The Past in Present

A Contemporary Middle Eastern History Project

Tag: Trump

Blind Elections

March 31, 2019 /
Amercian Election Voting Badges

As the first Democrat’s are announcing their candidacy for the 2020 presidential elections in the United States, the country as well as the rest of the world is bracing for quite a show.

Certainly, U.S. presidential elections (and politics in general for that matter) have always featured polarised characters. It seems though, at least from the other side of the Atlantic, that Donald J. Trump’s presidency has brought this to a whole new level.

It thus makes the keen observer wonder, when did the debates about a nation — and the case of the United States, debates about the fate of the world — become prime time entertainment?

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Change VS. Make America Great Again

July 19, 2018 /
Trump and Obama
Trump and Obama

My 90-year-old landlord is convinced I should write my dissertation about Donald Trump, instead of Barack Obama. He says it would be “more interesting”. Fair enough.

Instead I’m “stuck” with Obama’s Middle Eastern policy. How he tried to extend his slogan of “Change” into that troubled region by promoting a “New Beginning”.

I marvel at questions like  these:
Why was there a new beginning needed?
How did the ‘new’ look like in the eyes of the charismatic 44th President of the United States?
And what on earth did he refer to as ‘old’? Bush? Clinton? Cold War diplomacy? The New Deal? Slavery?

Then it struck me, sipping my tea at the window and watching my landlord bring the trash bins to the street.

Trump is essentially doing the same thing!

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