Uncanny Similarity Between Donald Trump and Deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi

They don't look alike. But are as unfit for presiding respectively over America or Egypt, they match.

Trump puts himself above the law, saying, in critical cases, it does not apply to the President. So did Muslim Brotherhood Morsi in Egypt. Trump sees no conflict of interest in mixing between the business of his 550 companies and being the President of the United States. So did Morsi when he declared, during his presidency, that he was above the law.

Perceiving Russia as in loco ally of the U.S., Trump has seen no problem in Russian slicing off of part of the Ukraine, "Wouldn't it be nice to get along," he intoned. In Egypt, Morsi, during the Brotherhood's reign of darkness (2012-2013), saw in Turkey and Pakistan foreign policy extensions of Cairo.

Morsi did not have the material riches of Donald Trump. Far from it. But in Khairat El-Shatter, the Brotherhood's money bags, there was an equivalency.

The Brotherhood's coffers were supplemented by unaccounted for financial dollops from overseas. The State's Central Accounting Office in Cairo was barred from even raising questions. These were regarded as "charitable contributions" from abroad, and the hand of the State could not reach them for counting or accounting.

How similar is that to Trump's non-divulgence of his taxes either before the elections or after his elevation to the post of president. "We are being audited by the Internal Revenue Service" -he posited. No proof on that. And if a proof is produced about that feigned audit, no conflict in divulging the amount and sources of his claimed riches for both transparency and payment of US taxes.

Trump came to the Oval Office, not through the majority of the popular vote on November 8, 2016. His non-merited ascendancy to the most influential executive post in the whole world came through a Constitutional gimmick called the Electoral College. An appendix in the American Constitutional structure which had been intended by the founding framers to keep mobocracy out of ruling America. Well, that safety valve has malfunctioned, as it backfired through the enraged mobs being counted for the purpose of satisfying the Electoral College.

In Morsi's case, the route to the presidency in Egypt was circuitous, but led in the same direction. First Morsi was not the first choice of the Muslim Brotherhood. (Nor was Trump for the Republican establishment in America. Sixteen others competed with him for the coveted prize). But once Morsi was chosen, his gaining over his opponent, General Shafik, left the legitimacy of the vote count in doubt. Even with one and a half percent edge in the popular vote over Shafik, the ballot boxes were not secure. And judicial monitoring was not geographically even.

Both Trump and Morsi have a distinct propensity for war. Trump has declared "I love war;" and Morsi beat the drums for warring against Ethiopia over the construction by Addis Ababa of the Renaissance Dam over the Blue Nile. "Egypt will go dry -a catastrophe," screamed Morsi. Yet all the while, Morsi looked the other way as Hamas denied the very existence of Israel with which Egypt has a peace treaty.

The two men share the same perception of brotherly movements abroad as means of legitimating their rule over their respective countries. Trump sees in the British Brexit and the rise of the right in Europe a vindication of the neo-isolation of America. The deposed Egyptian President saw in a mythical Caliphate over all Muslim lands the road to the resurgence of Islam, as interpreted by the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is interesting to note that neither Trump nor Morsi has an inclination to read. Trump has openly manifested that. But Morsi has proved it by circumstantial evidence. Morsi claims a Ph.D. in engineering from California. The question is this: Has he written that dissertation? Or was it written for him on commission. For if he had written it, then where is the proper English language which surely develops and expands in its vocabulary through the arduous self-authorship of a Ph.D. dissertation?

In a small pamphlet titled "Accomplishments by President Dr. Mohamed Morsi," nearly 500 projects are listed. From dredging a canal in Upper Egypt to the repair of the railroad between Cairo and Alexandria. All by Morsi!! So are Trump's claims to great accomplishments within 50 days. Pre-election plans for industrial expansion by large US companies are immediately claimed by that narcissistic president to be a part of Trump's achievements.

Anxiety reigns over America since the assumption by Trump of the U.S. presidency. In certain instances that anxiety translates into outright fear, experienced by immigrants worried over deportation for the flimsiest infraction. Included in those widening circles of fear are Muslims, due to the Muslim ban, compounded by raising red flags over the misnomer "Islamic terrorism." As if terrorism has a faith!!

So was the case in Egypt, during the Islamist reign of obscurantism of the Muslim Brotherhood. The targets were the Copts, the liberals, the other secularists, women. Tourism dried up, compounding the economic woes of Egypt of 100 million. Attackers of churches, Shiis, unveiled women, and the very message of Al-Azhar went unpunished. It was the reign of impunity gone mad!!

Neither Trump nor Morsi saw in the judiciary a co-equal branch of the Government. In Egypt, the Supreme Constitutional Court was besieged for weeks by Brotherhood hooligans. The Brotherhood controlled both the executive, and its own Brotherhood majority parliament. As for Trump, judgments by the judiciary were attributed to the ethnic background of one federal judge, or to incompetence as in the case of freezing the Trumpian executive order affecting the freedom of movement in and out of the U.S. Trump called the orders issued by the U.S. judiciary, whether in Washington State or in Hawaii, "judicial over-reach!!"

One more thought remains: The Egyptian Revolution of June 30, 2013 has resulted in the removal of Morsi, thus saving Egypt from the possibility of civil war. In America, the nation is deeply divided; the three branches of government, including the judiciary through the possible confirming of a very conservative ninth justice for the Supreme Court; the growing anxiety over Russia's influence and possible blackmail over Trump, are all the kinds of drip drip drip which may end up in shortening the tenure of Trump's presidency.

Similar features of governance by Trump and Morsi are manifest in two critical areas: They both have failed in keeping religion and State separate. And they both seemed to treat the armed forces of their respective countries as if they were their personal institutions. Witness the oft-repeated Trump's reference to: "My Generals."

Am I forcing similarities between Trump and Morsi into my own perception of dislike for both? Possibly. Of course, Trump may yet declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization -a measure worthy of the just war on terrorism. But whatever happens, with such actions, I cannot avert my gaze over two presidents who have acted similarly in a variety of issues.

In life, similarity of circumstances, especially in governance, generally leads to similar outcomes. The parallel of the Trump and Morsi trajectories is difficult to ignore. Both of them have rested their thrones on the perilous grounds of "I won!!"

Both Trump and Morsi live on the same oxygen. Their oxygen is called the mob. They both draw their fancied approval from the howling masses. For Morsi it was Rabaa and El-Nahdha. For Trump it is Nashville, Tennessee and Michigan.

The Trumpists, especially Steve Bannon, Trump's highest adviser, are calling for "the destruction of the administrative State." This anti-State call evokes the horrible memory of a Muslim Brotherhood earlier call. "Toz Fi Misr" (to Hell with Egypt) which was uttered by a Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide.

There could be nothing either "supreme" or "guidance" in belittling Egypt of 7000 years of existence. 


NOTE: New blog postings will resume on a monthly basis until my new book is ready for the press this Fall. Its title: "War On Jihadism Ideologically: The New Islamic Religious Revolution"

Under Trump, The Arrival of A Chaotic "American Spring!!"

This is a "Made In America" American Spring. Quite different from the Arab Spring. Its participants are not the masses. They are the billionaires. Its ethos is not democracy; it is the gradual destruction of democratic institutions, with the freedom of the press, a constitutional right under the First Amendment, as a primary target.

As in the Arab Spring, there is no recognizable spokesman. Though Trump is the President, who gushes out daily with "alternative facts" (meaning falsehoods), the White House staff spins what the Donald says. This is while the Cabinet reshapes those utterances in various forms. In the meantime, the civil service (two millions of them in various departments) ignores those directions, or at best, kills them by a deliberate slow motion.

