Making America hate again

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures to media before boarding Marine One departing for Andrews Air Force Base en route to West Palm Beach, Florida, at White House in Washington D.C.,the United States, Feb. 3, 2017. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

President Donald Trump started his third week in office leaving the whole world in absolutely no doubt about his impulsive eagerness to threaten and bully his way, anytime and anywhere:

He fired the Acting U.S. Attorney General for refusing to implement a presidential order she found to be illegal; and he attacked a U.S. judge who ruled against his discriminatory ban on travel to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority nations, promising to overturn the "ridiculous ruling" by the "so-called judge."

He also entered into a bitter war of telephone words with the Australian Prime Minister, announced new sanctions against Iran and dispatched his new Defense Secretary, retired General James "Mad Dog" Mattis, to Japan and South Korea, from where he pointed at North Korea and threatened to block China's access to the South China Sea.

In his first fortnight at the White House, President Trump took more steps to anger American citizens than any of his predecessors, period:

He ordered the dismantling of a health system depended on by tens of millions of Americans; revived the prospect of an oil pipeline being forced through sacred Native American lands and rivers; decreed the building of his "big, fat, strong and long" Mexican border wall (and gave notice that a border tax will be imposed to force Mexico to pay for it); appointed a Climate Change denier to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and nominated a conservative judge to tilt the balance to the right in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Indeed, from Day One after the billionaire property tycoon took over the Oval Office, Americans have been hitting the pavements and streets to protest his presence, starting with women on January 21 leading the largest mass protest since the Vietnam War in 1967.

Three short weeks later, states and cities, governors and mayors and some leading Republicans have loudly disagreed with their president on points of law and justice.

Washington and Minnesota state offices won a court case jointly filed against Trump's violation of U.S. law by resorting to religious discrimination in the implementation of his anti-Muslim immigration restrictions. Not only did the President pummel the judge concerned, but he also ordered the State Department to launch an "emergency appeal" to reverse the judicial order against his political order.

The protests against Trump have also multiplied abroad, especially in the countries affected by his immigration ban, but also in the U.K., where there are strong calls on Prime Minister Theresa May to rescind her invitation for him to visit London.

Simultaneous with the January 21 mass protests, millions more in 60 other countries also took to the streets to protest his manifest sexism and demand that he respect women's rights.

No other U.S. president has been greeted at home with such protest and hostility, or become the subject of such pubic sarcasm and parody, the butt of so many serious jokes. Similarly, no other has caused so much panic and concern abroad about his policy implications for other nations. And no other has been openly endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.

Meanwhile, President Trump continues to use his tongue and his Twitter account as his two main weapons of mass distraction, to mask the reality of the growing opposition to him at home and abroad.

He accuses "every country in the world" of "taking advantage of the United States," describes every bilateral foreign policy commitment he inherited from Barack Obama as "dumb deals," and even accuses Australia of wanting to export "the next Boston bomber" to the U.S.

But the U.S. president's continuing and relentless assault on universal rights has not escaped everyone.

A week ahead of his inauguration, Human Rights Watch (on January 12) released its Annual Report on Threats to Human Rights around the World -- and for the first time in the report's 27-year history, the USA was named as one of the biggest threats.

Citing Trump's path to power, the report declared his campaign was marked by "misogynistic, xenophobic and racist rhetoric." It also said his promises, if implemented, "could cause tremendous harm to vulnerable communities, contravene the United States' core human rights obligations, or both."

But neither this report, nor facts from studies have deterred Trump from pursuing his declared path. He's building the Mexican border wall despite being publicly advised by his selected Homeland Security Secretary, John F. Kelly, that "A physical barrier, in and of itself, will not do the job."

He proceeded with his promised entry ban on Muslims despite his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson publicly saying: "I do not support a blanket type rejection of any particular group of people."

And despite being advised by Defense Secretary Mattis that "waterboarding" is an "ineffective" torture tactic, he insists he will consider ordering its use "if that's what the American people want."

The "Black Lives Matter" and other African American civil rights protest movements, national coalitions for women's rights, Native American advocates, the defenders of immigrants' rights and even American-born sons and daughters of immigrants have started bracing for a long and hard fight.

As minorities with a clearly brash and threatening leader, they have good reason to fear. From all they have seen and heard from their new president in his first two weeks, far from "Making America Great Again" as promised, he seems instead hell bent on making America hate again!

Earl Bousquet is a contributor to china.org.cn, editor-at-large of The Diplomatic Courier and author of an online regional newspaper column entitled Chronicles of a Chronic Caribbean Chronicler.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.