The bafflement and bewilderment among the saner heads are now
widespread as the US election results show Trump has triumphed. The
feelings sloshing around us are understandable. How could a man so unfit
to head a superpower, so unreliable, so sexually scandalous and so
misogynic and racist could make such a comeback?
Paul Krugman, the Nobel winning economist and columnist, in his
lament for the result writes in The New York Times, truly reflecting the
emotions of a logical people, “What we do know is that people like me,
and probably like most readers of The New York Times, truly didn’t
understand the country we live in. It turns out that we were wrong.”
Yes we were wrong. Yes the whole world was wrong. The media were
wrong. The politicians were wrong. The World leaders were wrong, and
even Trump’s own party leaders were wrong.
How could we support a man who so openly boasts about groping women?
How could we support a man who does not believe in inclusiveness and
thinks Muslims should be thrown out of the country?
In the end Donald Trump looked a forlorn candidate in the race. More
than 160 of his party top guns had deserted him. Most of the newspapers
including the Republican leaning ones had turned on him. All the polls
indicated that his rival Hilary Clinton will win. Even when the voting
started, the projection showed Clinton’s winning chance of 85 percent.
However much we all thought like that, however much we wanted him to
be defeated, more people than us in the US had thought otherwise. And
they rushed in droves to vote for Trump.
America must search its soul and find an answer to this upset politics.
But some answers we can probably guess. The American society has
become highly racist. The ongoing phenomenon of white American policemen
killing blacks on trivial grounds and the backlash of some stray blacks
killing white policemen was just an indication.
The white Americans had taken on a hardened attitude towards the
immigrants and Muslims. They started believing in blood and soil.
To them, the venom and hatred that Trump spits is what they actually
wanted to say but could not because of the veneer of civility. Trump
had unhinged that latch to inner psyche and gurgled out the filth. The
voters went mad with joy at the sudden ventilation of their pent up
feelings.
And Trump alone knew what he was doing. He is a genius in that
sense. His campaign team, all very qualified professionals in the realm
of communication, psychology and politics, cringed at Trump’s constant
stewing of hate speeches and almost resigned. Many of them left their
desk to hit the bars in the evening to pass their time more
meaningfully. Trump overrode his campaigners in delivering his speeches.
His campaign team failed to stop him from tweeting unsavoury texts. He
closely watched and edited his advertisement campaigns, often to the
frustrations of his team. And he proved right. Only he could touch the
nerves of his fellow citizens.
When the tapes about Trump’s behavior with women came out, everybody
that it is just about the last nail on his coffin. Yet, they forgot to
recall what happened when a more severe kind of sex scandal was revealed
about Bill Clinton regarding his sexual conduct with Monica Lewinsky.
Clinton was reelected.
They forgot that such misogynistic attitude is so common in that
society. Men and women actually take it for granted that men will behave
like that with women. Trump actually was the Man.
And he became more of a Man when the media deserted
him. He was a lone fighter. A wounded bull that everybody wanted to win
against the matador. And so he won.
A man who is considered as capable of bringing, if he
wins, “a new age of darkness”, as The Guardian wrote, and the man whose
win will put the world in danger as the UN Human Rights Commission
observed and the highly reputable monthly, The Atlantic, which perceived
him “to be a danger to the USA, had his last laugh.
Whether the world can smile too, we have to wait with crossed fingers to see.