In the midst of this chaotic American Spring, the masses (65% of the American public no longer trusts the man in the White House) use the weekends to fill the American equivalents of Tahrir Square. A movement which resists Trump's espousal of Putin's style of leadership, his Muslim ban, his wall at the Mexican border, his attacks on the judiciary, his non-divulgence of his taxes, and his assault on the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care).

There are variables between the American Spring and the Arab Spring. But they share in one primary quality: One does not know their final outcome. The fragmentation (in the Arab world, it is called "sectarianism") in America is the real "creative chaos" which Washington had used as descriptive of the attempts to effect change in the Middle East. However, in the American Spring, it is a constitutionally induced chaos. Here is why.

In the American Constitution, there is a "supremacy clause" -the Tenth Amendment. For its importance to understanding the American Spring, it merits quoting: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." So it was difficult for me, when lecturing at the Cairo University School of Law, the pearl of Arab legal education, to explain to my students that "the American federal government is a government of limited powers."

Here we have to bear in mind that the masses of the American Spring draw their power not only from "the right of the people peaceably to assemble" (The First Amendment to the Constitution). The practical source is the state which controls the police (not federalized in America), the education (controlled largely by local school boards), state legislatures, state taxation, state licensing of businesses and corporations, state election of non Article III judges. Huge powers. By contrast, the federal government, among other things, controls: foreign policy, foreign and interstate commerce, immigration, coinage of money, post offices, promotion of intellectual property, and war declarations.

This is a very broad and thus incomplete comparison between state powers and federal powers. But guess what? In the American Spring, stimulated by the election of Trump in consequence of this period of American rage, the State flags are flying high: The mayors of many cities and the governors of a dozen American states have ordered their police forces not to cooperate with the feds in certain activities; sanctuary cities are resisting Trump's draconian methods of deportation; Times Square (the new American Tahrir Square) is proclaiming "We Are All Muslims Too." 

Allies of the masses in the American Spring are: the federal judiciary, the free press, the constitutional provisions on the separation between church and state, the civil service below the billionaires who now compose the cabinet, the on-going investigations in Russia's intervention in the American presidential elections.

Add to the above, the 17 American intelligence and security services about which Trump had frothed at the mouth in petulant anger. They, when confronted by a President about whom impeachment is already publicly discussed after only four weeks of his administration (called Trump Inc.) are opting for selective briefs to Trump. These are tailored to protect America from leaks to its adversaries.

In his book "The Art of Intelligence," Henry Crumpton who spent his life in the CIA's Clandestine Service, manifests the huge gulf between "The Art of Intelligence" and Trump's "The Art of the Deal!" Trump's "America Uber Alles" is relying on megaphones from Trump Towers. The masses are relying on resistance from the ground up.

Commenting upon the chaotic national scene in the Trump era, Daniel Gross sounded the alarm in the New Yorker magazine. Under the title of "The German National Anthem and 'America First'" he said: "Political language, when misused, can turn healthy patriotism into toxic nationalism." And the New York Times Magazine of February 12, festooned its cover with one word: RESIST.


NOTE: New blog postings will resume on a monthly basis until my new book is ready for the press this Fall. Its title: "War On Jihadism Ideologically: The New Islamic Religious Revolution"

Blog postings are for now suspended until further notice in 2017.

Blog postings are for now suspended until further notice in 2017. This is due to the fact of my authoring at present a book in English entitled, "War On Jihadism Through Ideology: The New Islamic Religious Revolution."

This book shall be dedicated Al-Azhar, Cairo Egypt.

Thank you for your attention.

Launched By Trump, A War of Cultures Has Begun!!

One has to be blind not to see in the utterances of Trump and his coterie the launching of a war of cultures!! A war against Islam, Blacks, Jews, and all non-whites. Words have consequences, and appointments by Trump underline the gravity of those consequences.

Trump began his campaign for the presidency by calling for "a Muslim ban on entering the U.S.," thus converting Islamophobia into one of the fronts in his war of cultures. From fear of Islam into a declared aggression in the form of singling out Muslims as enemies of America.

The Trump movement did not stop there. His appointee to the post of national security advisor, General Michael Flynn publicly declared that "Islam is not a religion, but an ideology." Elaborating on his Nazi-like pronouncements against the faith of 1.7 billion Muslims, Flynn called Islam "a malignant cancer."

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell described Flynn as a "right-wing nutty." Flynn circulated a video declaring: "Fearing Islam, which wants 80 percent of humanity enslaved or exterminated, is totally rational and hence cannot possibly be called phobia."

As a national security advisor, Flynn is charged with guiding the president on all foreign policy matters. Furthermore, that extreme anti-Islam propagandist is the coordinator of all foreign policy across all agencies.

Soon the cavalry of hate, spearheaded by cultural warriors was given formal recognition through another appointment. That of Steven Bannon to the White House post of chief strategist for the President. Bannon has worked for 11 years as the editor of Breitbart News, a medium for the Alt-Right -a fascist entity advocating that "America is for the whites only." In addition, Bannon is well known for his unalterable anti-Islamic views and prejudices.

So now you have two of the most senior staff positions in the Trump White House qualifying for top aides in the new war of cultures.

Logically, behind the forward leadership of the shock troops come the foot soldiers. People like Richard Spencer, head of the National Policy Institute. To his audience who raised their arms in the Nazi salute on November 20, Spencer declared as follows: "White identity is at the core of both the alt-right movement and the Trump movement, even if most voters for Mr. Trump aren't willing to articulate it as such."

Spencer's audience full throatedly screamed: "Heil the people. Heil victory." It was the perfect environment for hysteria befitting the harangues of Goebbels. In a cultural war, you need first to attack the credibility of the media outlets of your opponent. Thus Spencer pivoted to attacking the American mainstream media which Trump has systematically attacked as "the media is crooked."

The response of the Spencer rally was not disappointing. For he, with the swagger of a winning boxer, demanded an unequivocal endorsement of his racism. Said he: "Perhaps we should refer to them (the media) in the original German." "Lugen presse." To this stimulation, they roared back mimicking the Nazi-era term for "lying press."

Of course, in Trump's newly-launched cultural war, fact-checking is a poisonous tool, as the big lie technique should stand unchallenged. How enraging it must have been for Trump and his cohorts to be challenged by both Fact Check and Buzz Feed. These two organizations have determined that more than 50% of Trump's pronouncements were blatant lies. Including his assertion that he saw "Thousands upon thousands of Muslims dancing in New Jersey at the collapse of the World Trade Center." It never happened.

No exit from the scrutiny of a free investigative press of the stream of lies is overlooked. There are the Trump surrogates to explain that Trump was misquoted or misinterpreted. Or "It was never said." Or, frequently in the case of Trump: "I don't recall," or "I was told," or "why are we focused on this issue" (as in the case of 12 women complaining of Trump groping them). And if all else fails "I shall sue," and "I shall never settle."

Well, Trump was forced to settle the Trump University scandal for $25 million. Refunds were arranged for the thousands who were fraudulently enticed to pay tuition in return for the illusive quest for getting rich quickly through learning Trump's Art of the Deal.

Note that for Trump, the law is a construct of loopholes to be exploited in order to evade paying taxes. For that tax evasion, Trump was described by one of his hired guns, Rudolph Giuliani, "a genius." 

Well, if Trump who claims to be a billionaire, is applauded by a former Mayor of New York City, what do you think of the impact of that spin on the average citizen who is obliged by law to pay taxes in accordance with his/her level of income? Undoubtedly, non-observance of the law would become a national practice!!

