With Emmanuel Macron (France) and Rishi Sunak (UK) election tumbles, and the sad spectacle of Donald Trump, and Joe Biden visibly showing senility at the presidential debate rematch, many in the wild west, probably cannot help, but blame Russian president Vladmir Putin for seeking to destroy the superpowers. Ninety minutes of debate between Biden 81 and former president Trump 79, left many to conclude that America could be a lost country. 

Biden’s painful performance and Trump’s comeback while battling many woes in court, including a conviction for felony, could be Putin’s handiwork, although due to deadlocked partisanship, the debate may not move a needle. After all, Trump is said to have been installed by Putin in 2016. This time round, Trump wasn’t as mean as in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, or Biden in 2020. Even his known bombast, lies, half-truths, and inflated claims couldn’t distract from Biden’s decline and Americans should pity themselves. 

Two elderly men is varying degrees of impairment expected to hammer out compromise, are instead driving extreme polarity as they tussle for the most powerful job in the world to safeguard economies, human safety and nuclear weapons. They are squabbling as to who plays better golf, didn’t have sex with a porn star and tried to hide hush money paid through a third party. Imagine. We are all ‘losers’ to borrow their own words.

Had it been an African country showing this absurdity, a US ambassador in that country would have already called out. A broken political system Americans are stuck with yet impose their will on everybody because they are a military bully. One could see Biden’s face, a suppressed hatred for sharing stage with a convicted felon 

The return of Trump should be a blessing for the world, unless we again fail to seize it. It is exposing the American sad exceptionalism to ridicule on the global stage. The rise, fall, rise again and now comeback of Trump, the only US president impeached twice and convicted by a court of law, and now returning through an election is worrying. Trump and Biden, conjure dark humour and trepidation about the world’s future. 

During the debate, one could see in Trump’s thin smiles, the machinery of his cold personality relishing in Biden losing memory on stage. Under these circumstances, Trump didn’t need to be overly crude except when he mocked that he didn’t think that even Biden understands himself anymore.

Trump’s legal woes, questionable ethics, narcissism, misogyny, conspiracy theorist, casting doubt on US electoral system, unfiltered propaganda, unrestrained dark populism, unafraid to bring his children to work for him in the White House, and supporters inclined to political violence are all slippery grounds familiar in the so-called banana countries. 

 Gone are days when Africans idealized whatever they saw on films, TV series, imbibed James Bond 7 or what they heard over radio and from relatives returning from America and Europe. Today, the convergence of media technology, increased travel, interactions and rise of social media is shuttering the American invincibility daily before our own eyes. The unfiltered lies about America’s shame, duplicity, and shamelessness with which it treats its own poor and others like Palestinians and Afghans among others around the world is the norm, not the exception.

Biden or Trump, whoever is elected US president in November 2024, will neither figure tall nor have much to offer to Africa and the desperate in the world when, Barack Obama, the so-called Black president was only a footnote. The US is just a superpower third world country with less to offer. With bountiful natural resources and rising educated young population, Africans should decline US paltry droppings and instead dig themselves out of the hole.