“Democracy is tricky; it sometimes
ends up as a parody of itself. When the people clamour for change, they
can vote with their hearts, and prove impervious to plain sight reason,
and overlook likely pitfalls. We can only hope that Donald Trump does
not become the symbol of the change that Americans are seeking. That
would be sad indeed for the free world.” – Reuben Abati, “Anything Can
Happen in America”, The Guardian, March 6, 2016.
Earlier this year, I had written a piece titled “Anything Can Happen In America”,
from which the quote above is excerpted, but I had virtually no idea
that the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election could be so shocking,
unthinkable and unbelievable. I was like the pollsters, the cultural
activists, the Nobel Laureates, the American media establishment and the
global community, minus Russia and Vladimir Putin, a Clintonite. I
stood with her. When the unthinkable happened on Tuesday, and Americans
chose as their 45th President, Donald John Trump, the real estate
developer, reality television celebrity, a complete outsider who
stumbled on politics and turned it into a celebrity show, I could only
ask: how did it happen?
The triumph of Trumpism, a byword for
incorrect conduct, misogyny, hate, racism, nativism, isolationism,
anger, and defiance is sad news for the world. It is an assault on the
ideals of American democracy. Trump’s triumph has left America more
divided than it was a week ago, and the prospects of that nation
rescuing itself from the tragic mistake it seems to have made may take
long in coming. The same country that champions it the most has exposed
the underbelly of democracy, that beloved option for global leadership,
ironically.
Democracy is said to be driven by the
values of good rather than evil, of humanity as opposed to inhumanity,
individual freedom and rights rather than oppression, inclusion as
different from exclusion but the same model of governance hands over
power to the majority. As we have seen, the majority may not necessarily
represent the will of all the people, or even the real majority, it is
the choice that is made by the voting majority or as determined by the
guiding rules as in the case of the United States: and no matter how
stupid, illogical or unreasonable that choice may be, it is taken as the
voice of the people and it is binding. This dictatorship of the
determined majority has nothing to do with popular opinion or goodwill,
but the actual choice that is made according to the guiding rules of the
game.
Democracy, relying on the strength of
numbers and local rules has fed many countries with statistically right
but logically wrong outcomes. The outcome in the United States this week
is completely confusing. And that explains why there have been protests
across America by those chanting “not my president” to express their
dismay over Trump’s surprise win.
This is the first time in a long while
that the outcome of an American Presidential election will leave the
entire country so tragically divided the morning after. Even the
international community is in shock. Trump’s triumph is a threat to the
liberal standards on which the global order is anchored. Hillary Clinton
in her concession speech said her defeat is “painful and it will be for
a long time.” Not necessarily for her but for America and the rest of
the world. The deepest cut is in America’s heart; the wound that has
been inflicted therein by Americans themselves will be felt for a long
time to come.
This year’s American general election
should inspire a deeper interrogation into the nature of democracy and
its many pitfalls. The people of the United States had a plain choice
between good and bad alternatives.
More than any other American
presidential candidate in this election, Hillary Clinton got the most
impactful endorsements, yet she did not win. If the rest of the world
had been asked to vote, she would have won by a landslide, but it was up
to the Americans themselves to choose their own president, and they
have just told us to mind our own businesses in our countries.
Hillary Clinton is urbane, experienced,
charming and gifted. She has proved her mettle as First Lady, Senator
and as Secretary of State. She won the Presidential debates, ran a
dignified and organized campaign and won the confidence of every
critical constituency. Bernie Sanders who ran against her for the
Democratic party’s ticket and Donald Trump, as well as their agents in
many places threw mud in her direction, but the polls favoured her to
the last minute.
The pollsters have been proven wrong by
the choice that America has made. Hillary Clinton gave hope to
generations of women across the world. Her emergence as America’s
president would have broken the glass ceiling at the most powerful spot
in the world, and energized young men and women across the world.
America has decided to spit in the face of history and opt for misogyny
birthed by ultra-conservatism. Confronted with the obvious choice of a
decent, tested and experienced woman who could have given them the prize
of two Presidents for the price of one, they chose a foul-mouthed,
egoistic, bombastic, free-wheeling outsider with a wife whose body shape
and naked assets would be part of a yet uncertain legacy.