Speaking of the law, as Trump thrusts this great country in a war of cultures, let us examine his appointment for the post of Attorney General. It is none other than Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. An avid anti-black racist who, as attorney general of Alabama had this to say about a defense attorney. "He is a shame to his race!!" That attorney was white, his clients were black. Later, Sessions who later sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called a black attorney "boy" -a term reserved in the south for black men.

In no way could Sessions, if confirmed by the Senate, in his capacity as head of the Department of Justice, divest himself from his anti-black past. Jeff Sessions, in 1986, had the dubious distinction of being rejected by that Committee as a nominee for a federal judgeship "due to his racist comments and behavior."

The would-be chief enforcer of the law in America has associated with FAIR (the Federation for American Immigration Reform) which is hostile to immigration and is committed to racial selectivity. Its founder, John Tanton has repeatedly expressed the wish that America remain a majority-white population.

The anti-Islamic, Mike Pompeo of Kansas, is now Trump's nominee for Director of the CIA. He believes that "most Islamic leaders across America were complicit in terrorism."

The election of Obama to the presidency had the effect of baring the racial and religious divides in America. Racism, in particular, has now bubbled in the open, pointing to a sad fact: The South,at least at the local levels, is still fighting the American Civil War by other means.

And Trump, sensing that tilt at the local and State levels, found a wave which he could surf to the top. The Democrats failed, as they focused on the elite, the urban, and the college-degree holders. The blue collar workers, left behind by globalism, and hungry for change, any change, were lured by Trump's "Make America Great Again."

Through Trump's victory, this mantra has become "Make America White Again." A catch-all phrase for a battle cry in the rush toward a war of cultures. A war in which the perceived enemies are local: From Jews, to Muslims. From Blacks to Latinos. From the Brown to the hyphenated names and foreign accents. The early skirmishes incidental to the larger battle are on:

• 31% increase in hate crimes; 701 incidents have already been recorded;
• Swastikas have been scrawled on synagogues;
• "You could kiss your visas good-bye" is now frequently hurled at Muslim taxi drivers;
• False claims by General Flynn and others that Sharia is spreading in America. It is not. In fact, 38 states have either legislated, or on their way to legislating that the word "Sharia" cannot be mentioned in their courts. They, ignorantly regard it as antithetical to American values and the Constitution;
• Now there is Trumpian conversations about registering Muslims in America, and even applying the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Korematsu case to Muslims. That is the Supreme Court's infamous 1944 Japanese internment decision. Approving the herding of hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans into detention camps following the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
• That decision has not been repealed, thus potentially allowing it to apply to Muslim Americans. Such threats are legally considered an assault, especially when accompanied by "the apparent present ability to give effect to that attempt if not prevented." 

Those fears had, on Friday, November 18 brought together Muslim, Jewish and Christian clergy members and lay leaders to gather in front of a mosque in Washington in a demonstration of mutual support. Sensing the dangers of the Trumpian threatened measures, they formed an inter-faith group called "Shoulder to Shoulder." 

Their call on Trump is clear and simple: "Keep your promise that you shall serve as the president of all Americans."

The question here should be centered on the cultural war. Analyzing Trump from this perspective is challenging. Not because his racial and ethnic preferences are not already clear. But because Trump is showing the face of a normalized Trump in contacts with some of the foreign powers.

Trump who manifests friendship to Egypt, the Emirates, and Japan, is a different face. For the appeasement of the Republican party, the protection of his 110 businesses in 22 countries, including the far-flung Muslim world, and the need to give priority to jobs in America, all combine to give diplomacy a seat at the Trump's table.

As a deal-maker, Trump by core beliefs, practices, appointments to his administration, and to his populist base, is possessed of two personas: the one inside America, divisiveness on the basis of ethnicity and religion is to become the norm. And one for the outside, provided it does not project weakness.

The issue here is beyond diplomacy where negotiations or force may be employed. The issue is that a war of cultures inside America shall undoubtedly have grave repercussions, especially in the world of Islam. His top lieutenants have already withdrawn their recognition of Islam as a religion. Thus enabling ISIS which is now splintering into poisonous units all over the world. But through Trumpian hallucinations are provided fresh oxygen for recruiting, funding, and operating.

In this connection, Trump and his team are reading "The Islamic State" backward. To them, it is "The State of Islam." For the Trumpists, being hostage to social media, the very tool of ISIS franchises, have become brainwashed by the narrative of terrorism.

As such, the Trumpian narrative about Islam, nurtured by the ISIS narrative, is blind to the present New Religious Revolution waged, primarily, by Al-Azhar in Cairo, and its Rector, Dr. Ahmed El-Taiyeb. The tenets of this counter-jihadism are centered on:

• Islamic law is supplemented by legislation;
• Equality among all faiths is built on Islamic jurisprudence;
• "Allahu Akbar" means that all humans are equal in the eyes of the Creator;
• Justice and knowledge are essential to Islamic practices;
• Regardless of variety of practices in the geographic expanse of Islam, gender equality is guaranteed;
• No "holy war" in Islam; only self-defense within your boundaries;
• Removing a dictator is a religious duty, providing that such action would not result in Fitna (self-help without the benefit of law);
• Cooperation within a community and inter-communally must be premised on the public good; and
• Respect for local laws is incumbent upon a Muslim residing in non-Muslim countries.

Just read about that Religious Revolution set forth in four statements recently made by the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar in Nigeria, Germany, France and Russia (Chechnya).

How very alien are these tenets from the false advocacy of the likes of Bin Laden or Al-Baghdadi of ISIS!! And how ignorant is Trump's war of cultures of these principles!!

No wonder that a writer for the Op Ed page of the New York Times, Charles Blow commented in the issue of November 21 on the orange color of Trump's face: "That orange glow emanating from the man is the sun setting on America's progress, however slow and halting, on race and gender inclusion and equity."

Responding petulantly to such assessments, Trump, the king of tweeting, responded angrily: "The New York Times is a failing newspaper." He even chided CNN for only showing bad angles of his face. How pitiful and silly for an American president-elect to be enamored with his facial looks more than with his threatening substance!! 

The foregoing is not a hateful analysis. It is the analysis of hate. Mr. Trump: Your enmity towards "the other" can be seen through the naked eye. Your first salvo in your war of cultures was the declaration of a Muslim ban.

While Bush junior, even in the heat of 9/11, declared that "we are not at war with Islam." But Donald declared, 15 years after 9/11, that the problem with US Security was Islam. His National Security Advisor, General Flynn, declared that "Islam is not a religion, it is an ideology."

