"These are the times that try men's souls"- Thomas Paine
The election of Donald Trump to the Oval Office is a disaster for America. It is a huge victory
for the most vulgar and reactionary political and cultural forces
domestically in America. Internationally speaking it's a victory for
nativism, identity politics, authoritarianism and bigotry.
Reactionaries all around the world from Putin in Russia to Marine Le Pen
in France and even Islamic Jihadists have praised the election of
Trump. This is a defeat for the republic, its constitution and its
cherished ideals.
Like
most people I believed Hilary would win. I thought Trump was well and
truly finished with the Access Hollywood revelations and even the last
minute FBI probe into Clinton's emails would not be enough to save him.
How wrong I was.
The
mainstream media and most political commentators and pollsters were
wrong too. Few people, if they are honest, saw this coming.
It
seemed too ridiculous that at the helm of the most powerful country -
and arguably empire- in the world would be that guy from The Apprentice.
Nonetheless,
it is amusing to see on social media and in the political commentary
people playing the blame game and blaming their pet scapegoats for the
election of Trump.
Hilary
supporters will blame Berniebros, Wikileaks, James Comey, Russia and
third party voters for sabotaging her campaign. Conservatives claim
Barack Obama and his policies enabled Trump. People on the cultural left
are blaming white people and their 'unbearable whiteness'. Those who
would call themselves 'anti-regressive left' liberals blame 'the left'
for driving voters to Trump because of their promulgation of political
correctness, identity politics and even 'anti-white racism'.
At
this point searching for the scapegoat is pointless, especially when
all that it motivates is scoring points with adversaries on Twitter. If
we wish to understand the precarious position we are currently in then
we need to understand the political and economic forces that enabled the
Trump phenomenon.
There are two main narratives used to explain the election of Trump.
Some think it was a revolt by the downtrodden against elites by an
economically insecure working class who are victims of globalisation.
Some Liberals having none of it and
feel it was a 'whitelash'; the expression of angry white people fueled
by racist rage, reacting in opposition to liberal, multi-cultural,
cosmopolitan America as represented by the presidency of Barack Obama.
It is true that 58% of whites voted for Trump,
while 88% of African Americans backed Clinton. Trump was supported by
53% of men, Clinton by 54% of women. Similarly 55% of over-45s voted
Trump, while 55% of 18-29 year-olds chose Clinton. Three-quarters of
those educated to postgraduate level supported Clinton; barely a
third backed Trump. 81% of white evangelicals voted Trump, and just
16% backed Clinton.
Superficially, this may support the 'whitelash' thesis since the
majority of whites voted for Trump. But in reality, it is more complex
than that.
The majority of white voters may have supported Trump, but he gained only 1% more white support than did Mitt Romney in 2012. On the other hand, 29% of Hispanics voted for Trump, an 8% rise from 2012.
This isn't to say racism and white nativism has nothing to do with the
reasoning of those who supported Trump. Trump's isolationist rhetoric
and his views on Muslims and immigration do appeal to a white nativist
tradition that has a long history in America. An example being the Know
Nothing party of the 19th century who rallied against Chinese and Irish
Catholic immigration because they perceived it as a threat to the White,
Anglo-Saxon, Protestant identity that was dominant in America.
In addition, it is known that White nationalist movements and groups
like the Ku Klux Klan and the alt-right endorsed Trump and were
certainly elated when he won. Moreover, there has been reports of hate crimes and racial abuse occurring against minorities.
Some have turned out to be false, but this still a worrying development that ought to be condemned. So yes, it has something to do with race. Not nothing and not everything, but something.
On class, 53% of those earning less than $30,000 voted Clinton,
while only 41% voted for Trump. This does weaken the claim that Trump’s
success was rooted in working class hatred of the Washington
establishment. But what the figures show is that among the poorest
sections of American society, who traditionally overwhelmingly vote
Democrat, there was a huge 16% swing towards Trump as compared to 2012
when they voted for Obama.
This shift reveals the most striking difference between Trump and Clinton voters. More than 75% of Trump supporters feel financially worse off today than in 2012, 72% of Clinton supporters feel better off.
When asked about whether life for the next generation would be
better, 59% of Clinton supporters thought it would better, 63% of
Trump supporters thought it would be worse.
Ultimately, both narratives of white nativism and economic insecurity
have some truth to them. The problem is both sides fall into the trap of
mono-casual explanations.
Different people can cast the same vote for different reasons and multiple factors can work at the same time.
Those who have suffered the effects of de-industrialisation and
'outsourcing' who have been left behind by globalisation and are
experiencing economic instability may have voted for Trump because they
naively believe he will bring back American manufacturing jobs and
economic security.
Others who are more economically comfortable and possess a racist
worldview may have voted for Trump because they were turned on by his
anti-immigration and anti-Muslim rhetoric.
