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American carnage is over: Why Donald Trump's inaugural speech was terrifying

President Trump sounds a lot like candidate Trump and the man who was once stunned by Stone Cold Steve Austin will now have access to nuclear codes.

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A day after his inauguration, my mother, a retired college professor in Kolkata expressed her disbelief at the fact that Donald J Trump was now President of the United States of America. She had been optimistic that Hillary would win and break the final glass ceiling in US, and her consternation at Trump’s inexplicable victory is understandable. But that’s how the cookie crumbles and despite getting 2.86  million fewer votes than Hillary, Trump is now the POTUS and if you thought President Trump was going to be any different from candidate Trump, then we have to tell you that joke is on you. 

The speech made it clear that President Trump is not going to be different from candidate Trump as his inaugural address was an extension of the twisted dystopia he has been selling to the American people. As outgoing president Obama and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton watched on, Trump proceeded to paint a picture of America under siege where he was the Pied Piper, the only man who could lead the nation out of the doom and gloom.

Claiming that Washington DC had gotten rich at the behest of rest of America, Trump promised to ‘give it back to the people’ a la Bane. Borrowing from the mumbling warlord from The Dark Knight Rises as he says: “Today's ceremony, however, has a very special meaning because today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the people."

Maybe this was an inside joke, hitting out at Mark Hamill for reading out Trump’s tweets in his Joker voice, but all in all Trump’s inaugural address was a speech full heavy on dystopia and darkness, as he promised to lead America out of the darkness.

The America before Trump, if one were to believe his speech, was bleak.  He said: “But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation … and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealised potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”

He claimed that American industry had enriched foreigners, that Uncle Sam had subsidised armies of other country’s which had hurt its own military and they had spent ‘trillions abroad’ as America fell into despair. He promised to live by two rules – 'buy American and hire American'.

Trump’s speech was a microcosm of his campaign as he sold nativism and protectionism as the means to lift America from his imagined doom with the promise that only he could do it.

 Claiming that the ‘wealth of the middle class had been ripped from their homes and redistributed across the world’, he said America would protect its borders from ‘the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our job’.

Followed by this there was the usual rhetoric of ‘winning again like never before’ and bringing back jobs and wealth and building roads and tunnels, getting people off welfare and rebuilding the nation with American hands.  How he was going to do that, beyond threatening companies on Twitter, is anyone’s guess but hey, he’s the man with the plan with the richest cabinet in US history.

Of course, there was the war cry of uniting the civilised the world against ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ which would be completely eradicated from the face of the Earth, Trump using the I-word to differentiate himself from his predecessor.

Trump’s speech will leave America’s allies wondering what’s next, while Putin will probably be smirking knowing that advertently or inadvertently, the man he wanted in the White House is firmly lodged there.

For the rest of us who watch in shocked and awe, it’s a new beginning, and we really don’t know what’s going to happen next. All we know is that a real-estate mogul turned reality star, who was on the receiving end of a Stone Cold stunner, is now the leader of the free world and the most powerful man on earth. And that it is no longer a joke, the Donald is in the White House. God bless America and save us all.

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