Many months ago, Michael Moore got it right: “This wretched, ignorant, dangerous, part-time clown and full-time sociopath is going to be our next president”. He advised fellow-Americans who thought otherwise, to stop living in a bubble and face the truth. What is the truth?
The truth is strewn around in bits and pieces. Hilary Clinton’s “unpopularity” because she can’t be “trusted”, not even by a majority of white women! Bernie Sanders’ depressed liberal voters who just couldn’t sufficiently drag themselves out of bed to vote for Hilary. Working class anger in the electorally critical industrial states of the Upper Midwest at Democrat policies in support of NAFTA that had taken away hundreds of thousands of jobs. But in the final analysis, it all boiled down to one main factor: fear. This fear translates into the majoritarian, protestant, white man’s angry last stand against “Feminazi”, against blacks, gays, “Mozies’, “outsiders”, “them”, etc, who are threatening to “take over” America and end this white male’s domination of the last 240 years!
This is borne out by statistical facts. Given demographic changes, it is forecast that by 2042 the US will not be a white majority country. Conservative Republicans, in particular, will become a minority in the US. This rapid radical ethnic change that is based on immigration policies and birth rates, coupled with waning religious cultural practices among the young, is creating a sense of “dislocation” in white America. This dislocation has created an identity crisis that has led to the politics of identity: US vs THEM. This identity crisis is most marked among white protestant low education working class Americans whose fragility has aroused both anger and fear and compelled them to reassert their white supremacist vocabulary.
It is ironic that the very notions of economic and cultural globalization, multiple identities and political correctness that characterize the rising new millennium of freedom and assimilation have sparked a fearful reaction in the leader of the “free” world and “free” market. Immigration, refugees, jobs, outsourcing, brain drain, etc, are all manifestations of globalization that has created multiple identities and notions of equality and political correctness in the First World. Donald Trump’s victory is based on a correct reading and exploitation of white Christian society’s fears triggered by such dislocations.
It is all the more ironic that the impulse for change in America is not based on the sort of hope for the better – better defined as more culturally liberal and assimilative, more globally integrated, more politically equal, more free, more politically correct — that Obama and then Bernie Sanders inspired, but exactly on its opposite; that is, fear that the social change underway is unacceptable because it is “anti-American” (“give us our country back” effectively means “don’t erode white protestant supremacist ideology”). It is also remarkable that this anxiety has led to a wave of fear and loathing amongst the majoritarian liberal democratic regimes of Europe by fuelling similar sentiments among jingoistic and racist parties and groups.
Why did the pollsters get it wrong until the votes were counted? One reason may be that many Donald Trump voters did not want to be seen as being politically incorrect, so they lied about whom they had voted for by exorcising their anger and fear in the anonymity of the ballot box. No other American election to date has been based on such subliminal politically incorrect and divisive sentiments. What next?
Donald Trump has quickly moved to reassure Americans that he will be president of them all just as Hilary Clinton has exhorted her followers to continue the good fight for all the politically correct causes. The sense of angry dislocation is now palpable in the very section of state and society that is accused of it by the dislocated classes who have voted for Mr Trump.
However, Mr Trump in office may not be the same man Americans have come to loathe or love in opposition. Establishment real politik has a way of reasserting itself in foreign and defense policy. Europe will resist attempts to erode NATO. Big business will not allow Trump to dictate the terms of globalizing markets and capital. Even Republican Congress will not allow its pet themes and projects to wither on the vine. Indeed, since the popular vote is evenly shared, Trump is likely to meet with popular resistance if he tries to turn the tide back on issues like abortion and mixed marriages. Similarly, it is easy to promise jobs and difficult to deliver them by spurring higher rates of economic growth in just four years of economic policy making. The noticeable change may only be in tighter immigration controls and homeland security in relation to “them”. If he can significantly reduce income taxes, all America will applaud him. But again, that is easier said than done. Pro-India rhetoric is unlikely to be matched by anti-Pakistan action.
