By Soumya Ghosh
It was Tuesday, the 8th of November 2016. As the various news channels across America reported the vote counts, an astonishing new reality was beginning to take shape. What was previously thought to be implausible had now transcended into palpable actuality. A reality television star was soon to become the 45th President of the United States. A stern evocation of figurative déjà vu—alluding Trump to the bygone eras of Nazism and Fascism—gripped many on the liberal spectrum of politics. An aura of anguish and anger characteristically defined their sentimentalities after Trump’s triumph. Elsewhere, in the exurbs of the Appalachia and the mountainous Western states of the United States, there was a sensation of euphoria mixed with positive incredulity.
The insurgent in chief
‘Their man’, after eight years of pervasive liberal rule, had finally been elected to the highest office of the land. As a whirlwind of change ushered in a new political epoch, the establishment of both parties was left aghast as a tumultuous tide of economic and social anxiety swept through the land. Trump’s sacrilegious acts of political defiance—including questioning the sacrosanctity of the NATO charter, chiding fellow allies for not paying their “fair share”, decrying the allegedly antediluvian rules-based liberal international order and making ostensibly contentious statements regarding immigrants—earned him the animosity of many, including prominent members of his own party.
However, what the political pundits, election prognosticators, and establishment politicians missed was that he was the insurgent-in-chief. The very antithesis of the established norms and conventions. He was here to contravene the prevailing status quo and not conform. Fast forward to Executive Order 13769, President Trump signed a sweeping Executive Order effectively banning the entry of residents of certain majority-Muslim nations. In Trump’s view, he was fulfilling a major campaign promise and which potentially reduced the likelihood of fatal acts of terrorism. His nativist urges, however, were not shared by the Washington Federal District Court which issued an injunction blocking the implementation of the order. As of writing, the United States Supreme Court allowed the third and a more truncated version of the travel ban to go into legal effect. In stark contrast to Trump, President Bush visited a local mosque immediately after the September 11 attacks and pledged solidarity with the American Muslim community – still reeling with the aftermath. Similarly, President Obama refused to use the phrase “Radical Islamism” to categorize terrorist attacks motivated by religious perversion, as it, in his view, would be detrimental to counteract terrorism.
Dissecting Trump and Trumpism
Aside from the legalities, the seeds of Trumpism are far more complex. To properly introspect the ‘Trumpian phenomenon’, we must delineate two intrinsically close but not necessarily overlapping political tenets: Trumpism and President Trump the individual. Trumpism is primarily an anti-establishment ideology deriving its influence from the American isolationism of the 1930s and nativism. To paraphrase the former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, “America is a nation with an economy. Not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders, but America is a nation with a culture and a reason for being.” This ‘reason for being’, in this instance, is the convergence of isolationism, protectionism and ‘cultural preservation’. Whereas, the political tenet of Trump is a semi-Neronic (of the Roman Emperor Nero), narcissistic, frenzied and a potentially infantile individual – dressed in political opportunism and maximizing the rising discontent with the established political class in America.
It is indeed difficult to surmise, contrary to popular perception, that President Trump is a political ideologue. His rather public history of oscillating between self-contradicting political stances bears testament to this fact. This uncanny symmetry between the two political tenets is what distinctively defines the age of Trump. In many aspects, he is perhaps America’s first post-modern President. His fantastic erasure and disdain of what a President’s demeanour, character, and stature should constitute have irreversibly revolutionised the office. He is the insurgent and this is his insurrection. What many liberal commentators miss is that Trump was never elected on the platform of normalcy. He is the figurehead of a movement which is intrinsically disruptive and potentially cataclysmic. His superficialities, idiosyncrasies and uninhibitedness are what essentially strikes a chord with his frenzied base. The older order of elitist-infused intellectualism had been replaced by an anti-intellectual strand of politics. Trump’s character owing to the sui generis nature of the same is an extremely partisan issue. Americans trapped in their own political echo-chambers more often than not reach inconsistent conclusions of Trump’s persona based primarily on their party affiliation and political beliefs. A sad reality of a hyperpartisan era, augmented by the constant slew of schismatic politics and promulgated by prominent anchors of cable news channels.
