Trump’s ‘Trump Card’ By Cameron Duodu

15 Nov 2024

Feature Article Trump’s ‘Trump Card’ By Cameron Duodu

FRI, 15 NOV 2024 1

Of course, anyone who thought that the Americans would NOT bring back to power, a guy who had proved himself to be such a clown, now knows better. In a dangerous world filled with bullies of Putin’s type, to give power back to a guy who openly states that he wants to have the sort of “generals Hitler had”?

The American electorate heard him all right. But despite the many lives that were among the heavy losses the US incurred fighting Hitler in World War Two, they nevertheless brushed Trump’s sub-conscious wishes aside and re-elected him! Amazing.

Well, the Americans will only have themselves to blame if Trump Mark Two becomes the disaster that is waiting to happen. If that disaster does materialise, however, Trump will not be the only person to blame.

I think Joe Biden did the US political system a great deal of harm, by not recognising that he was “past it”, not only in terms of age but in such serious aspects of modern, media-ruled politics as being able

to stay alert at all times and to remember things of a complex nature.

But if Biden made a mistake by hanging on for far too long, Kamala Harris was unbelievably obtuse. You just don't go into politics and dally with such high functions as those of Vice-President and remain as diffident as she proved to be. The position of Vice-President of the USA is a most treacherous double-headed knife which must be thrown with the greatest skill so that it can hurt without showing who threw it!

President L B Johnson, for instance, hated the Kennedy clan for he knew they despised him as a moribund stiff-necked racist from the South of the USA,who couldn’t give a toss for the glamorous liberalism with which the Kennedys wanted to woo the world for the US.

But LBJ learnt how to make the Kennedy clan fear him as a man who was “better inside the tent, pissing out, than outside, pissing in!”

So much knife-throwing was carried out in the

two camps that LBJ was even suspected of knowing “something” about the assassination of JFKin 1963.

Kamala Harris didn’t have the political guile that would have enabled her to be denouncing Biden behind the scenes, whilst kowtowing to him in pubic. Not only that: she seems to exhibit a placid personality that is so unadventurous that she couldn’t even naturally display to her fellow non-whites, the hidden anger that should have been bubbling inside her as she saw the vivid pictures on TV of the slaughter of Arabs that was being carried out 24/7 by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, partly with arms supplied by a US Government, in which she was supposed to be the Number Two person. What was she in that Government for? To show off her gender and skin-colour?

What did she think as the US Secretary of State made dozens of journeys going to Israel, to plead for a more humanitarian approach to the Gaza war, without so much as scratching the surface of Netanyahu’s sensibilities (assuming he had any)?

Did she really think that organisations like the Nation of Islam would sit down unconcerned and watch their members go and vote for a Democratic Party ticket that, to them, was collaborating with the slaughter of Arabs? If any country went to do a “turkey shoot” in Israel, would the Jewish community in the US vote for any party that supported such a slaughter either directly or in secret?

Kamala apparently has had a lot to learn about race and politics in the US. I think she had better go home and take off her political boots! Trump knew what the American electorate wanted and gave it to them. Yes == the US doesn’t want any more “immigrant garbage” (as Trump diagnosed what seems to be white America’s major socio-political head-ache.

Poor Kamala, on the other hand, couldn’t identify her greatest potential social weapon.

Poor old thing.

Martin Cameron Duodu is a United Kingdom-based Ghanaian novelist, journalist, editor and broadcaster. After publishing a novel, The Gab Boys, in 1967, Duodu went on to a career as a journalist and editorialist.. More Martin Cameron Duodu (born 24 May 1937) is a United Kingdom-based Ghanaian novelist, journalist, editor and broadcaster. After publishing a novel, The Gab Boys, in 1967, Duodu went on to a career as a journalist and editorialist.

Education
Duodu was born in Asiakwa in eastern Ghana and educated at Kyebi Government Senior School and the Rapid Results College, London , through which he took his O-Level and A-Level examinations by correspondence course . He began writing while still at school, the first story he ever wrote ("Tough Guy In Town") being broadcast on the radio programme The Singing Net and subsequently included in Voices of Ghana , a 1958 anthology edited by Henry Swanzy that was "the first Ghanaian literary anthology of poems, stories, plays and essays".

Early career
Duodu was a student teacher in 1954, and worked on a general magazine called New Nation in Ghana, before going on to become a radio journalist for the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation from 1956 to 1960, becoming editor of radio news <8> (moonlighting by contributing short stories and poetry to The Singing Net and plays to the programme Ghana Theatre). <9> From 1960 to 1965 he was editor of the Ghana edition of the South African magazine Drum , <10> and in 1970 edited the Daily Graphic , <3> the biggest-selling newspaper in Ghana.< citation needed >

The Gab Boys (1967) and creative writing
In 1967, Duodu's novel The Gab Boys was published in London by André Deutsch . The "gab boys" of the title – so called because of their gabardine trousers – are the sharply dressed youths who hang about the village and are considered delinquent by their elders. The novel is the story of the adventures of one of them, who runs away from village life, eventually finding a new life in the Ghana capital of Accra . According to one recent critic, "Duodu simultaneously represents two currents in West African literature of the time, on the one hand the exploration of cultural conflict and political corruption in post-colonial African society associated with novelists and playwrights such as Chinua Achebe and Ama Ata Aidoo , and on the other hand the optimistic affirmation of African cultural strengths found in poets of the time such as David Diop and Frank Kobina Parkes . These themes come together in a very compassionate discussion of the way that individual people, rich and poor, are pushed to compromise themselves as they try to navigate a near-chaotic transitional society."

In June 2010 Duodu was a participant in the symposium Empire and Me: Personal Recollections of Imperialism in Reality and Imagination, held at Cumberland Lodge , alongside other speakers who included Diran Adebayo , Jake Arnott , Margaret Busby , Meira Chand , Michelle de Kretser , Nuruddin Farah , Jack Mapanje , Susheila Nasta , Jacob Ross , Marina Warner , and others.

Duodu also writes plays and poetry. His work was included in the anthology Messages: Poems from Ghana ( Heinemann Educational Books , 1970).

Other activities and journalism
Having worked as a correspondent for various publications in the decades since the 1960s, including The Observer , The Financial Times , The Sunday Times , United Press International , Reuters , De Volkskrant ( Amsterdam ), and The Economist , Duodu has been based in Britain as a freelance journalist since the 1980s. He has had stints with the magazines South and Index on Censorship , and has written regularly for outlets such as The Independent and The Guardian .

He is the author of the blog "Under the Neem Tree" in New African magazine (London), and has also published regular columns in The Mail and Guardian ( Johannesburg ) and City Press (Johannesburg), as well as writing a weekly column for the Ghanaian Times (Accra) for many years.< citation needed >

Duodu has appeared frequently as a contributor on BBC World TV and BBC World Service radio news programmes discussing African politics, economy and culture.

He contributed to the 2014 volume Essays in Honour of Wole Soyinka at 80, edited by Ivor Agyeman-Duah and Ogochukwu Promise.Column: Cameron Duodu

Disclaimer: "The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect ModernGhana official position. ModernGhana will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements in the contributions or columns here." Follow our WhatsApp channel for meaningful stories picked for your day.