So here is a mini-lesson for those who wish to read about the history of the global Muslim reaction to terrorism from which the Muslim World had suffered the most:

• In 1997, the first head of State to call for a global effort against terrorism was Egypt's former President, Hosni Mubarak. That call came from the rostrum of the US General Assembly.
• Before that 1997 global call from Egypt, which now, under President El-Sisi, is in the throes of combating terrorism on its own territory, was a Mubarak presidential decree of 1996. It was to the effect that all terror incidents should be brought, not before civil law courts, but before military courts. That was Egypt's response to the Saber Farahat terrorist attacks on the Semiramis Hotel (Cairo) in 1993, and later on the visitors of the Cairo Egyptian Museum in 1996.
• Farahat was apprehended, brought before a military tribunal and executed. I was the attorney for the US attorneys who were claiming, for the foreign victims at Semiramis, monetary compensation from Egypt. The Egyptian Court of Cassation offered the maximum under Egyptian law; I counselled acceptance; the US attorneys on the case demurred; an a federal court in New York City gave them zero. Saying: "The case has already been decided by the Egyptian judiciary -a competent judiciary."
• And in 1998, the League of Arab States adopted the first international regional convention on terrorism; followed in 1999, by a similar convention adopted by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (57 States), based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
• All the while, the U.S., governmental and non-governmental entities were howling "foul" at these timely anti-jihadi efforts. Reason: the wrong reason. They were placing due process for the individual ahead of due process for the community.
• When 9/11 happened, a major crime against humanity, and in which hundreds of Muslims perished as a segment of the 3000 victims, Saudi Prince Walid Bin Talal offered Mayor Rudolph Giuliani $10 million to aid the first responders.
• Giuliani rejected that humanitarian effort for a flimsy reason. Prince Walid, in a TV interview had been asked: "Do you think that 9/11 happened because of US policies favoring Israel?" Bin Talal replied: "I can't exclude it."
• A few years later, Giuliani, now chosen by Trump for a top security post in his administration, went to the Muslim region to make millions of dollars through consultancies and speeches. General Flynn was not too far behind in making lots of money through counselling Turkey -a Muslim majority country.
• Thousands of Muslims are now serving in various American police departments and in the US armed forces. Millions of US Muslim civilians are daily contributing to US advancement. Steve Jobs, the father of the digital age, was a Syrian.

Mr. Trump: Before you open your mouth with assaults on Muslims and other American minorities, know that you yourself seem to have little regard for US laws: Not only on tax laws; on contract law; on due process law; on entitlements law; on anti-discrimination law; on religious liberty laws.

Even in regard to conflict of interest laws, you, at present, are refusing to separate between your personal wealth and America's commonwealth. Your family, which is your primary source of counselling, cannot run your business as of the moment you take the oath of office on January 20, 2017.

Mr. Trump: Your ignorance of the law is documented by your lack of knowledge of your own presidential powers. Were you to stop for a couple of hours in order to read the U.S. Constitution, you shall find that you have only ONE POWER. The power of pardon. (It is a well known fact that you do not read.) The Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution does not mean you, Mr. Trump. It means the States where powers which are not allocated to the federal government become automatically State powers.

Now the cities and mayors are rising up to defy your plans for mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants. The United States is fast becoming "The United States of the City States." The States have the exclusive powers on their police forces.

And if you can spare more time for a modicum of studenthood in international trade law, you will find that your bluster against international trade agreements is nothing but ignorant Trumpese.

Rejecting the Trans-Pacific Partnership by you is a hollow threat. China has already cordoned off America through her proposal for a "Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific." Both Peru and Chile are anxious to join it.

Your empty rhetorical nonsense about China, whose steel built your gambling casinos, has been ridiculed by experts who dismiss your bombast. The Peterson Institute for International Economics has concluded that "a full-blown trade with China and Mexico would push unemployment in the United States to nearly 9 percent, in 2020, from 4.9 percent today." What would the millions of working-class Americans who voted for you say to that, Donald? "Defrauded Again!!"

And Mexico has now undervalued its currency. Thus making its products more competitive, and its territory more inviting to American manufacture. The Ford Motor Company is planning to have its small cars assembled, not in America, but in Mexico. Labor in Mexico is paid only 15% per hour as compared to labor pay in the U.S. It is Mexico that has already built its wall, an economic wall, not the Trump wall, at the southern border.

In the New Yorker of November 25, Ali Fitzgerald posted this headline: "Post-Election Nihilist Horoscope." Then predicted: "The new orange-tinted moon of November 8th will usher in an age of extreme darkness -lighting only the houses of racism, misogyny, and gross red hats."

Donald: You often repeated "I love wars!!" Regardless of any Trumpist spin which you and your team might employ, wars shall not "Make American Great Again." 

Because of the holiday season, these blog postings shall be suspended until late December. Happy Holidays!!

Egyptian Mythology Regarding America's Love for the Muslim Brotherhood

Following Trump's non-merited victory in the presidential elections, there was elation in the Egyptian media. A non-merited political victory in America causing euphoria in the Egyptian media. Caused by the faulty assumption that Trump's victory shall diminish the Brotherhood sway in Washington, D.C.

This Egyptian mythology becomes more intriguing as some Egyptian opinion-makers claim that Hillary and Obama "conspired with the Brothers against Egypt." This is a direct quote from a message from a senior former Egyptian Ambassador.

I cannot falsely claim that I am neutral in my assessment of Trump as a post-modern thug, or of the Brotherhood, as a dangerous vehicle of terrorism in the name of Islam. Neutrality in either case would constitute, for me at least, giving my brain and my reasoning a holiday.

Having dealt in my previous blog postings with fascist Donald, my focus in this writing is on the fraudulent assumptions that the Brotherhood had so far held sway in official Washington, D.C. This myth of affinity is nothing more than Brotherhood's propaganda which the unwary Egyptian media and thinkers have come to take seriously.

Never wishing to lecture, except in my classrooms in New York City, as this would be a false self-elevation. I only wish here to share thoughts and observations gained from my close proximity to the American political environment. This proximity is continually enriched by my daily research and writing, as well as by my interactions with a steady stream of thought updating from my own students and interns.

New knowledge is my daily business. Old assumptions are my daily feeding of the trash bins. This has been impressed upon me since my senior year in my beloved high school in Egypt (Zagazig High School) where, in the science section, I nationally competed for the prize in the Darwin theory of evolution. Evolve or perish. I choose the former.

This month of November 2016 marks the fourth abysmal anniversary of former Egyptian President, Mohamed Morsi, declaring himself to be above the law. That declaration of November 2012 marked the rise of Brotherhood fascism subverting the democratic goals of post-Mubarak Egypt.

It also mercifully marked the beginning of the end of Islamist rule in the country of 100 million Arabs, nearly one third of the Arab nation. The demise of that dark rule was also by a popular uprising in June 2013 whose success had to be guaranteed by the might of the Egyptian armed forces. Case closed!!

America's grumbling about those developments, ignorantly calling the June 30 Revolution a military coup, was never due to the influence of the Brotherhood in America. It was due to America's sticking to the false measurement of "every opposition is a form of democratic expression." Not so!!

For the "right to self-determination," a right derived from sovereignty which resides in the populace, implies the right to determine what form of democracy it chooses. There is no global consensus as to what democracy is, or how it should be practiced.

Case in point: Has the choice of Trump as President-elect come about through what should be considered "democracy?" No!! It is a result of the Electoral College, an anachronism in the US Constitution intended to keep the mobs away from having their votes directly counted. My vote for Hillary who got the majority of popular votes (63 million to 58 million) did not register. Swallowed in the bowels of a perennial quirk in American democracy.

There is another anomaly in America's early support for the Brotherhood in Egypt. That support, now vanished, was manifested by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meeting in Cairo and elsewhere with Brotherhood representatives. That was not to assist in the political aggrandizement of the Brotherhood's Guidance Bureau in Egypt. It was to serve national American interests in the largest Arab country.

Those American efforts are legitimate pursuit of national American interests. This is what national sovereignty is all about. There is no love or hate in international relations. There are only national interests. When they converge with foreign national interest, we call this convergence "alliance."

Alliances are not marriages. They are temporary liaison affairs which may sour at any moment. That notion is perennial, the relations with other nations are changeable. The lessons of Darwinian evolution.