This hyperpartisan era has real-life repercussions in Congress where bipartisanship which once was a defining element in the United States Senate now seems like a vestige of a bygone era. Dissonance and discord between the Democrats and the Republicans are the recurring themes be it on taxes, immigration, or healthcare.
The looming Special Counsel Investigations
It was May 9th, 2017. President Trump precipitously fired James Comey, the then-FBI director. Citing a recommendation by the U.S. Attorney and the Deputy Attorney General, Trump concluded that Comey mishandled the Hillary Clinton private email server allegations. Eight days later, Robert Mueller was appointed as the Special Counsel for potential Russian involvement in the United States elections. Since his appointment, Mueller and his team have indicted former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates, with Michael Flynn, the former National Security Advisor pleading guilty to “lying” to the FBI vis-à-vis his contacts with the former Russian Ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. Indignant and irate, Trump characterized the Special Counsel investigation as a “witch hunt” and espoused a conspiratorial view accusing the “DeepState” of going after him.
Truth be told, the propensity of leaking confidential information especially those damaging to the President has increased manifold. It might not be too far-fetched to argue that the Mark Felts (Mark Felt was the FBI agent who passed confidential information about the Watergate Scandal to the Washington Post reporters) of the modern-era want to make their power and influence felt. The American right-wing media has not missed an opportunity to chastise and discredit the investigations and its indictments thereof, as an imperium in imperio (a state within a state) hit job to topple the Trump presidency and reduce his legitimacy. Whatever be the outcome of the Special Counsel investigations, it will unquestionably play an ineradicable role in the midterm elections, which will then shape the Trump presidency for the remaining two years.
Adieu, Pax Americana?
In his recent Atlantic piece, Richard Haas, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote, “It is an abdication, the voluntary relinquishing of power and responsibility. It is brought about more by choice than by circumstances either at home or abroad” – explicitly referring to America’s gradual withdrawal from the preeminent role it once enjoyed in preserving the global international order. The United States, the sole superpower of the world, in his opinion, was losing its influence and power due to what he and Fareed Zakaria termed as “the rise of the rest”, that is, a resurgent Russia, the rise of China, and the ebullient European Union—all waiting to fill in this ostensible power vacuum. The foreign policy preached and practised by the current administration can be described as a pernicious mix of jingoistic rhetoric and gradual abnegation from the world order.
The United States military has ratcheted up its military actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria while the diplomatic corps of America show a growing disdain for international institutions. The latter exemplified by cutting aid to the United Nations, withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. Unilateralism is the new norm, be it on the United States’s unprecedented recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or ultimatums to withdraw from a multilateral agreement—the JCPOA (Iran Deal). The era of Pax Americana which conceived and implemented the revolutionary Bretton Woods institutions of World Bank and IMF is slowly but steadily being replaced by the BRICS and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, both financial institutions in which China is a steering member. Whereas in Europe, a resurgent Russia under Vladimir Putin seeks to restore the lost pride of the former Soviet Union especially in the now independent former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Baltic countries like Latvia and Estonia.
A year of surrealism and normalisation
The age of Trump has certainly infused and vivified the post-truth era of politics. Americans, by any indications, are growing increasingly polarized insofar as simple political arguments are leading to heated confrontations.Unlike in the preceding years, there is an intrinsic link between political positions and human emotions. This link has an inseparable and inextricable connection redefining the political sentiments echoing America.
But as the Founding Fathers of the great nation duly envisioned, America is robust and fiercely independent. There are checks and balances to the Presidency which will, au fond, reduce the far-reaching and pervasive powers of the office, as will the mass domestic and international hysteria engulfing the Trump presidency, as the era of normalization sets in.
Featured Image Source: markn3tel on Visual hunt / CC BY
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