will collapse if he is impeached.
We will get over this. There are downward shifts in his support. The upcoming midterm elections will tell the tale. America the good and the great may even arise from the ashes of a Trump presidency. Only time will tell. Despots come and go. Canada is not immune from despotic development. Be vigilant. We may have to fight these battles all over again here in Canada and in other countries around the world. History sadly repeats itself. If the creeks don’t rise and the sun still shines I’ll be talking to you.

By Romeo Kaseram
Louise Bennett was born on September 7, 1919, on North Street in Kingston, Jamaica, the only child of Augustus Cornelius Bennett and Kerene Robinson. Her father owned a bakery in Spanish Town, while her mother was a dressmaker. Bennett lost her father in 1926, leaving the young girl at the age of seven primarily in the care of her mother. Bennett’s first schools were Ebenezer and Calabar Elementary; later, she continued on to St Simon’s College and then Excelsior High School in Kingston; in 1943, she enrolled at Friends' College in Highgate, St Mary, where she began focusing her growing, incipient love for the literary on Jamaican folklore. According to Wikipedia, she was the first black student to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, England, after winning a British Council scholarship in 1945.
By 1943, Bennett had already been published, with her poetry appearing in the Sunday Gleaner. With her creativity already aligned with performance at such an early age, Bennett followed the thespian stars after graduation from RADA, working with repertory companies in Coventry, Huddersfield, and Amersham, along with other revues across England; at the same time, she was also producing radio performances, hosting two programs for the British Broadcasting Corporation: Caribbean Carnival, from 1945-1946, and West Indian Night during 1950.
According to Mervyn Morris, writing in Caribbean Beat, while Bennett did very well at RADA, she rejected opportunities to remain in Britain as a professional actress. Returning to Jamaica in 1947, she taught for a while, and with Noel Vaz, co-authored the Christmas pantomime, Bluebeard and Brer Anancy in 1949. Morris adds, “Finding it hard to make ends meet, she went back to England in 1950 to work again for the BBC and to perform with repertory companies... In 1953 she moved to New York, where, after a while in other jobs, she did some broadcasting with Alma John at WWRL, sang folksongs at the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village, and, with Eric Coverley, co-directed a folk musical called ‘Day in Jamaica’. In May 1954 she married Coverley, and they returned to Jamaica in 1955.”
From 1955-1959, Bennett worked for the Jamaica Social Welfare Commission, where she taught folklore and drama at the University of the West Indies. This was a similarly productive phase, and saw the emergence of Miss Lou’s Views, a series of radio monologues from 1965 to 1982; also within this timeframe, in 1970 she began hosting the children's television program Ring Ding, which flourished until 1982. Her talent also overlapped into motion pictures, where she made appearances in the movies Calypso (1958) and Club Paradise (1986).
Bennett’s prolific output included several books, among these poetry written in Jamaican patois, in which according to the Jamaican Information Service, “she was able to capture all the spontaneity of the expression of Jamaicans’ joys and sorrows, their ready, poignant and even wicked wit, their religion and their philosophy of life”. Britannica cites her best-known book to be Jamaica Labrish, a collection of folklore and poetry, which was published in 1966. Her output also included many recordings of traditional Jamaican folk music, and among her many outstanding albums were Jamaican Folk Songs (1954), Children’s Jamaican Songs and Games (1957), Miss Lou’s Views (1967), Listen to Louise (1968), Carifesta Ring Ding (1976), and The Honorable Miss Lou.
In the Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English, Morris cites a tandem relationality between Bennett’s writing and performance, noting there were “dissenting voices about the artistic merit” of her poetry. He adds that serious consideration of her work began only in the early 1960s and culminated with the publication of Jamaica Labrish. Yet the dichotomy persisted, with Morris noting that, “Although Bennett's work is often enhanced by her own expert performance, her writing offers the reader considerable rewards. Some critics argue, however, that only in performance are her talents truly realised.”
Morris adds: “The Bennett poem is normally, almost invariably, a dramatic monologue in Jamaican Creole, employing a version of the ballad quatrain, but her verses are not constrained by the metrical restrictions of the model. They carry the rhythms and, in performance, the variations of tone and pitch of Jamaican speech. The dramatic monologue is a form that encourages irony – Bennett’s work is pervasively ironic.”
Additionally, “Through the comedy, beyond the laughter, there is an ongoing social critique in Bennett’s work. Her writings evaluate. They pillory pretension and self-contempt. They ridicule class and colour prejudice; they criticise people ashamed of being Jamaican or ashamed of being black. They respect, but sometimes criticise, the values and perceptions of the ordinary Jamaican, the ‘small man’ struggling in systems he does not yet control.”
The Jamaican Information Service valorises Bennett as “Jamaica’s leading comedienne”, noting her to be the “only poet who has really hit the truth about her society through its own language”. Additionally, it cites her to be an important contributor to Jamaica of “valid social documents reflecting the way Jamaicans think and feel and live”; and that through her poems in Jamaican patois, she raised the dialect of the folk to an art level, which is acceptable to, and appreciated by all in Jamaica.
Bennett received tremendous acclaim and awards during her fulfilling career – among these, she was recognised as a Member of the British Empire in 1960; she also received the Silver Musgrave Medal, Institute of Jamaica in 1965; the Norman Manley Award for Excellence in the Arts in 1972; the Order of Jamaica in 1974; the Gold Musgrave Medal, Institute of Jamaica in 1978; also, an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from the University of the West Indies in 1983, another Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from York University in 1998, and the Order of Merit, Jamaica’s third highest honour, in 2001.
Bennett lived the last decade of her life in Scarborough, Ontario, where she died on July 27, 2006. Following a memorial service in Toronto on August 3, her body was returned to Jamaica, where after lying in state, she was laid to rest among this nation’s cultural icons at National Heroes Park.
(Sources for this exploration: Wikipedia; Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English, Second Edition; Caribbean Beat Magazine: https://www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-82/remembering-miss-lou#ixzz5RJJUmA5A; and the Jamaican Information Service.)

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