This is why outside intervention in national affairs is the riskiest form of relationship. Good fences (they are called borders) make for good neighbors. And that good neighbor might be far away, but brought closer by mutual interests. Another reason why the Brotherhood had failed in Egypt, and ended up marked as "terrorist." In its terrorist acts in Egypt, it kept on looking for support from beyond national borders.

An organization which calls for foreign intervention through diplomacy, arms, funds, or propaganda, is a traitor organization. That is why the most odious and stupid charge that Trump addressed to Obama was to call him "traitor." There has never been any scintilla of proof on that. On the reverse side, it was billionaire Trump who openly encouraged Russia to intervene in the American elections. Through hacking into the emails of the Democratic National Convention. Now Trump (the traitor by these obvious measurements) shall become President over the nation which he had deceived.

Add to the falsehood of the Brotherhood claims of amity with the Democratic party, and its treacherous attempt to subvert Egyptian sovereignty through soliciting foreign intervention, another dangerous falsehood. That is the unfounded claims by the same Egyptian source or sources that "the lady (meaning Hillary) is the worst." And that she and Obama "conspired ...against Egypt and other Arab countries." Mere words without the requisite backing of proof.

My disparaging such reasoning is not based on my being an attorney -searching for proof before I open my mouth. Attorneys do not have that dangerous luxury. It is based on my having taught political science before I taught law.

And my political science background has kept me a willing ally of national sovereignty. Our world is made up of the nation-States. The United Nations is an inter-state system, not an inter-nation system. Even in Islamic jurisprudence, I teach that Islam did not create a State. It created an "Umma" (a community). What holds a State together is its internal strength.

Thus a State that complains of "conspiracy" is in fact a weak State that blames its misfortunes on others. Competition about national interests is not conspiracy. So when my Egyptian respondents cry about what they erroneously see as an Obama/Clinton conspiracy on Egypt, they in fact convey lack of awareness that the New Egypt is no longer buffeted by outside conspiracies. Not even in its anti-terrorist struggle against the Sinai hit and run criminal marauders.

Where is my proof? Egypt of the present is rapidly transitioning to "The Strong State." That transition is even recognized by crazy Trump. One of his main surrogates, Rudolph Giuliani, former Mayor of New York City, and the author of the foreword to my 1999 book entitled "Government Ethics and Law Enforcement" admitted to this publicly.

Asked on November 13 about Trump's envisaged ban on Muslims, Giuliani, who might be considered for a high post in the Trump administration, his response was a testimony to the effects on America of "the Strong State." In effect, he specifically cited Egypt as an example of the Arab State with which a Trump administration can vet (scrutinize in advance) applicants for immigration to the U.S. Why?: "Because El-Sisi government, a strong ally, has done a good job at combating the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt."

Where in his response do you find the value, any value, of the Brotherhood megaphones in Times Square, New York, or Washington, D.C.? Gone with the wind. In fact where in that early recognition of Trumpian recognition of Egypt as a Strong State is the effect of all the trash that American non-governmental organizations are heaping on Cairo for human rights abuses? None!! Why?

These NGOs are valuable to an interventionist America. They are its cat paws. The Obama administration has reduced their credibility. This is due to the Obama doctrine of  "leading from behind." It also reflects America's pivoting away from the Middle East and shifting those resources to Asia and to trade.

Those claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood is Washington's darling should learn an essential new fact about America and the world, especially the Middle East. That is that the American center is no longer the federal government. The center now is defused among 50 states, calling themselves the United States of America. By the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, powers not given by the Constitution to the federal government belong automatically to the States. (The Supremacy Clause).

And as they say, "the proof is in the pudding." Trump won the presidency by vilifying Washington, D.C., and gambling on his support from the State legislatures, fashioned, through gerrymandering, vote suppression, and the strongest voter ID requirements. All of which are non-democratic methods.

But it worked for him, and for the entire Republican party which now has Republican governors in 38 states, majorities in the two houses of Congress, and now the Oval Office. The party of Lincoln is now owned by Trump, the man who ferociously attacked Hillary, the Yale Law graduate, and cuddled Sarah Palin who could hardly know how to read the U.S. Constitution.

A point of convergence between Cairo of today and Washington of Trump is the emphasis on "jobs and the economy." For the opposition in Egypt claims that more than 25% of Egyptians are below the poverty line, so does the opposition to Obama claiming that 40 million America children go to bed hungry. Bill Clinton, a southern governor from Arkansas, won the presidency twice largely on the slogan: "It is the Economy Stupid." 

No wonder that the chief operating officer of a major American bank (Pharos Investments) spoke optimistically about Egypt which has been approved to receive $12 Billion as a loan from the International Monetary Fund. Mr. Angus Blair, reflecting the attitude of fellow bankers about the New Egypt's floating its national currency, said: "They are pleased that there is new thinking which is what Egypt needs."

Please, Mr. Banker, say this to the doom and gloom sayers in Egypt. Tell them to leave Cairo and go visit the country side. This is where Egypt's pulse is. Even a weak pulse is a sign of life. A life of a new rebirth of the Strong State, now recovering from 60 years of military dictatorship.

The New Egypt should rid itself of the stale thoughts of the past. Replacing those thoughts and resultant mythology by facts that matter. Together with a convalescing economy and a strong army, ensuring non-porous borders, Egypt needs opinion-makers trained in connecting the dots.

They say that camels walk faster at the sound of the flute. Let Egyptian writers play their flutes to help that caravan move forward across even non-chartered deserts.

Opinion-makers in America expect trouble in Trump America. Describing Trump's victory, one of them, David Remnick of the New Yorker magazine, characterized it as "an American tragedy." Then went on to call it "an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine."

Uncertainty about America does not augur well for the rest of the world. In fact, within 96 hours of his victory, Trump, on TV, proved that his ultra-right bluster during the campaign threatens to become policy.

In that TV interview he: affirmed that the wall between America and Mexico shall be built, from 2 million to 3 million illegal immigrants shall be the first installment of deportees, and looking menacingly through the cameras, he sternly ordered the anti-Trump demonstrators "Stop It." 

He is already proving those who are writing to me that "his bark is more threatening than his bite," or that "the lady would have been much worse than him" are dreamers.

With internal instability being ushered to the American streets, countries like Egypt should, as of now, double their efforts to rebuild themselves from within. It has always been my belief and advocacy that national deliverance happens from within, and that planning on the basis of reliance on help from beyond the border is a national gamble.

Even Emperor Donald J. Trump has admonished States relying on American defense: "Go Defend Yourselves Or Pay Us."

Observing our world of today, it doesn't take much thoughtfulness to conclude that the world is pivoting to the right. From America to Europe, both west and east, to Russia to India to Japan, the right is ascending. From globalism, our world is, in many ways, returning to tribalism.

That is why the sovereign response at the national level is the Strong State. Alliances between strong states, whose national interests intersect, shall last as long as that intersection lasts.

For the Arab people, following the settlement of their national upheavals, their future as a regional grouping shall only be served by the fulfillment of an old dream: the formation of the United Arab States (UAS). Not a union, but a federation where the internally sovereign State shall go on, with the sinews of foreign affairs and defence are in the hand of a federal council.

This is the Swiss model of cantons, adjusted by the American constitutional model of supremacy for the individual State where powers are not allocated to the federal council. Is this an Arab mythology? Maybe. But it is more logical than the present do nothing League of Arab States where the future of some of its members is being shaped by non-Arab States.

For a United Arab States, the Arabs have the fabric. But so far, neither the will nor the tailor!!

To those who write to me saying that Hillary would have been worse for America than Trump, I say: You don't understand America. Comparing Hillary to Trump, is like equating between experience and demagoguery.

