Democracy on line

Who ever said human beings were not their own slaves in how they felt and disposed around baser instincts? That defines a primordial being. Man has progressed by learning from his follies. Democracy as a system of collective living isn’t perfect, yet it remains the dominant system of collective social existence. America, polarised to the extreme and divided down the middle, is living through its most telling test of democracy as still a relevant system to run a state and its people as it chooses its president.

Many have called Donald Trump controversial. It is patently one-sided. He is unconventional — as unconventional as the American society has become in the last few decades which threw up one of its own to head the country and the society. Ronald Reagan was the first in the list of re-awakeners when being white, conservative and nationalist stopped being a taboo. He succeeded magnificently. Defeating communism and unraveling the Soviet Union wasn’t ordinary stuff. Americans linked such exceptionalism back to their foundational roots touching hearts and the imagination of most. America travelled back as it travelled forward. If Clinton had to win it was now only possible being a centrist. If Obama later came on the back of his personal charm and appeal it was an aberration — a Black man, a one-term Senator with a Muslim middle name, was too much out of the ordinary. The white man returned with a vengeance of a Donald Trump. The politics reflects the shaping of the American society. The 2020 presidential elections manifests such a journey.

There are two Americas: the rural, white, conservative and somewhat bigoted to the non-white mind — one that is still out there fighting to save his turf from an alien invasion of those who do not look like him increasingly encroaching on his space; and the other, coloured, non-white, but educated and urban that finds comfort in dense co-habitations of larger cities. If the Blacks were earlier persecuted at the hands of the white majority they now have company of bigger numbers; or whites, but different because of how they have evolved or what they have read and reflected or around with different experiences than their much larger white cohorts. Call them the educated liberals of the cities who are greatly more internationalists and know a world beyond their counties.

In the wide mosaic of electoral colleges as the American map gats painted in red depicting a Republican hold there are specks of blue which mar that uniformity. These specks are the non-traditionalist America inching out into the sea of red slowly eating away at the red territory. It consists of larger cities and metropolises where those that don’t belong to the wide, expansive, sporadically dotted countryside, live. The trouble is they are the engine of growth in the modern economy which makes America great. Without their research, development and production neither would the rest of America have its riches nor its exclusivism. Someone forgot to tell this story to the rural, conservative and colloquial America. And that is where the trouble lies. The division runs through the middle of modern day America. Trump built his story on fearful foundations of this assault and then entrenched the belief among his voters of an alien invasion of the culture, values and the riches. It has only deepened divisions.

The 2020 election was a composite of two reactions. One was to Trump’s last four years of a divided America where a legalised alien was hounded, where a Muslim was persecuted, where America stood separated from the world and decades old alignments were dismantled, where an organically linked world with America at its head was left to fend for itself, when international treaties and covenants were trashed, and where a pandemic struck wreaking the worst possible havoc on American people in lives lost with unparalleled deprivation. People of colour, professionals and city dwellers, and some who feared the unstoppable decline of the American eminence got together to save America from its fears and its distortions. Joe Biden happens to be leading this group hoping to repose some sanity in a society gone awry. In how he patches up a shredded canvas will decide if the damage is permanent. In there also lies the hope that a world asunder will re-find its functional order or will a new one need to be stitched.

The second reaction is to this reparatory surge itself. The white, conservative, rural man who chose not to wear the mask and abhorred convention to fight disease and a pandemic, chose to reinforce his defence. He has awarded Trump with another five to six million votes than what had first gotten him into the White House four years back. If this isn’t reaffirmation of the base instincts of an alien assault, what is? The task for the new administration to somehow find a median to repair, re-stitch and keep the social fabric from fragmenting further will under-line its success. In its absence America will implode. Biden’s four years will determine that.

A more co-operative world is a need too. Finding solutions to pandemics, leading the fight against climate change and forging a new consensus on economic remodeling as technology and cybernetics weaves their way through the society and the economy as newer determinants of wealth loom. Another Bretton Woods which could foster a more equitable distribution of resources and returns and inhibit the widening gap between nations and within nations is a clarion need. These form the contours of the new world. To that end the world will need to co-operate, engage and co-function more away from the Trump’s populist slant for isolationism. This may also deliver to Biden a winning formula if such American eminence can resonate with the people back home and repair some of the cleavages. It will also restore order to an increasingly dysfunctional world.

The 2020 elections saw a turn-out of around 76% — the highest in the last 100 years. People spoke in a democracy in a no uncertain way reposing their faith in it. When a man as possessed and primed as Trump found himself being edged out and cried wolf for corruption, miscount, or suggested the election was being cheated away from him was calmed into submission by none other than his vice-president who simply walked to the microphone to tame his ranting and urging to keep faith in the system and in democracy that if threw up Trump also gave a Pence. Many others have followed suit and urged restraint from a volatile Trump keeping his base in check as well. Democracy – 1, Detractors – 0.

There isn’t anyone close enough to being a Republican among Democrats than Joe Biden. If that explains things a little better. Kamala is dangerously more left than Biden to some. If his personal health holds and he works in all earnest he may be able to reverse the damage caused by Trump internally and globally. This is essential if the course correction in the US is to hold. Or, Donald Trump will be back with a vengeance in 2024 and the world will never be the same place again.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 8^th, 2020.

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