The 2016 US election brought America and the world the most surprising result in the history of democracy. While every pundit and political expert predicted a victory for Hillary Clinton, Donald J Trump won the presidency of the United States of America.
Mr. Trump and his unusual campaign techniques are off-limits to this article. It would be a far fetch to conclude that Mr. Trump was an agent of change or had any systematic political ideology in contesting the election in 2016. But it will be worthwhile to evaluate the symptomatic existence of Donald Trump and trace the root cause of his ascend to the top of the political epitome.
One needs to go back to understand how the most learned and educated people from the so-called most powerful country in the world made such an irrational decision. Just ten years before this election, in 2007-08, America and the world experienced the most dramatic financial crisis. This crisis was due to a bubbled housing market and had deep roots in exuberant spending by the corporate world and individual consumers. Many middle-income families lost their belongings along with their jobs and homes. This financial crisis left a daunting impact on the psyche of the middle class of America. Later the recovery from the crisis was remarkable for the US stock market and the personal wealth of high-earning people, but most of the middle class found themselves helpless at the end of the recovery. Many middle-income individuals could not find the same jobs, wages, or lifestyle due to the slow recovery of service sectors. As a result, the gap between many middle or low-earning families with the rich widened to an extent where it stands impossible to bridge.
.................................................................................................................................................................
तुम्ही ‘अक्षरनामा’ची वर्गणी भरलीय का? नसेल तर आजच भरा. कर्कश, गोंगाटी आणि द्वेषपूर्ण पत्रकारितेबद्दल बोलायला हवंच, पण जी पत्रकारिता प्रामाणिकपणे आणि गांभीर्यानं केली जाते, तिच्या पाठीशीही उभं राहायला हवं. सजग वाचक म्हणून ती आपली जबाबदारी आहे.
.................................................................................................................................................................
Historically, the American middle class fetched livelihood from manufacturing jobs for decades. The job sectors like mining started to lose their luster more rapidly than any other jobs. The middle-class working individuals, over the years, did not feel the necessity to upgrade themselves with the credentials of modern-day jobs. The manufacturing industry, especially automobile manufacturing started to show cracks way before this crisis as outsourcing became a trend.
The working class was especially hit hard and was completely caught off-guard when the financial crisis hit America and the world. An increasing number of businesses started to lay employees off as credit got contracting. As a result, people start losing their net worth at an alarming speed, sometimes along with the houses they live in. And when the recovery was around the corner, people did not find the skills required to secure a job in this market.
So what does this have to do with the Trump election? One might wonder. During the Obama era, at the beginning, the economy was affected by the financial crisis and the focus was to bring the stock markets back on track. The United States is a capitalist country. So when the capital is recovered, the businesses are recovered. With recovered businesses, jobs are back with people earning money and more importantly spending money on goods. While the government machinery was busy building this circle of capitalism back, efforts were seldom made to bring the lives of individual people back on track and cure the long-term systemic failures. For example, not a single individual was jailed or punished for such a colossal financial disaster. While the common person was still reeling from the problems, the rich, super-rich people appeared to have been recovering well. This sentiment or fear stayed in people's minds and Trump took advantage of that very well.
The Trump campaign promised that no modern-day president in the US would dare. One of the near-impossible promises the Trump campaign made was to bring back the mining and manufacturing jobs in America. To elaborate more, let us consider mining. Mining jobs were and still are improbable to come in large numbers because several states have emission laws that take precedence over the federal emission standard. It means if the state does not agree to emit more carbon in the air, it can overrule the mandate by the federal government to mine. During the financial crisis, most of the manufacturing moved out of the United States simply because manufacturing had become very costly in the US. Most companies preferred to manufacture outside of the US and assemble goods in the US. For example, in one car produced here in the United States, the spare parts travel four times between the US and Mexico before being put in the car.
Most voters were not aware of the fact that jobs Mr. Trump promised were not possible to be available as the companies could not afford to bring those projects back.
But elections are run on emotions. Even despite the glorious recovery of the financial market, the common perception of the politicians from both parties was not significantly positive for increasing the job demand. Tired of the normal politicians, the working class started liking this new non-political person considering him to be a straight shooter. Trump seemed to be the person who could talk the talk which benefited him immensely (and it took several years and is still not completely understood by the majority of the voters that he could not walk the walk). In addition to that the voters got the satisfaction of choosing the non-political, non-dynestical average person in the white house.
At the same time, a trend of populist or Nationalist governments started in many parts of the world around. With that came protectionism (for example - Make America Great Again or Make in India or Brexit). The Trump campaign imbibed the feeling of Americans being taken for granted and looted by the entire world. So the choice for the middle-class working people was to keep Hillary Clinton - whose association with big businesses was the point of contention - away from power. The middle-class working American wanted to elect this so-called street-smart person who claimed to have done many so-called successful businesses. The slogan for the Trump campaign was that America needed a better negotiator (to give people their rights back) and people believed it!
To analyze another data point, some portions of the voting fraternity can be termed as white supremacists. The resentment of these groups after Barack Obama was elected as President was concerning to him being an African American person. Trump personally approves of these groups and such a thought process by questioning Barack Obama's birthplace. (He has repeated this recently with Nikki Haley). Trump with the help of 'The Tea Party movement' made Barack Obama's election an issue of race and class. It will be highly debatable to think that he has much intellectual power to take any such stand. But the leader of a nation is as good as the people surrounded by him. During the 2016 election campaign, Trump was surrounded by people with extreme opinions giving him an edge in the political process.
