Has there been a great man more misunderstood than Donald Trump? Methinks not.

When he sloganised “America First” and “Make America Great Again”, political pundits saw this as a reversion to a myopic autarky –an inward-looking nationalism of the white, evangelical, hinterlandish citizenry whom Trump now meant to foreground as the kosher America long neglected by the dandy Left liberals of the East Coast.

More fool they.

Each day that passes makes it known that in saying “America First” and “MAGA”, he was not conjuring merely a new form of local patriotism, but indeed calling upon all nations and governments of the world to make this agenda their own as well.

Ergo, all countries of the hitherto misbegotten globe were henceforth to tailor their inconsequential national priorities primarily to enable the MAGA vision to bloom and fructify, and to make of us all its faithful undertakers .

Thus, a new, well-intentioned imperialism was conjured that mistakenly seemed like a collapse into a bird-brained provincial America.

What wonder then that as the year has gone by, we have seen Trump install and further not just the Donroe Doctrine bearing on the Western hemisphere, but laying out policy directions for nation-states far and wide as vassal colonies to a new empire.

Thus, which government may fire what number of shots in a localised skirmish, or not, or buy munitions in what quantities and what rates from the Pentagon, declare ceasefire at which hand of the clock in whichever part of the world, trade or not trade freely in oil, rare-earth minerals, etc from which market of Trump’s choosing, sign on the dotted line of deals to the best enhancement of MAGA, make announcements of such deals unilaterally – all these exigencies now find their oracle in the White House.

To a point where few heads of government find the gumption to contradict the fatwas bellowed from the Oval Office, even if tendentious or plain obnoxious.

That old rules-based international order now stands transplanted by a new MAGA-based Trumpean disorder, in which the good or bad of nations and leaders is first made known from Washington before they themselves quite know.

Remember the United Nations? If you do, forget it: it now gives way to a “Board of Peace,” an alternate UN proclaimed by one man, Trump, with a two-billion-dollar membership fee and a permanent presidency that belongs to only the man, Trump, presumably till death.

Those that pick up the gall to mouth protest are left either to be squeezed yet more, or left to their impoverished devices for a week or two, till better sense prevails and they come calling again, or, failing that, simply extracted from their wicked perches to be lodged in some jailhouse on the land, which is the main of all lands, and tried as traitors to what the god decrees, MAGA.

You may wonder what makes this possible.

Nothing in the educational/ethical/Christian record of Donald Trump seems to warrant the assumption of such authority.

Thus, it seems only the power of lucre, membership of the Epstein super-club of the influencers of the world, inherited military muscle and freedom from scruple of any kind that after all have elevated Trump to Vishwagurudom – such as few seem to want to contradict, barring, of course, the usual suspects in Beijing and Moscow.

Nor is it the least of Trump’s triumphs that the “legitimate” heir to Vishwagurudom, Narendra Modi, should not tire of dubbing him friend despite one insult after another, for reasons best known to him.

That the curious camaraderie nevertheless poses a conundrum for Bharat, the long self-appointed Vishwaguru, is an eventuality that still remains in place.

In all his humility, Shri Modi has designated the year of the Lord 2047 as the telos when Viksit Bharat will coincide with the realisation of our ordained stature as the law-givers of the world, as that conjuncture gels supreme achievements in high-tech with the timeless wisdom of our ancient lore, however intractably at odds the two archives might be.

In that moment of miracles, cow dung will fuel the most puissant race of rockets to the furthest reaches of the universe and plant the divine image of the genuine Vishwaguru all along the stratosphere.

So, even as we Bharatiyas are invited not to ask silly questions about today, tomorrow, the next year, or any year till 2047, but to devotedly follow the leader whatever miseries the interim may continue to heap upon us, it is dear Donald who has stolen the march to Vishwagurudom for now.

Charmingly, Shri Trump has cutely sought to emulate the genius of our current electoral zeitgeist.

He is asking his party satraps to muscle their way to force a nationalised electoral system as we have in Bharat, although the American constitution explicitly requires such exercise to be conducted by the states there, and not by the federal executive.

And, taking cue from our own smart election commission, he has let loose ways and means to see that only “citizens” can be seen to have the right to vote – a fact already enshrined both here and there, but now sought to be made amenable to practices we have been witness to in the republic of India.

American ghuspaithya suspects have, of course, been at the receiving end of federal bullets, making some executive mouths water in Bharat as well.

Why can’t that happen in Lucknow or Guwahati which happened in Minneapolis?

Indeed, Trump is already going further, having nudged the likes of Shrimati Tulsi Gabbard, secretary in charge of the FBI, to go down to Georgia, seek out all the ballots from the presidential elections of 2020, which Trump never ceases to claim he won, and to reveal the perfidy vented upon him by the electoral officers in Fullton county, Georgia, at the wicked behest of the traitorous Democrats.

The idea, thus, is to prove how Trump had actually won that election and, thus, how the insurrection of January 6 was in fact indeed a patriotic putsch to save America from liberal double cross.

For all you know, such is Trump’s clout now as Vishwaguru that he might just pull this one off too, giving courage to collaborative satraps in other countries to launch their own January sixes.

“America First” therefore does not mean what we thought it did – it comprises a dog-whistle calling upon all the lesser world everywhere to follow the leader, or else.

Might then this be the hour of the next coming of the Avatar promised in the divine song, Gita?

Tailpiece

Meanwhile, here in the Viksit capital city of Delhi, awaiting Vishwagurudom, another young aspirant to full-scale development falls into a massive open pit, bike and all, on a metropolitan road, and dies – martyr to the grand finale of 2047.

Om shanti, Om shanti, Om shanti.

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