What has occurred in America on November 8, 2016, has been described as "an epic mistake" (Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate in economics). Within 24 hours of that characterization, Trump appointed Stephen Bannon as his Chief White House Strategist and senior counselor. Bannon, the chief editor of Breitbart News, is the guru of white supremacists, the propagator of Islamophobia, and a man who made of hate an industry.

By such indicators, Trump is not embarking upon healing America's wounds. He is launching a reign of racial, ethnic and religious hatreds, thus raising the specter of civil strife.

For now, rage has overcome sanity, and ignorance is about to overwhelm recognizable norms of governance. As the least politically experienced president-elect in modern American history, Trump is especially known for his "I alone can fix it." A most pretentious bombast.

A number of Arab leaders are scampering today to befriend Trump. Trying to get to his boat by climbing over the edges. To them, I offer the following:

• Remember that that boat has a hole in its bottom. Allowing the waters of Islamophobia, racism, war mongering, and the Trump family business, to rush through it;
• Remember that, under a Trump administration, "America First," "deals are people," and sudden changes of mind, are Donald's political persona;
• Remember that Trump's history reflects no lasting loyalties;
• Remember that, by all means, a changed America might still offer opportunities for an Arab renaissance subservient to no outsider.

For in this period of world tribalism and rage, the way to national success is to put diplomacy in the service of clearly defined national goals. Trump is temporary. And Hillary is gone. But prudence calls for expecting a furious return of the Democrats under a new leadership to oust the regime that came to power in spite of the popular vote.

• Remember that under the U.S. Constitution, the federal government is one of enumerated (i.e. limited) powers. The States, and by extension, the cities, are where most of the powers reside. New York City, for example, has already defied Trump on immigration. Its police is not federal. Nor is its educational system. Nor is its voter ID system. 

Because of Trump, the United States may constitutionally be reverting to Athenian democracy: The City State. Back to the future!!

Because of the American Thanksgiving holiday, there shall be no blog posting issued next week.

"Not My President!!" Screamed The Millions Against Trump!! So Do I!!

What the founders of America feared, has now happened. Those greats, 240 years ago, all aristocrats and educated elite, have feared mob rule. So they, in the Constitution, built a firewall to prevent that. Called the Electoral College, it is intended to filter the popular vote.

Though with an attractive name, "representative democracy" is no guarantee that the winner of the popular vote in a presidential election, does necessarily win the Oval Office. What counts here, by today's calculation, is the winner of at least 270 electoral votes. In recent history, it happened in 2000, in Bush v. Gore. Despite losing the popular vote, Bush became President. And now in 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. But Trump is now the President-elect.

On November 8, I voted for Hillary. But this, in America's representative democracy, the candidate whom I opposed, Donald Trump, cancelled my vote out. By comparison, when I, as a dual citizen (Egyptian American), voted for El-Sisi in 2014, my vote was tallied for the Egyptian presidential candidate of my choice. That is because in a country, like Egypt, you have "popular," not "representative" democracy.

With Donald J. Trump expected to be sworn in on January 20, 2017, as the 45th President of the U.S., America is a land of anxiety. Why?

• He has never held public office before. That is where a holder would normally get to such a position. Through the grueling practice of politics. And "politics" is essentially the art of compromise. Donald has never practised that art;
• Trump has worked assiduously, through his own voice magnified by his troupe of surrogates, to inject doubt about the conventions of government. He has weakened the trust in a sitting President, in the legislative and the judicial branches, and in the political parties, including his own party;
• Even before the results of this nasty campaign, he inveighed against the electoral system. Calling it "rigged," is not reflecting the popular will, needs to be closely monitored by his supporters, and is driven by faulty polls and "corrupt media;"
• Donald has used, for his political advocacy, the weapons of insults, smears, innuendoes, and cruel sarcasm, against anyone who dared to disagree with him. An expert in TV showmanship, he put fabrications ahead of facts, fear mongering ahead of "trust in America," violence ahead of conciliation, and bluster ahead of cool-headedness;
• He repeatedly declared "I love wars;" showed more respect for Vladamir Putin than he exhibited towards his own President; threatened to wall off America against immigration; manifested outright Islamophobia; and promised to undo America's alliances and treaty obligations;
• Trump, by his own declarations, has a manifest disconnect with the global fight against terrorism. His claim about his possession of a secret plan to fight DAESH (ISIS) is laughable. And his assertions that he knows about strategy "more than the generals" is lunacy. Especially that he has evaded serving in any military role or capacity;
• He regarded tax evasion and avoidance as adeptness at using the law as a vehicle for manipulation.

Keeping all the above in mind, to which we should add his disdain for women, his uncontrolled propensity for unwanted and offensive sexual advances, and his refusal to pay those who work for him, in violation of his contracts, how can Trump lead America of the 21st Century?

The danger of a mobocracy which produced a Trump presidency cannot be over-stated. He can have his way for "America First." But how can he be trusted with the nuclear code, with treating his political adversaries with respect, with the issues of climate change, the sanctity of treaties, free trade, and bolstering international institutions such as the United Nations family of organizations, about all of which he invented stupid accusations?

"Making American Great Again," his battle cry, implies that America has been on a slippery slope due to a dysfunctional system. Any system of governance is always in need of change, because circumstances keep on changing. But how can President-elect Trump walk back from an ideology of "making America hate again?"

His unpredicted and unmerited victory has been due to an electoral system in which he does not believe. It  was also due to the rise of the poorly educated white population in the industrial belt who blamed economic unequality on the wrong party -the immigrant. The browning of America (by the year 2030, the white demography shall be at 45%). The culture of fear was Trump's daily tool which was allowed a cost free microphone 24/7. And the length of the Clintons exposure on the American stage for 3 decades entailed the negative cost of over exposure.

An era of American history has just ended on November 8, 2016. And an uncertain era of anxiety has just begun. The writing is on the wall:

• Through gerrymandering, the Republican Party, the party of war and foreign interventions, has built institutions at the state level. The result: 38 out of 50 state governors are Republican; both houses of Congress have Republican majorities sent through State elections;
• Since the passing of Justice Scalia, the US Supreme Court has been functioning without its full complement of nine justices. Votes of 4 to 4 means non-revision of the judgments of lower courts. A defacto nullification of the Supreme Court's role of judicial review. Now a Republican President, with expected support from a Republican majority in the Senate, can name and appoint conservative justices. Thus tilting the highest court of the land further to the right;
• Undoing the historic Obama signature legislative achievement, "The Affordable Care Act." Providing health insurance so far to nearly half of the 40 millions Americans who cannot afford health insurance; 
• Cutting income taxes for the top 1% of Americans (the billionaire class);
• Threatening to deport en masse 11 million undocumented immigrants, before "allowing them to re-enter America legally." Thus tearing the fragile fabric of poor families whose adults have invested their energies in jobs not preferred by American citizens;
• Supporting the National Rifle Association (NRA), under the deceptive mask of supporting the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. There are 350 million guns in the hands of 9 million Americans. Annualy causing 30,000 deaths by gun violence all over America;
• Pretending to be charitable to worthy causes, such as the American veterans, when in fact hardly any contributions were made; and
• Threatening to sue all women (so far the total of 12) who have come forward accusing him of criminally assaulting them sexually.

Trump has called President Obama "a traitor;" threatened to institute criminal prosecution against Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for what he has fabricated as her "gross negligence" in Benghazi. That is where the U.S. Ambassador and 4 other Americans were killed by marauding Libyan militias. It was the Republican's in Congress who had refused to fund diplomatic security arrangements abroad. And the unfortunate death of that Ambassador was due to his decision to travel from Tripoli to Benghazi where no security at that US facility was up to par.

