As a brown woman, I have to ask: why the sudden outrage about Trump’s appointments?

RASHMEE ROSHAN LALL November 19, 2016

president-trumpForgive me brothers and sisters (and even those who do not regard themselves as my brothers and sisters, my being a brown woman of christian with a small ‘c’ beliefs, though I am not of the Christian faith).

Forgive me but I do not understand the outrage over US president-elect Donald Trump’s appointment of Alabama senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney-General and former Breitbart head Steve Bannon as Chief Strategist at the White House. Did we not notice they were part of Mr Trump’s campaign?

Forgive me, but what then is so unexpected about Mr Sessions’ and Mr Bannon’s appointment?

Both men have been at Mr Trump’s side in the long hard days of the presidential election campaign. Mr Sessions – he of the nativist, white nationalist views, so racist he could previously not be appointed a judge – was the first senator to throw in his lot with Donald Trump. Way, way back, when everyone was smirking about the entertaining absurdity that was Mr Trump’s campaign to be America’s 45th president.

Mr Bannon – he of the white nationalist views and the anti-South Asian-in-Silicon-Valley beliefs – has been CEO of Mr Trump’s campaign for the past many months. He has been shoulder to shoulder with Mr Trump in the long hard slog towards the White House – and the hope for victory of an ethno-nationalist view of America.

Mr Sessions and Mr Bannon were right there, by Donald Trump’s side, and we all saw them. And we heard what they believed. And 60 million Americans (I know, I know, not the majority of the voting-eligible, just one-quarter) voted for Mr Trump having seen and heard Mr Sessions and Mr Bannon who were at Mr Trump’s side.

And 60 million Americans (I know, I know, not the popular vote. Hillary Clinton won that by more than one million) voted for Mr Trump. They voted for him having heard (despite having heard or perhaps because they had heard?) his views – against Mexicans, Muslims, immigrants etc etc.

So Donald Trump, as Mrs Clinton said after the election, “will be our next president.”

What is so surprising about our next president appointing to his administration the very people who were at his side in the campaign?

What is so surprising about the views of those new Trump administration appointees?

There is no purchase in the progressive left launching attacks on Mr Trump’s appointments until and unless these appointees (and President Trump) seek to infringe or curtail civil rights, natural justice, constitutional freedoms.

It makes the progressives look silly. They should keep their powder dry for the moment it is needed.

That moment, alas, may come, sooner rather than later. God willing it doesn’t, but it would be disingenuous to assume that God will be kinder to America than every other conflict-ridden country with divisive authoritarian leaders and enough people to elect them to office.