How invested, friend, are you in the fate of the presidency of Donald John Trump? How vested, fellow Kenyan human, are you in the next open seat on the Supreme Court of the United States? How vested, child, are you that Hillary Clinton's e-mails are being mentioned with a certain measure of zealous certainty (what about them?! say the party of donkeys, and they are proof that she is evil incarnate! say the lumbering conservative-is Party of Lincoln). Have you keenly read the tea-leaves during the Adam Schiff Show (better known as the Hearings of the Permanent Select Committee of the House of Representatives) on the Ukraine Affair? In short, brethren and sisthren, how much passion have you channeled into the wheres and wherefores of the United States of America political drama of the year?
For sure there are lessons to be learnt; there are lessons to be learnt from all affairs of men, particularly men of power. In the United States political drama, there are many lessons to be drawn, from how to manage expectations to how to side-step political landmines that would fell lesser humans. But, and I cannot stress this enough, investing emotional capital in whether or not Donald Trump and his acolytes are building an anti-democratic personality cult is foolishness of the highest order - especially if you are not a citizen of the United States.
I have been witness to men and women of Kenyan descent - citizens one and all - inveigling against each other on account of the pro- or anti-conservative credentials of Mr Trump. Some describe themselves in terms that, if you didn't know they were Black Kenyans, you would surely swear they were dyed-in-the-wool WASPs - White Anglo-Saxon Protestants - down to their claims of following various European-vintage "schools" promoting this, that or the other "conservative" or "libertarian" ideology.
They are so invested in "solving" the Dem v GOP/ Red-state v Blue-state schism, they have almost completely abandoned any thought for the plight of Kenyans in Kenya. If you ask them where they were when Henry Rotich was playing fast-and-loose with the national chequebook, all you'll get are shrugged shoulders and mumbled dissembling of a most shameless kind. Th eUSA, as a political idea and entity, is very amusing. As is the Brexit United Kingdom, Yellow Shirt France, Ataturk-lite Turkey and I'm-sorry-I-wore-blackface Canada. We have serious challenges facing our people on account of the pro-Western Democracy or Face-East economics policies that have shattered social safety nets and savaged economic security for the majority of Kenyans and to waste precious intellectual energy fighting stupid USA culture wars is the height of idiocy. Like the sharp-tongued boss of Goldman Sachs would have put it: that idiocy should not occur here. We can learn from the USA people. We don't have to join their tribal conflicts.
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