Trump's presidency shall undoubtedly reflect the deep chasms in American society; the decline of conventional norms of governance in Washington, D.C.; the absence of the citizen's trust in law and order measures and institutions, including the FBI as a neutral investigative arm of the Department of Justice; the resurgence of torture of individuals suspected of terrorism. Thus upending the legal principle of "you are innocent until proven guilty by court of law."

Even the appointment of top experts to make up for the inexpertise of Trump in governance, shall prove to be a futile remedy. The Donald's span of attention is very short; he digresses instinctively; he failed 3 times in debating Hillary; he gets bored with details; and he has repeatedly declared that he relies only on his gut feelings.

Snakes have the natural capacity of changing their skin. But not their nature. "Healing wounds," declared by Trump upon securing 278 electoral votes (for Hillary's 208 votes), shall be an impossibility for Trump, a racist who has befriended the stalwarts of the Klu Klus Klan.

Even Trump's battle cry "Make America Great Again" is plagiarized. Its original author is James Fallon, national reporter of The Atlantic magazine. That is the title of his book published in 1989.

Yet there may still be a ray of hope of this USA -United States of Anxiety. In the Senate, the Republicans have 54 seats, not the majority of 60 needed to overturn important items of Obama's legacy. Neither the so-called Obama Care, nor the right to abortion (Trump has threatened women seeking abortion with punishment), nor existing treaties which are already the law of the land since 1832.

In her concession speech, Hillary Clinton urged her supporters to "continue to fight for what is right." She added "we must defend the American dream which is big enough for everyone." So the battle for the soul of America is not an end.

But the message of Trump's victory to the outside world is that as America has turned to the right and inward. So should other States, looking for an American global role, seek their salvation from within. "The Strong State" is the logical answer to the Trump so-called movement.

It is catastrophic to see Obama, a professor of constitutional law, be replaced by someone who was publicly challenged by a gold star father, Khizer Khan, a Muslim whose son, an American army officer was killed in Iraq. His words addressed to Trump shall live on for a long time: "Have You Even Read the U.S. Constitution!!"

Trump's elevation to the presidency of America is akin to the peasant rebellions of medieval Europe. The periphery, for long neglected, rising, avenging their neglect from the center.

In multiple cities, anti-Trump demonstrations broke out. By the thousands, they marched through the streets from coast to coast. Their slogan was "Not My President." This is a reverse echo of the chants by what those who could not accept a black man, Obama, to be their president. An early sign of a deeply divided nation.

Calls are now filling the air. Calling on the Democratic leadership to step aside. Its ineptness in ignoring the backwoods where "the forgotten" either voted for Trump or stayed home on election day, shall undoubtedly be punished. This now looks like a form of an "American Spring" where the Millennials, the minorities, the women, and the blacks are lashing at both Trumpism and the old guard of the Democratic party.

What makes America America are not only the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. To these, one should add underlying but vibrant concepts. These are freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, equality before the law, no formal State religion, no formal language, no king, freedom of movement, openness to immigration, civilian control over the military, freedom of the press, freedom of choice, an independent judiciary, and enforced respect for privacy. Above all, a peaceful and orderly transfer of power.

This entire fabric of what makes the U.S. an attractive place to live and prosper shall be severely tested by Trump -a racist and a xenophobe. An unqualified, narcissistic, lying bully, against whom a popular majority has voted on November 8, shall be sworn in on January 20, 2017 as the 45th President of the United States. A magnification of the failures of democracy -a term which has no precise definition in any legal dictionary.

November 8, 2016 marks a huge turning point in American history.

• It shall be the date on which a con man, a charlatan, was made President-elect;
• His elevation to lead this great and powerful country was not through a popular vote. It was through a dysfunctional system which delegates my vote to electors who can direct it to their choice, not mine;
• His victory is a defeat for an inclusive America, a post-racial America, and America which by its own constitution must separate between religion and the State, an America whose strength has been partly due to immigration, and partly through innovation;
• Regardless of present feverish attempts to make him act presidential, he shall always be what he has been for his whole 70 years of life -a rich man with no social conscience. You cannot make a pig attractive by applying lipstick to its mouth.

So, America, from now on, you have no claim to advise the world as to what democracy is, or how human rights might be observed; or how to run their national life.

The News Desk of the New Yorker magazine wrote: "The rest of the world is now at leisure to stand back and ponder the astounding dereliction of the American Presidential election."

Mr Trump: Like all the millions of Americans now planning to demonstrate against your presidency on January 20, 2017, I shall chant: You Are Not My President:

• For you have no faith in the principles under-girding the U.S. Constitution;
• Your presidency has happened through deceptive promises to masses which fear the future; and
• Your gutter language about "a rigged system" has made the teaching of national civics and respect for the law a real challenge. For it was an idiocyncratic system which made of you, a crooked billionaire who defied every norm, a president-elect.

The America which I have inhabited for 64 years has never elected for the presidency as vile a person as Trump. This shocking development has come about for a host of complex reasons. Not the least of these is that Obama soaring favorability could not be transferred to Hillary Clinton. The Latino-Black coalition exists in name only. One third of the Latin vote went to Trump, for the alluring promise of jobs. The threat of a wall on the Mexican border did not scare them off. And sizable numbers of the blacks did not vote. A non-vote, in effect, was a vote for Trump.

Now the only ray of hope for the de-Trumpization of America is in Trump's impeachment for any illegal act by him as President. Or in his voluntary resignation. Trump's removal, if it happens, would come at a much cheaper cost to America than threat of possibility of civil war.

In The Nile Valley, Two Heroes of Unity: One, Since 3100 B.C., Is Celebrated; The Other, Since 1954 A.D., Is Ignored.

History can be kind to some great leaders, yet unkind to other similarly great leaders.

In Egypt, there was Pharaoh Narmer (Mina) who united the two geographical parts of Egypt: the Delta, in the north, and the Valley in the south. Around 3100 B.C., Narmer, not only established the First Egyptian Dynasty. He also brought Egypt, both Upper (meaning South), and Lower (meaning North) under one crown -His!!

The Narmer tablets, depicting that historic and enduring unity, are well known to Egyptians, especially those who, like myself, taught the History of Egypt in Cairo.

Our late Egyptology professor, Dr. Ahmed Badawi, drilled in our heads the name Narmer, at the University of Heliopolis. He even exhorted us to stop by the historic hotel called Mina House, located till today at the foot of the Giza Pyramids.

What Narmer accomplished for Egypt in regard to that geographic unity, the British, during their heinous occupation (1882 - 1954) could not undo. Trying to create North Egypt and South Egypt (Divide and Rule), they utterly failed. Unity, one could assuredly say, is in Egypt's DNA.

From Narmer, a celebrated unity hero for the past 6000 years, to another Egyptian hero, Muhammad Naguib, first President of Egypt (1953 - 1954) who, until now is totally ignored. His dream of unity, though not attained, would have brought the Nile Valley, from the Mediterranean to Uganda into one proud entity, with the great Nile as its spinal cord.

Naguib's failure in accomplishing that breath-taking mission was not for lack of trying. It, as could be seen from his memoirs, was due to the Nasser coup of 1952, with its participants turning against one another. It boiled down to Naguib, whose mother was Sudanese, and Nasser, whose family hailed from Upper Egypt. Near South versus Deep South. A historic catastrophe which changed the entire history of the modern Middle East.