The two are not purely distinct and mutually exclusive. They can also
interact, as people are more susceptible to fall into angry, parochial
nativism when they feel increasingly economically insecure.
The fact is there is mass disillusionment and disenfranchisement among
the working class and some sections of the middle class with both the
mainstream political parties - Republicans and Democrats.
Congress' approval rating is at an all time low. An exit poll from
last Tuesday suggested that 72% of voters thought that "the economy is
rigged to the advantage of the rich and powerful", 61% felt that
"traditional parties and politicians don’t care about people like
[them]", 68% agree that "traditional parties and politicians don’t care about people like [them]" and three-quarters believed that "America needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful".
Trump is no representative of the oppressed or a 'man of the people'.
His economic policy will invariably benefit the the rich and powerful,
not the working class, as well as almost wreck the US economy.
His authoritarianism will unfairly and/or unconstitutionally target
Muslims, Hispanics and others. Trump will arguably be the most
unpredictable president in American history. It will be horrible but
what form the horror will take is yet to be revealed.
I fear much of the political and media elite will draw the wrong lesson
from this election. During the campaign and now after the election some
were wondering, explicitly, if this animal called democracy is all that
it is cracked up to be, and that it may be democracy itself that is the
problem.
Take for instance Andrew Sullivan's much lauded essay for New York Magazine, entitled "America has never been so ripe for tyranny".
His argument is essentially that Trump is what happens when ordinary
people are given too much say in the political realm or in his own words
"democracies become tyrannies when they become too democratic".
According to him the American system is supposed to 'cool and restrain
temporary populist passions', but in recent years democracy has become
too 'direct', meaning that people’s 'untrammeled emotions' can now shape
political discourse.
His solution to the right wing populism of Trump is for the rebuilding
of the 'elitist sorting mechanism' that allowed American politics to
remain kind of distant from the urges of the masses.
Elsewhere, in a new book called 'Against Democracy',
Jason Brennan, a political philosopher at Georgetown University argues
for an epistocracy. This is an 'aristocracy of the wise', who should
bare the responsibility of deciding political matters for those of us
who are of 'low information'- a cute technocratic euphemism for stupid.
The lesson I take from the election of Trump is not that there is too
much democracy in America, as Sullivan and his anti-democratic
cheerleaders would assert. It is that there isn't enough democracy in
America, either in its institutions or in terms of holding
representatives accountable.
Habitually voting for the lesser of the two evils like a thoughtless
drone isn't all there is to democracy - it’s about substance, debate and
the people having control over the future political direction of their
societies.
Over the past few decades, democracy in its very real sense has
withered away and has been replaced by technocracy and the rise of
expert cliques playing a significant role in shaping public life.
This is why Hilary was a bad candidate to run against Trump since she
perfectly represented the corrupt, liberal technocrat more interested in
representing corporate power than the American people.
"Where do we go from here?", you may ask.
No simple answer will suffice, but I can offer a few suggestions.
Firstly, we need stop being so obsessed with Trump and his odious
personality and start addressing the issues that lead many voters to
support him and the political forces that enabled him.
It is true that many of Trump's policies are immoral and repellent and
many of his supporters, following the example of their 'daddy', hold
obnoxious views about women and ethnic minorities.
It is also true that hardcore white nationalists supported Trump, which
is very worrying. But this should not blind us to the fact that many
others voted for Trump for very different motivations – because he seems
to be the only one that speaks to their grievances and expresses their
frustrations and pure rage with mainstream politics and the elites.
However, engaging with the concerns of Trump voters does not equal
pandering to their prejudices or embracing anti-immigration and
anti-Muslim rhetoric.
On the contrary, the vile ideas of Trump and his acolytes have to be unapologetically refuted.
No one is arguing for abandoning liberal principles, but mindlessly
calling Trump voters racist, ignorant, white trash and nothing else is
counterproductive and achieves nothing because you forbid yourself the
chance of potentially changing at least some of their minds.
Secondly, we need to revitalise popular and socially progressive
movements through which to resist the poisonous and corrupting effect of
money in American politics, to make the system more democratically
accountable and through which to link liberal ideas on individual
liberty, progressive economic arguments, accepting immigrants and a
belief in social solidarity that will ultimately challenge the status
quo and will make America, in the words of Martin Luther King, live up
to true meaning of its creed.
In other words, an alternative has to be offered that challenges the
status quo but is not the reactionary authoritarianism of Trump.
It has to be an alternative that also challenges Trumpism but is not the restrictive elitism of Sullivan and co.
It has to be rooted in radical, progressive and democratic values. It
must be able to capture the imagination of the American people and show
them that a better, more positive vision of American society is possible
and they have the power to realise it.