The rest is what they call a political history. After a gap of four years after losing the election with almost 91 court cases and convictions against him, he is believed to have an upper edge in the 2024 election. In 2016, experts felt that he was the outcome of discontentment in people and not the cause of it. But in 2024, him being the presumptive nominee, shows an absolute lack of political acumen on a particular political party.
Political Templates Offered by Trump and Followed by World Leaders
One of the remarkable legacies, one can use such a term, of Trump's victory is making other world leaders follow his suit in governing.
One can find remarkable resemblance in the public behavior of leaders of the several democracies in the world.
Even after the magnificent election mandate in their favor, several of these leaders never really stepped out of the campaign trails. The early foreign visits from India's Prime minister were nothing but an extension of this campaign rhetoric. Mr. Trump too made sure that his tone was in re-election mode while in public rallies. A similar tone could be found in Bolsonaro of Brazil, Erdogan of Turkey, and Viktor Orban of Hungary.
The common theme of the euphuism for all these leaders was to demean their predecessors heavily. Technically one can ignore this as an electoral rhetorics. But it surely did not leave good taste when they chose to do so outside of their countries and in front of the world media where they were not facing their electoral population
Their absolute distaste for the media is also a resembling factor. The number of interviews these men have offered to their electoral population is minuscule (and if offered it is to the favored journalists). Some countries are having almost a decade of not having a single press conference offered by their leaders. While in response to the dislike of the media in in the United States, there was and still still a substantial number of media outlets talking heavily against Trump. The use of social media has been a commonality between these and several other leaders as a medium of communication for all these leaders. While a social media platform is a new norm, one can not ignore that a tweet is almost a monologue of opinion and can not be challenged or questioned like in a conversation. Both leaders have implemented rather a clever method of communicating policy-related decisions on social media that conveniently avoids appraisal from the press. Most of these world leaders have cleverly used social media platforms to spread misinformation while denouncing the mainstream media. The word 'fake news' has originated and became popular with Donald Trump using it more often. It is with the same mechanism Donald Trump is successful in making 61% of the registered Republicans believe that the last election was not fair and One of the most common traits in leaders is the populism and over-representation of the majority. Trump has not kept his emotions against the minority a secret. His policies against minorities have been judicially challenged and shot down several times and should have been otherwise considered his glaring policy defeat. But the policy against minorities is being utilized by leaders like Viktor Obran emulating Trump's vision of the United States.
In a study published by the Brookings Institute in 2019, just before both the US presidential election and India's general election democracy around the world is facing sharp challenges in the world. Specifically, four of them-the four "T's-identity, inequality, information, and interference. The template that Donald Trump has set in front of the world leaders impacts all these ‘I’s.
.................................................................................................................................................................
Facebookवर अपडेट्ससाठी पहा- https://www.facebook.com/aksharnama/
Twitterवर अपडेट्ससाठी पहा- https://twitter.com/aksharnama1
Telegramवर अपडेट्ससाठी पहा- https://t.me/aksharnama
Whatsappवर अपडेट्ससाठी पहा- https://shorturl.at/jlvP4
Kooappवर अपडेट्ससाठी पहा- https://shorturl.at/ftRY6
.................................................................................................................................................................
One of the ironic situations Trump put many of the first-time immigrants in the United States is that they dislike the opinions of Trump but at the same time like the similar policy in their country of origin. For example, individuals from Germany dislike how immigrants are treated in the US and want Trump to welcome them but at the same time, they dislike when the German Chancellor provides shelter to the refugees. The same can be said about the Bangladeshi residents or Rohingyas coming to India and the reaction of the Indian diaspora to it or dislike Trump selling copies of the Bible with the US Constitution but cheering the concept of state and religion mixing freely in India.
These are different times in the United States. With the increasing possibility of Donald Trump becoming the president again, chances are that he will try to write new chapters to his templates of controlling the regulatory bodies for other world leaders to follow and control the democracies in their countries.
.................................................................................................................................................................
लेखक सलील जोशी बोस्टन, अमेरिकास्थित असून माहिती व तंत्रज्ञान या क्षेत्रात काम करतात.
salilsudhirjoshi@gmail.com
.................................................................................................................................................................
‘अक्षरनामा’वर प्रकाशित होणाऱ्या लेखातील विचार, प्रतिपादन, भाष्य, टीका याच्याशी संपादक व प्रकाशक सहमत असतातच असे नाही.
.................................................................................................................................................................
तुम्ही ‘अक्षरनामा’ची वर्गणी भरलीय का? नसेल तर आजच भरा. कर्कश, गोंगाटी आणि द्वेषपूर्ण पत्रकारितेबद्दल बोलायला हवंच, पण जी पत्रकारिता प्रामाणिकपणे आणि गांभीर्यानं केली जाते, तिच्या पाठीशीही उभं राहायला हवं. सजग वाचक म्हणून ती आपली जबाबदारी आहे.
© 2024 अक्षरनामा. All rights reserved Developed by Exobytes Solutions LLP.
Post Comment