The Naguib vs. Nasser split had to do with different outlooks, personal, political and geostrategic. Naguib, the fatherly face of the Nasser Coup, was in favor of democracy in Egypt and of Egyptian/Sudanese unity. But Nasser, the young photogenic face of the army rebellion against the monarchy of King Farouk, guiding Egypt east (Nach Ost -as they say in German) for leadership of the Arab World.

The result: expulsion and imprisonment of General Naguib; the declaration by the Sudan of its independence in 1956; thrusting of Egypt in non-winnable Middle Eastern wars; the destruction of Egyptian democratic institutions until the revolutions of 2011 and 2013; and the unintended consequences of the growth of Islamism in Egypt, especially under President Sadat.

Returning now to the question which should haunt, if not all Egyptians, at least those who care about the full projection of Egyptian history and politics. Thus I turn to the memories of Muhammad Naguib, published in Arabic under the title of "I was President of Egypt" (Konto Raiisan Li Misr).

For fairness, I have no means of verification of what Naguib argues in those memoirs. Except for two circumstantial pieces of evidence: The outcome of the Nasser/Naguib conflict; plus my personal knowledge of President Naguib when he was alive.

I was his son's teacher in the early 1950s at the Model School of Al-Naqrashi Pasha at Qubba Gardens, Cairo. His character was stellar; spoke modestly  and sincerely; and was attentive to the quality of education in post-war Egypt. He was also loved by his troops forming the Frontiers Battalions (Selah Al-Hodood).

These were reasons why the Free Officers, led by Nasser in that historic coup against monarchical Egypt in 1952, chose him to front that rebellion.

Without summarizing those 420 pages, published in various editions from 1984 to 2003, my focus in this blog posting is the junctures of that rift whose consequences are still present. Even within the scope of that limited material, I shall focus on the manifestations of that rift as they impacted the destruction of the Naguib dream of unity between Egypt and the Sudan.

As an army officer and a patriot who participated in the Egyptian uprising of 1919 against British occupation, Naguib, throughout his life, called himself "Son of the Nile." 

His maternal grandfather, Muhammad Othman Bek, was a senior Army officer stationed in Khartoum., the Sudan. The Mehdi rebels in the Sudan in the late 1880s spared his life in recognition of Othman's commitment to Nile Valley amity.

Naguib's entire family lived in the "Anglo-Egyptian Sudan," named as such by the diktat of the British occupiers of Egypt. A major stratagem of Great Britain in the Nile Valley was of dual nature. To separate Egypt from the Sudan, and to separate the Sudanese north from the Sudanese south.

That divide and rule approach was premised on ethnic and religious lines: North of Malakal was "Arab and Muslim;" south of that point was "Negroid, and either Christian or animist." 

Following on his father's footsteps, Naguib graduated from the Cairo Military Academy in 1918. As with his father, his early service was in the Sudan. That is where some members of his family still live, and where his father was buried. Fondly, Naguib recalls his childhood in the Sudan, his camaraderie with the Sudanese, and his mother being Sudanese.

A total immersion which provided Naguib with a purely Nilotic outlook which did not recognize the line of demarcation between Egypt and the Sudan.

Such outlook was deepened by Naguib's early education in the Sudan. From Wad Madani, south of Khartoum, to Wadi Halfa, south of the Egyptian border. His icons were Sudanese officers and educators looking for British departure and for unity with Egypt.

So were Naguib's experiences in the Upper Nile region (south Sudan) as he had to travel with his family to wherever his father was transferred throughout the huge expanse called the Sudan.

At that time, the Sudan was geographically the largest African country, endowed with unlimited resources: water, land, diversified agriculture, huge animal resources, and a population full of pride and passion for being Sudanese.

Orphaned at the age of 13, following his father's death at the age of 43 in Khartoum, Naguib, though impoverished, was admitted into Khartoum's Gordon College. That was an exception, as the British occupation prevented Egyptians in the Sudan from applying for admission. But Naguib's father, though an Egyptian, was a senior officer in the service of "the Government of the Sudan."

His studenthood at Gordon was marred by his loyalty to Egypt. The sovereign in Cairo was "The King of Egypt and the Sudan." Not the British, a foreign occupier who saw to it that even the railroad from Cairo to Aswan would not be connected to the railroad in the Sudan -a few miles from that connection.

While being a student at Gordon College, Naguib's loyalty to that natural and historic unity caused him trouble. He refused to take down a text dictated by a British professor. In part, the text said that "Egypt was ruled by the British." 

Standing in protest, Naguib was defiant: "Sir!! Britain is only an occupier of Egypt. Egypt is internally self-ruled, but is a part of the Ottoman Empire." His punishment was 10 lashes administered to his back. "I submitted to that degrading punishment, without even opening my mouth out of personal pride."

Naguib was in fact an Egyptian Sudanese, not fitting in the mold of Nasser whose gaze was not South, but East. His fronting the Nasser coup and becoming Egypt's first president proved to be a painful ordeal.

• He felt that the Free Officers caused more harm to the cause of democracy and party politics than those opposed to the coup;
• He posited that "We dismissed King Farouk but replaced him with 13 other kings;
• He bemoaned his inability to stand up to "the increasing Nasser dictatorship;"
• Out of disgust with the direction of the Nasser's coup, Naguib submitted his resignation to the "Revolutionary Command Council," made up of members of the Free Officers who submitted to Nasser's authoritarianism.
• Before submitting that resignation on February 22, 1954, he confronted the entire Command Council accusing them of influence peddling, financial corruption, and other deviations, such as the establishment of "an Egypt as a State ruled by central intelligence."
• His options were: either to exercise his authority as president, or to resign and let Nasser have his way. One of Naguib's central complaints was that he was forced to sign off on decisions by the high military command which were issued and then brought to him afterwards for a pro forma endorsement.
• As to the Sudan, Naguib who felt the inner pulse of the Sudanese more than any other member on the Revolutionary Command Council, saw that the complaints voiced by the Sudanese were on the upswing. Especially after the plebiscite on unity with Egypt, where the vote was seven for unity, and one for independence.
• Naguib was convinced that Nasser felt that "the Sudan was a burden on Egypt, and should be jettisoned." One of Nasser's side kicks was Salah Salem who advocated that "the Sudan was definitely lost;" a shock for Naguib!!
• Naguib's bottom line was that the Revolutionary Command Council sacrificed the unity of the Nile Valley, and acted accordingly, causing protests in Khartoum where the crowds chanted "Sudan is for the Sudanese."

Imprisoned till his death, Naguib bemoaned that his name was expunged from schoolbooks in Egypt; that he was beaten and insulted by officers who were encouraged to disregard his prior status as a patriot, and his having been the first president of Egypt.

In his memoirs, he expresses his deep pain for the rising Nasser dictatorship, the loss of the unity of the Nile Valley, and the conversion by Nasser of Al-Azhar to a mere department for religious affairs.

Naguib's championed the unity of the Nile Valley. To him, it was a means of bolstering the backbone of the Arab homeland through the creation of a strong State at the Arab geographic midpoint. He is more than deserving rehabilitation, though posthumously. That would be a means of rectification of that gap in the history of modern Egypt.

If Narmer is celebrated as the unifier of Egypt after 6000 years of his rule, so should Naguib who, in the early 1950s, saw in Egypt a fulcrum for a larger unity.

When I was sent as legal counsel to Darfour, the Sudan, in 2006 by the UN Security Council, I experienced sudden pain for what had been lost by the destruction of that unity. It was as if Naguib, from his grave, was whispering: "See what has become of this beautiful land once that unity vanished."