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From Far & Near

 

By Shashi P.B.B. Malla

Biden’s Path to Victory

There is now a collective sigh of relief among the vast majority of Americans and also the world at large that the American nation has chosen wisely and come back from the brink. A jump over the cliff would have only brought chaos and destruction.

Joe Biden, the new US President-Elect said in his victory speech: “Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end.” And it was indeed the beginning of the end of the terrible/nasty/disgusting/repulsive/offensive/obnoxious Trump era. As we wrote last week in this column, it was also the time frame when the ‘winds of change’ would start to blow in the greatest and oldest constitutional democracy on earth.

Last Saturday shortly before midnight [Nepali time], the instant that CNN’s Wolf Blitzer projected Joe Biden would become the 46th President of the United States(POTUS) – the Associated Press and other news outlets followed shortly after – the world breathed a huge sigh of relief and took a momentous turn. The United States had, after all, been on the razorsharp knife’s edge of granting Incumbent president Donald J. Trump a second term, and thereby metaphorically jumping off the cliff with untold dire possibilities for itself and the world.

However detrimental it looked at the beginning of the vote count – he was trailing badly in the former ‘blue’ i.e. Democratic-leaning states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania –Joe Biden pulled off mission impossible and reconstructed the “Blue Wall’ and took back the crucial battleground states ensuring victory. The US will now embark on a starkly different road than the one it would have barreled down had Trump the Dump managed to eke out a victory.

Voter participation was high, despite the enormous physical constraints linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. The electoral process overall unfolded as designed – despite voter suppression beforehand by the Republicans and attempts by Trump himself to delay the US Postal Service. Violence was minimal.

Trump’s unwarranted declaration of victory on election night last week was laughable and gained little traction. His calls to stop the vote-counting [which was itself illegal] – except in those states where he was gaining – fell on deaf ears.

One America, Two Nations

Only citizens may vote for the president, but the election affects people everywhere in the world. Therefore, as the Council on Foreign Relations’ president Richard Haass wrote: “…it is not premature to explore what the election reveals about the world’s most powerful country” (CfR, Nov. 6).

The fresh winds will now blow away Trump’s nefarious attacks on vital democratic institutions and the vulnerable, including racial minorities, immigrants and religious groups. Trump’s pathetic racial fear-mongering will now end. The White House [white only from the exterior, but black, ominous and menacing from the inside] will cease being the country’s biggest source of lies and threats. Above all, science and climate change will again be taken very seriously. The ‘Dance of the [Bloodsucking] Vampires’ will end.

America will no longer have a divisive president who uses division and fear-mongering as an instrument of power. Governance and foreign policy will not be made through the whims of un- and misinformed megalomaniac manipulating social media. Trump’s administration will be remembered as a terrible nightmare: “Trump’s demagogic presidency will become an aberration in American history rather than a new foundation that affronts the country’s bedrock values” (CNN/Stephen Collinson & Caitlin Hu, Nov. 8).

Biden has already announced the formation of a task force to fight the worsening global pandemic – even before formally assuming office.

The U.S. will now be part of the solution about a warming planet and climate change.

In the crucial ‘Atlantic Alliance’ there were legitimate fears that a second Trump term would finally destroy NATO and buckle America’s role as an exemplar of democratic values and practices, however treacherous the world remains.

Trump’s defeat has caused enormous relief abroad, where the lives of people who have absolutely no capacity to influence American decision-making and power are intimately shaped by the behemoth between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

But it is also challenging and deeply disturbing to observe that America is a nation deeply divided. After all, more than 70 million Americans voted for Trump and followed him with an intensity and reverence [despite his glaring personal, intellectual and managerial shortcomings that matched the exceptional antipathy felt by his deepest critics. These struggled intensely to understand how his gullible and blind followers could rationalize his belligerence, lying, bigotry and chaotic thinking and actions. There was simply ‘no method in his apparent madness’. It was as if they believed in an ‘alternative universe’ and in ‘alternative facts’ not in truth per se. It was ‘Big Brother’ dictating ‘new think’.

Trump partisans truly believed that the so-called elites of the East and West coasts and the urban centres of the American heartland patronized them and their traditional values. This is, of course, nonsense. Falsehoods are taken as truth, and thinking makes it so.

Growing secularism and liberal social reforms in the last decades also convinced conservatives that their Christian faith was threatened. Thus, Trump who is definitely no model of Christian values, in an apparent instance of dichotomy could court Evangelical Christians and in turn be vociferously supported by them. No amount of soul-searching can budge them from this conspicuous contradiction! In addition, multi-culturalism was perceived as a major threat to the rural, traditional way of life.

Trump spoke for vast numbers of Americans who believed their federal government’s [and also those of ‘progressive’ states] championing globalism and multilateralism destroyed their livelihood. The lopsided bilateral trade with China was a case in point.

However, the mistaken outlook that while America was shielded by two great oceans, did not make it an island. Generations of American leaders had failed to educate the general public about this irrefutable fact and the limitations of ‘American Exceptionalism’.

Explosions of joy on the streets of American cities, where citizens voted in extraordinary numbers were not shared in the vast rural American heartland. This was another internal contradiction – the great urban-rural divide.

Prospects

There is every chance that Republicans will cling to their majority in the Senate, and make inroads into the Democratic majority in the House. Many Republicans may have tired of Trump’s antics, but most have no backbone to oppose him and may still pursue their obstructionist policies. Trumpism could, therefore, remain very much alive. Their choice is very clear – self and party before the nation! [As in our own dear country]

Trump’s refusal to concede defeat could now foment intense outrage among his followers that could somehow obstruct Biden’s presidency. But the narcissist-in-chief doesn’t care. Like France’s Louis XIV, he thinks he himself is the state: “L’Etatc’estmoi” [like our own Dear Leader, Oli]. This was the hallmark of his presidency. Now that he is inhabiting a sinister, twilight world, his insidious farewell words could well be those Louis XV/Madame Pompadour: “Apresmois, le deluge” [after my reign, the nation will be plunged into chaos and destruction].

The aftermath of the election is highlighting the intense internal estrangement of a great nation now highly disunited. One could say, America is one country and two nations, or at least two tribal factions. In the key battleground states, the votes were nearly equally split between the two candidates. This division will lead to a divided government.

President-Elect Biden has already recognized in his victory speech the cantankerous forces rocking the nation which he will lead in two months. How he sets about this onerous task will be the main story of his expectant presidency.

The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com

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