Planet Trump

When Donald Trump declared his candidacy for president of the US more than 15 months ago he was seen as little more than a joke. He was laughed off as an attention-seeking reality show host who would be a distracting amusement before inevitably dropping out. Look who’s laughing now. Trump’s comfortable victory over Hillary Clinton is easily the biggest upset in a year of seismic political events. This manages to dwarf even Brexit. Till the last minute, most polls put Hillary Clinton at least a little ahead in the race, with analysts arguing that she was the candidate Americans would opt for in the end. They did just the opposite, voting essentially for change and for a break from the manner in which Washington has been run over the past many years with the Trump campaign’s argument that very little had been done for Americans themselves apparently hitting home. It was also not insignificant that both candidates were rated as the most disliked of US presidential candidates in years. If Trump follows through on even half of his proposed agenda, the word is about to become a very different, far uglier place. Going by what he has been saying, Trump wants to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, ban Muslims from entering the US, reinstitute the shame torture regime of the Bush era and wantonly commit war crimes by killing the family members of suspected terrorists. At home he will automatically become one of the most powerful presidents in recent history since the Republican Party maintained its majorities in both houses of Congress.      And, as tempting as it is to paint Trump as an outlier, he is the logical end point of the Republican Party of the last 50 years. The party built up an entire media and think-tank infrastructure to push the notion that it was feminists, immigrants and African-Americans who were keeping the white man down. The main difference between Trump and previous Republican candidates was that he made the subtext plain.

Think of the many scandals that plagued Trump’s campaign, from his denunciation of Mexican immigrants as “rapists” to his sliming of the parents of a dead Muslim soldier to the credible accusations of sexual assault by many women. Then consider that this may have been part of his appeal. Trump ran an explicitly white nationalist campaign and his votes seem to have come overwhelmingly from the white population in states that have suffered because of the globalised economic system. Instead of pointing to the global financial elite, the understandable economic anxiety the working class in the US feels was taken in a racist direction and, distressingly, it worked.       The swing states Trump was able to win, such as Pennsylvania and Ohio, were formerly industrial states which have suffered greatly through globalisation, leaving an angry white underclass amidst the wreckage.                   Trump did occasionally divert from US ruling class orthodoxy in pointing out the rigged nature of global free trade and showing a streak of foreign policy isolation but that was washed away by the waves of hate he unleashed.  What this election has also shown is the extent to which the global ‘war on terror’ and its depiction by the US and world media has altered the way Americans think and act. The continuous whipping up of hysteria since 9/11 and the wars in nations around the world have led to today’s White House. Trump is essentially a blank slate, especially on foreign policy, and the hope is that he will at least move the US away from being a militarised state always on the lookout for the next war to fight.          Domestically, the hope is that the thuggishness of his campaigning style will not be a reflection of how he governs. His surprisingly gracious acceptance speech was a start but the US, and indeed the world, is understandably nervous that someone like Donald Trump is occupying the ‘most powerful office’ in the world.