A DIFFERENT AMERICA
“I am waking up to a country I cannot understand.”
On the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 6, this was the reaction of an American woman of Asian origin (Indian origin to be precise) who for months had toiled, sparing nothing, time and money included, to prevent a Trump victory. Including knocking for days on the doors, far from her home, of people with backgrounds totally different from hers. The people she talked to were mostly courteous and often warm, but her bids in persuasion failed.
Like countless others, she asks, “Why did so many go for Trump?”
“Joe Rogan” is one answer. (Rogan is a commentator on UFC, the Ultimate Fighting Championship that glorifies martial arts and attracts millions of viewers.) This answer is given by one of Trump’s biggest public supporters, Dana White, who is UFC’s CEO.
Calling Rogan “mighty and powerful,” Dana White also claims that Rogan presents “the most popular podcast in the world”. Rogan gave Trump three hours on his podcast towards the end of the campaign, and he also endorsed Trump.
I heard one NBC commentator say on television that Rogan’s Trump podcast (a counter, perhaps, to Kamala Harris’s remarkable weeks’ long pitch to female voters) was downloaded 90 million times. If true, this may at least partly explain the number of votes of young American males of all races that went to Trump, which was much larger than experts had predicted.
FATES ON HIS SIDE
Trump’s victory was surely aided also by the fact of his survival on July 13, when the would-be assassin’s bullet only grazed his cheek. The impression that the fates were on his side must have enhanced Trump’s appeal to supporters.
There’s a wide consensus, moreover, that many Americans held the Biden-Harris administration responsible for their financial stress and thought that Trump would manage the economy better. People chose to ignore Trump’s personal conduct as they voted for his positions on the economy, on immigration, and on the U.S.’s involvement in the Ukraine war.
Also notable was the increase in the percentage of Blacks, Latinos, and Asians voting for Trump, who had put in a serious and steady effort for their support even while permitting White Christian Nationalism and Trumpism to move forward in tandem.
The fact that virtually everyone in a senior position in Trump’s earlier administration had fallen out with him, whether it was Vice President Mike Pence, or chief of staff (and former marine general) John Kelly, or his military chief General Mark Milley, or his Attorney General William Barr – to name only a few – failed, it seems, to induce second thoughts, or questions regarding Trump’s judgment, in the minds of his supporters.
ONE INDIVIDUAL’S DOMINANCE
Not only is Trump now the elected president. He has already won control of the Senate and seems likely to win the House too. Much of the Supreme Court was either nominated by him or has been strongly sympathetic to him. From January next year, when Trump re-enters the White House, the U.S. will experience a single individual’s dominance as has not been seen for decades, if not for longer. And this after half the population voted against him.
Then there is Elon Musk. In the final stretch of the campaign, the world’s richest man (who among other assets controls a mega stage where our planet’s millions can address one another, and who had begun campaigning for Trump months earlier) placed himself and millions of his dollars at the disposal of the effort to mobilize voters. The question is inescapable: how salutary is an alliance at the summit between immense wealth and immense power?
No one who knows the world can doubt the uniqueness of the U.S. The world has come to its shores, and wants to come to its shores, because the U.S. offers freedom, equality, and opportunity, as no other country offers, to people of every kind. You may be a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or a Sikh of any denomination, or something quite different; you may even see yourself as the founder of a new political, religious or economic doctrine; in the U.S. you will be free to live your life, and express your views, and collect companions or followers, and make your money, as long as you follow the laws, and you will be equal with everyone else.
Of how many countries in the world can you say this? Doubtless the destruction of America’s inhabitants who were “discovered” five centuries ago by arriving Europeans, and the slavery of the Africans brought to labor on American soil, are indelible parts of this country’s history. So, however, are the stories of the creation on that soil of a democracy of liberty and equality of a kind the world had dreamt of but never seen with open eyes before. Now, in November 2024, while one half of America seems to hail the return of Trump, the other half seems to fear for the future of freedom, justice, and equality. It’s a moment of real anxiety.
Yet we need not be shocked or shaken. Freedom, justice, and equality – or friendship, mutual trust and mutual respect -- may not be the inevitable state of any nation, no matter how blessed, or the birthright of any society, no matter how fortunate. The institutions that are supposed to protect these qualities, including political parties, courts of law, legislatures, a responsible media, and the office of a nation’s chief executive, may themselves require constant attention and the people’s vigilance.
WHO WILL KEEP AN EYE?
Who will provide this oversight? Will the American people? A lifelong friend, an American from the South, says, referring to the U.S.’s divided red and blue spaces, “The truth is that Americans don’t know one another. We don’t listen to one another.”
Often painfully slow, history’s arc of justice may, who knows, pick up pace when people start recognizing and listening to one another.
