For reasons having to do with credulity in the face of reality, illusions in the face of facts, religious stupidity in the face of reason, the bulk of Lebanon's Maronites are in love with Donald Dumb.
Throughout their history, they always adulated the "Strong man" who comes onto the scene with bravado and machismo, loses his battle, then turns against his own declared principles and makes a deal with his erstwhile enemy. Michel Aoun is the perfect example.
At the presidential elections of 2016, two and a half years late because of Aoun's Hezbollah ally's scuttling the constitutional process, the Maronites continued to believe that Aoun, being a shorty imbecile general with a Napoleon complex, would be a "strong" president. Alas, his ascent to the presidential chair in Baabda proved the opposite of everything the Lebanese imagined him to be. He turned out to be a traitor who, time and time again, sold his country to Syria and its Iranian Hezbollah ally against whom he waged wars in the 1980s under the pretext of "liberating" the country. Aoun, as former Army Chief, continued to disparage his own national army as "incapable" and promoting the enemy of the Lebanese State, Hezbollah, as the sole defender of Lebanon. He even founded a political party that turned out to be a hotbed of cronyism, family-led party of Fascistic autocrats pretending to be different from the other Christian parties which are also family-led parties of Fascistic feudal autocrats. That party is right now disintegrating before our eyes; the Aoun followers couldn't even do a bad job, let alone a good one.
For decades, the mentally defective Lebanese-Americans of the Maronite denomination supported Republican candidates and presidents. I never understood why. When asked, they would respond with the same lies and fabrications they hear on television channels like Fox News. Idiots like Atef (Tom) Harb are often interviewed on Lebanese television channels about the US presidential elections, and Harb blurts out the inanities that he hears coming from the mouth of the deluded demented Trump: It was the non-existent leftwing Antifa that attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, or Trump did not lose the election, it was stolen from him. Pathetic.
Again, I do not understand why the majority of Maronites, and many Lebanese in their footsteps, think of themselves as beacons of intelligence and endlessly repeat that Lebanon is simultaneously a country of enlightenment and culture AND a deeply religious country that sends candidates for beatification to the Vatican like Henry Ford used to make cars, on an assembly chain. Yet, looking around, all one sees is garbage strewn everywhere, poorly marked roads and streets, rudeness and dangerous driving, electric power outages, no running water, illegal Syrians having invaded the country, corruption everywhere, not just in state institutions but in dealings between individuals....
The height of Lebanese bragging about their greatness is that they are "smart" in ripping one another. In civility they see weakness, in courtesy they see vulnerability, in modesty they see poverty.... You know what public beaches are called in Lebanon? "The beaches of the poor". Literally. Why? Because 90% of Lebanon's beachfront property has been stolen by the wealthy corrupt political elites, and because a Lebanese wouldn't be caught dead going to a "poor's beach", the Lebanese go to the fancy and very expensive resorts owned by the cronies of the corrupt political elites where dark-skinned maids are not allowed to swim in the pools lest they stain the water, and where as soon as you arrive you are hounded by illegal "valet" parking goons who charge you an arm and a leg just so you look like a VIP. Showoff should be the motto of the Lebanese lemon republic.
And these are the people who love Donald Dumb because he sells them showoff and superficiality on a bed of lies and fabrications. No wonder they are - or really pretend to be - religious mongrels who have dotted their beautiful mountains with hundreds of statues of saints and the Virgin Mary in exchange for one thing or another, just like in the Middle Ages in Europe - the relationship of backward people with religion is a mercantile one: I'll worship you IF you heal my cancer; I'll build a statue for you IF you make me rich. I'll light a candle for you IF you let my son pass his seventh grade exams. You get the point.
Now you have a sense why the so-called Lebanese American lobby consisting of the Maronite "Corporate" Church's shills in the US, along with the dozens of barbaric political parties that have transplanted themselves in toto to the United States, bringing with them their stupid divisions and bickerings, incapable as they are of any sense of solidarity and collegial work toward a common goal. No wonder then that the Maronites and the Christians have been treated like a filthy rag by their friends and enemies alike, without ever winning a single political victory. They have been ricocheting from one crisis to another for the past 50 years and they are about to disappear like their brethren in Iraq, Syria and Israel have.
The Maronite Church ought, in times of crises and jeopardy, to unify its faithful and organize their survival. Instead, it fights the public schools and forces people to send their children to its own schools where it charges them tuitions one sees only in super-advanced countries' private schools. It even demands that the State fund religious schools. The Maronite Church runs hospitals - in fact, every religious cult has its own medical school and its own hospital - that charge fees that are beyond the reach of the economically depressed people of the country; they won't admit you unless you pay in advance, and if after the surgery or treatment you can't afford to pay, they won't release the patient or the dead body of the deceased patient. This is in a time of absolute collapse of the State and the country.
