Showdown looms as US elects a Big Man
January 2017 marked the extinction of Davos Man and the return of the Big Man. During the first few weeks of the Donald Trump Show, live from the White House, it has become clear that we have entered a new world disorder.
Even for those of us who did not like the old one, Trump’s not-so-brave new world is unsettling.
The Big Man now installed in the White House has an America First vision. Based on our experience of Big Men on the African continent, from Jacob Zuma to Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, the US is in for a rough ride.
Zuma was once likened to a tsunami. Like natural disasters, Big Men tend to leave destruction in their wake. They regard constitutions as little more than toilet paper. Institutions that get in their way must be neutered or destroyed. They view the media — “the opposition” — with contempt. Decisions that do not go their way in the courts are characterised as “counter-revolutionary” or “outrageous”. They have a particular disdain for the “educated” class.
They project themselves as being one with the people. And they treat the presidency as a family business.
Big Men are attracted to autocracy like flies to dung. Trump evidently believes that he can rule by executive order. He has surrounded himself with men such as Steve Bannon and Mike Pence, who are contemptuous of anyone who does not sound, look or pray like them. Their reactionary world view glories in a clash of civilisations. For now, this is presented as Western, Judeo-Christian society versus Islam.
Is Trump a fascist? Certainly, the US president is a deeply unstable, prejudiced, demagogic, nativist billionaire who craves approval and is advised by people with deeply rightist views. He must and will be fought.
But characterising Trump as a 21st-century Hitler could blind us to the real thing when it comes along (and perhaps it will soon be in the offing).
It also obscures the fact the convulsions in the US two-party system are rooted in a social and economic crisis that has affected a large portion of the US population.
“Why are Americans so angry in 2016?” asked a CNN report in March 2016. Stagnating wages were identified as the primary reason. According to the report, “American households today earn about the same as they did 20 years ago. That makes it hard to get ahead, especially for indebted families.” Between January 2000 and December 2014, the US lost about 5-million manufacturing jobs. “Some of those jobs have gone overseas or been replaced by machines …. It’s taking a huge toll, and even driving some to taking their lives. The suicide rate among less-educated white men has skyrocketed,” said CNN. The US has also seen a huge rise in inequality.
A research study released by the Economic Policy Institute in June 2016 found that since the 1970s inequality had risen in every US state. Between 2009 and 2013 the wealthiest 1% of the population captured 85% of total income growth. Crucially, the study found that “the decades since 1979 have been characterised by erosion of the minimum wage and overtime-pay standards, a decline in unionisation and the cultural and political acceptance of excessive executive pay”.
Fast-forward to the November 2016 election. While the establishment was happily endorsing a candidate whose husband, Bill Clinton, had famously ended welfare as the US knew it and whose family had grown rich through their foundation after they left the White House, Trump was speaking to an audience whose American dream had turned into a nightmare.
Trump has become a beacon for right-wingers and backward sections of the US population. But there is no evidence to suggest the majority who voted for him were “red-state”, misogynist, Bible-thumbing, gun-obsessed racists, despite Hillary Clinton’s denunciation of Trump supporters as “deplorables”. Many of those who voted for Trump in 2016 reported having voted for Barack Obama four years earlier. Many would have voted for Bernie Sanders had the Democratic Party not sabotaged his campaign.
The US election marked a break with the consequences of rule by meritocracy. While The New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian and Financial Times have tended to emphasise how well things had gone economically, particularly Obama’s handling of the post-crash period, tens of millions of people in the US and Britain have experienced globalisation as rising poverty and inequality. The liberal elite, including a number of newspaper editors working in echo-chamber newsrooms, failed to see this. As such, they played a part in Trump’s emergence as champion of the “working man”.
Of course Trumpism is deeply problematic and demands a response. But where does one start? The millions of people who joined the Women’s March, and the hundreds of thousands demanding an end to the Muslim ban, have given us a good idea. The fight is on. #Resist.
TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE IN THE US AND BRITAIN HAVE EXPERIENCED GLOBALISATION AS RISING POVERTY AND INEQUALITY