Read his piece below...
“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 “notmypresident” 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 Barrack 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. 
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