I thought that at a time of such an existential threat to the community, the leaders of the community (unfortunately consisting of either the religious dinosaurs or the church-affiliated feudal tribal leaders) should make some sacrifices for their people. How about having their army of fattened nuns and priests teach for free in order to reduce the costs of teaching. How about distributing lands to encourage self-sufficiency. Most of the lands owned by the Church are in fact donated by people who fled the country to no return because of the interminable crises. In other words, the Church encourages destitution to force people to emigrate, relinquish their lands to the Church, and send money from overseas. The entire economy of the country is based on the following program: Teach the children just enough languages and know-how so they can emigrate, find work abroad and send money back to the country. But soon, there won't be enough young Lebanese left to run the country or even emigrate.
Finally, back to why the Maronite morons of the Lebanese American community love Trump is that Trump declares hating the Muslims which, in the ignorant minds of the so-devout Lebanese Christians, means that by default Trump must love the Christians. But all they have to do is look at their tragic history of the past 5 decades: Betrayed again and again by Republican Trump-like administrations that chose to sell Lebanon and its Christians to Syria, Iran and Hezbollah because the Republicans have interests in the Muslim world for which they have always been willing to sell puny useless Lebanon and its Christians.
Ronald Reagan sent the Marines to Beirut in 1982 to assist Yasser Arafat PLO's evacuate safely from Israeli-besieged Beirut. Not to help the government of Amin Gemayel re-establish the rule of law after a decade of Palestinian-Syrian-Arab violence. Iran, Syria and Hezbollah (only one-year old at the time) bomb the Marines headquarters in Beirut in 1983, killing 241 US Marines and servicemen. What does the Republican hero Reagan do? He flees the scene taking his body bags and remaining Marines, and abandons Lebanon to Syria, Iran and Hezbollah. Had the coward stayed and fought back - the French, British and Italian armed contingents were with him, the Israelis were there with him, the Lebanese Christians and the Lebanese army were with him to assist in securing tiny Lebanon against Syrian and Iranian influence - the Lebanese war would have ended with great benefit for the US, Lebanon and Israel. We would not be where we are today with Iran and Hezbollah posing the threat they do.
Ronald Reagan inherited the hostage crisis with archenemy Iran from Jimmy Carter in late 1979, early 1980, and solved it by paying off the Iranians. With that lucrative mechanism, Iran instructs its Hezbollah proxy in Lebanon to kidnap dozens of American and foreign hostages (academics, clergymen, journalists, and even mediators) that are held in barbaric conditions for years. To solve the problem, Reagan surrenders to the blackmail and starts sending weapons to Iran on Israeli planes landing in Tehran airport. Iran takes its time and releases the hostages by the dropper, one at a time and with increasing demands for more weapons. When the stench of treason began wafting in Washington, the asinine genius Reagan decides to have the Iranians pay for the weapons directly to the armed Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Between 1981 and 1986, Reagan administration officials secretly and illegally sold arms to Iran, in contravention of the arms embargo imposed at the time. Reagan then used the proceeds of the arms sale to Iran to fund the Contras. All of this to get Iran to release the Beirut-held hostages.
By 1988, with the other Republican numskull George HW Bush in power, Lebanon faced a presidential election that could have saved the Christians from further defeat. Instead of backing the Christians who wanted free elections without Syrian and Iranian interference, Bush and his filthy State Department secretary James Baker the Turd sided with then Saudi-backed Damascus butcher Assad to impose a Syrian puppet for president - the famous "Mikhail Daher or chaos". The Lebanese Christians rejected the American diktat and suffered bombings and shellings and ultimately a monumental loss to the Syrians and the Muslims. Syria bombed the presidential palace and completed the takeover of the country by the Stalinist regime of the Assad family in Syria.
Between 1990 and 2005, Lebanon lived under a Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah Gulag of crimes, corruption, kidnappings, assassinations and such other refined methods of Islamic peacekeeping. It took only 9-11, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2005 assasssination by Syria and Hezbollah of the Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri who was a US-Saudi puppet to cause a slight, but superficial, shift in US policy on Lebanon.
Why do the Lebanese Americans continue to think that the republicans will help Lebanon's Christians is beyond understanding. It is, by every evidence, based on the ignorant assumption that because the GOP - and therefore Trump - always claim to want a Christian America, they will automatically protect Lebanon's Christians. The facts however are otherwise. Not only does the history detailed above point to the blindness of assuming some political convergence on the basis of religion, but American Protestantism hates Maronite Catholicism and will never make a sacrifice in its favor. Lastly, what does Lebanon have to offer America? A few saints and a backward anti-science culture, a few individualistic billionnaires who care less for Lebanon than give it a handout once in a while,... not much really when you compare it with what Israel contributes to the US. The Israelis have a unified well-funded collectively organized Jewish lobby in the US. What do the Lebanese Christians have? A disorganized, divided, poorly funded, individualistic vision-lacking bunch of morons who love the greatest dumb convicted felon the US has ever produced, one Donald Dumb.
Good luck with all of that.
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