Small hands with foot in the mouth

The anatomy of politics is vertical. Stature is the slogan in elections. Some leaders are elevated and some are cut down to size. Narendra Modi, during his election campaign, added a horizontal aspect to India’s power play by  throwing down the gauntlet of a 56-inch chest. In the ongoing US poll campaign, Donald Trump is having problems with his Y-axis. As his X-axis gets shorter, his persona is being measured by Americans at Madame Tussauds in Times Square, causing much mirth.

The part of Trump’s anatomy up for discussion is his hand. On the wall of the wax museum is mounted a cast of his hand for people to compare theirs with. Trump has leprechaun hands—7¼ inches long, which is smaller than the average for an adult male. The usual jokes apart, the question most of America has begun to ask is does the size of his hands suggest that he has a pea brain?

On all accounts, he does.

The farce began when Trump, during the Republican primary, called his rival, Florida senator Marco Rubio, “Little Marco”. Marco retorted, “He is taller than me, he’s like 6’2”, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5’2”. And you know what they say about men with small hands… You can’t trust them.” Trump shot back, “Rubio referred to my hands, saying ‘If they’re small, something else must be small’. But I  guarantee you, there is no problem.” The tumescent response wasn’t worthy of a presidential candidate. But that’s the comedy that is Trump and the tragedy of American politics. How does someone who typecasts Mexicans as drug dealers and rapists, hides the truth of his wife’s immigration credentials, and attacks the parents of a Muslim captain by Islamic terrorists become the presidential nominee of a mainstream political party?

It reveals what ails America—ignorance.

Its isolation is its bane. For one of the richest  nations in the world, the majority of Americans visit only countries they are culturally and geographically comfortable  in—Canada and Mexico. Americans have travelled to just 2 per cent of the globe. The average American lives in a state of Walt Disney nescience: a study found while 22 per cent of Americans could name all five members of the Simpsons family, only one in 1,000 knew the US Constitutional freedoms. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart confessed he did not know the definition of pornography! Some 81 per cent US citizens have never heard of Martin Luther King. Only half the US population knows the difference between Republicans and Democrats. Only 20 per cent of American youth, aged between 18 and 34, read newspapers. And just 11 per cent regularly read news on the Internet.

There you are. America, shut to the world, ignorant even about itself, is the most powerful nation on earth. This uninformed, inward-looking  section of America is Trump’s constituency. They deserve each other. The wannabe President of the United States declared Russia has not invaded Crimea. He said IS should be nuked and trade war with China is the answer. But even the ill-informed American seems to know better now. The secretive Hillary Clinton seems a better choice than a President who leads with his feet. Trump’s small hands are losing their grip over voters. His footsize, too, is getting smaller by the day.

ravi@newindianexpress.com

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