Srinivas Kamat
Many have been critical about Donald Trump’s speech at his Presidential inaugural when he called for – America First. This is nothing new since every country in the developed world has been lately putting their interests first and raising the flag of nationalism. Brexit was a form of this sentiment in the UK. Penn in France has been gaining increasing popularity in the Presidential elections in that country for the same reason. Standing up and speaking up stridently for your own people is very popular in Western democracies today.
The greater outcry of these nationalistic sentiments if you notice are coming from the countries that were considered progressive in their immigration policies and welcomed citizens of other nations, mostly the lesser privileged, to come and settle in their country. These same citizens in their adopted country started first to take away employment opportunities from the locals and then slowly some of the Muslims among them started to get involved in terrorism. Apart from the gripe that locals have about their jobs taken away, these emigrants lost the sympathy of the larger part of the people in their country of residence because the locals largely felt completely let down when the emigrants started involving themselves in terror.
We see this in a smaller way even in India where the people of a backward State move to other States mostly the urban areas and take away jobs from the locals. Thus we have to learn to live with the philosophy of – Think Local – that is spreading around the world. It will change but not too soon since it may take a decade or more that the prevailing sentiments will persist.
As for Donald Trump one thinks that he has been elected by the people he should be given a chance to prove himself. We should not be overly critical even before he puts his policies into practice. The principal to be followed is give him a break and provide him an opportunity to trip and fall over his actions. This way it will hurt America no doubt but it will hurt America more if you do not allow Donald Trump to function as the US President at all.