America’s future post-Trump’s triumph is
uncertain because what Trump stands for, the little that we know about
that, raises nothing but anxiety, definitely not confidence. America has
as President in waiting a man elected on the wings of sheer populism
and racist, nativist propaganda. His campaign was anchored on the
hate-propelled belief that the only way to make America great again is
to shut out Muslims, blacks, immigrants, intruding neighbours from
Mexico and Latin America, keep Americans for Americans only so they can
have jobs and prosper, and the spin that America is not safe in the
hands of women whom he considers fit only as objects and pieces of
decoration.
By voting Trump, America with its
intriguing electoral college system, which robs a popular candidate on
technical grounds, has deleted the triumph of American-led neo-liberal
progressivism in the global order. The sad news in part is that this is
also a growing trend in Europe, the equivalent of Brexit. Trump’s
triumph is however worse than Brexit. It is not likely “to make America
great again.” It is more likely to reduce, if not jeopardize America’s
influence as a stabilizing force in the global system. Donald Trump as
Presidential candidate repudiated America’s commitments within the
global system. He says he will pull out US troops and command stations
in Europe and Asia. If he keeps to his words, he could create such
instability across the globe that would result in countries which
otherwise depended on the United States looking out for themselves
security-wise.
Trump is perhaps America’s nemesis: too
much rationalization and over-simplification of everything was bound to
get the United States into trouble. The chasm between the American
establishment and its ordinary people has been blown open. Washington is
a living symbol of correctness on every stage, but now the people have
rejected Washington and its politics. There have been about 44 female
Presidents across the world, and now, the most powerful country in the
world has proven itself to be less progressive than India, Bangladesh,
Brazil, South Korea, Liberia, Ireland, Sri Lanka, Argentina, Croatia,
Nepal, Taiwan, Chile, Costa Rica, Philippines, Indonesia, Iceland,
Malta, and even Kosovo! America preaches inclusion and unity in
diversity, but the white, blue-collar and middle-class Americans who
voted majorly for Donald Trump have shown that the average American is
not interested in diversity; they want America to themselves alone.
America is not a country of nationalities, it is a country of
immigrants, and yet the settled immigrants want to shut the door of the
land of dreams to others. Donald Trump exploited their fears. He has
proven that it is possible to become president by appealing to the
people’s basest instincts. Shameful.
Trump, Machiavelli’s
“great-great-grandson” has through dirty tricks created a revolution
from which even the same party that saw him as an outsider and treated
his emergence as flag-bearer as an accident has benefitted. The
Republican Party owes its ascendancy in the White House and Capitol Hill
to this outsider who brought the tactics of Machiavelli, soap opera and
television shows to push a failing party back to reckoning.
Trump is neither Republican nor
Democrat; he belongs to the party of the streets, of a racist American
street motivated by a determination to reverse the misfortune of
disappearing jobs in inner America, inability of make ends meet, pay
children’s school fees or live decently. Americans chose Trump because
he spoke the language of the streets and projected himself as their
messiah. He projected himself, in his own words, as the champion of “the
forgotten men and women of our country…People who work hard but no
longer have a voice. I am their voice”. And so the people think, and so
they voted for him so enthusiastically they even handed him the
battleground states of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North
Carolina, which secured his victory and ended the emerging Clinton
dynasty. He is the candidate of America’s children of anger.
Trump’s organized blackmail and dirty
job may have given him the biggest job in the world but it will not
sustain him there or make him a great president. The easiest thing to do
is to promise the people change by pulling down the sitting government
and the entire political establishment.
In Trump’s reckoning, he did not just
defeat Hillary Clinton; he has defeated Barack Obama, the entire
Washington Establishment and its allies. Inexperienced, badly prepared
and ignorant, as is the common consensus, Trump has to run the most
complex governance system in the world. He can repudiate his campaign
promises and turn 360 degrees. This is not beyond him.
In the last year, his position on
anything and everything has changed from one stop to another. Or he may
choose to fulfill his bizarre promises and imperil the American
Presidency and the global order. One option will expose and ridicule
him. The other may fetch him the aggrieved assassin’s bullet or a
one-term presidency that could end up either as a tragi-comedy or a
nauseating farce.
The fulfillment of the Simpsons’ and
Michael Moore’s prophecy is the highest point of America’s
disillusionment. Soon enough, America will learn, at substantial cost,
new lessons about its new reality.
Take it easy, Hillary. Destiny is what waits for every person behind the dream.
Dr.
Reuben Abati was spokesman and special adviser, media and publicity to
President Goodluck Jonathan (2011 – 2015). He tweets from @abati1990.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the writer.
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