The world has waited with bated breath for the US electorate to decide. Now it will wait anxiously for four more years as Donald Trump unveils his policy architecture.
The truth is strewn around in bits and pieces. Hilary Clinton’s “unpopularity” because she can’t be “trusted”, not even by a majority of white women! Bernie Sanders’ depressed liberal voters who just couldn’t sufficiently drag themselves out of bed to vote for Hilary. Working class anger in the electorally critical industrial states of the Upper Midwest at Democrat policies in support of NAFTA that had taken away hundreds of thousands of jobs. But in the final analysis, it all boiled down to one main factor: fear. This fear translates into the majoritarian, protestant, white man’s angry last stand against “Feminazi”, against blacks, gays, “Mozies’, “outsiders”, “them”, etc, who are threatening to “take over” America and end this white male’s domination of the last 240 years!
This is borne out by statistical facts. Given demographic changes, it is forecast that by 2042 the US will not be a white majority country. Conservative Republicans, in particular, will become a minority in the US. This rapid radical ethnic change that is based on immigration policies and birth rates, coupled with waning religious cultural practices among the young, is creating a sense of “dislocation” in white America. This dislocation has created an identity crisis that has led to the politics of identity: US vs THEM. This identity crisis is most marked among white protestant low education working class Americans whose fragility has aroused both anger and fear and compelled them to reassert their white supremacist vocabulary.
It is ironic that the very notions of economic and cultural globalization, multiple identities and political correctness that characterize the rising new millennium of freedom and assimilation have sparked a fearful reaction in the leader of the “free” world and “free” market. Immigration, refugees, jobs, outsourcing, brain drain, etc, are all manifestations of globalization that has created multiple identities and notions of equality and political correctness in the First World. Donald Trump’s victory is based on a correct reading and exploitation of white Christian society’s fears triggered by such dislocations.
It is all the more ironic that the impulse for change in America is not based on the sort of hope for the better – better defined as more culturally liberal and assimilative, more globally integrated, more politically equal, more free, more politically correct — that Obama and then Bernie Sanders inspired, but exactly on its opposite; that is, fear that the social change underway is unacceptable because it is “anti-American” (“give us our country back” effectively means “don’t erode white protestant supremacist ideology”). It is also remarkable that this anxiety has led to a wave of fear and loathing amongst the majoritarian liberal democratic regimes of Europe by fuelling similar sentiments among jingoistic and racist parties and groups.
Why did the pollsters get it wrong until the votes were counted? One reason may be that many Donald Trump voters did not want to be seen as being politically incorrect, so they lied about whom they had voted for by exorcising their anger and fear in the anonymity of the ballot box. No other American election to date has been based on such subliminal politically incorrect and divisive sentiments. What next?
Donald Trump has quickly moved to reassure Americans that he will be president of them all just as Hilary Clinton has exhorted her followers to continue the good fight for all the politically correct causes. The sense of angry dislocation is now palpable in the very section of state and society that is accused of it by the dislocated classes who have voted for Mr Trump.
However, Mr Trump in office may not be the same man Americans have come to loathe or love in opposition. Establishment real politik has a way of reasserting itself in foreign and defense policy. Europe will resist attempts to erode NATO. Big business will not allow Trump to dictate the terms of globalizing markets and capital. Even Republican Congress will not allow its pet themes and projects to wither on the vine. Indeed, since the popular vote is evenly shared, Trump is likely to meet with popular resistance if he tries to turn the tide back on issues like abortion and mixed marriages. Similarly, it is easy to promise jobs and difficult to deliver them by spurring higher rates of economic growth in just four years of economic policy making. The noticeable change may only be in tighter immigration controls and homeland security in relation to “them”. If he can significantly reduce income taxes, all America will applaud him. But again, that is easier said than done. Pro-India rhetoric is unlikely to be matched by anti-Pakistan action.
The world has waited with bated breath for the US electorate to decide. Now it will wait anxiously for four more years as Donald Trump unveils his policy architecture.