I do not intend to discuss topical political issues very often in this blog, but the election of Donald Trump as the next President of the United States seems too momentous an event in the history of Western civilization to pass over without a comment.
Like most Europeans, I would have preferred Mrs. Clinton (or just about any conceivable candidate) over Trump – and Bernie Sanders over Clinton.
When I say “most Europeans,” I do not, of course, mean all Europeans: quite a few people here, even some in Finland, seemed quite OK or even delighted with the result. Most nationalist populist politicians and their supporters, for one, greeted the news with joy. They hope that it will help their own cause, give their political aspirations credibility and inspire supporters. And it might just do that. Much like Brexit earlier, Trump’s presidency will serve as proof of the fact that nationalist populists can win. Which, of course, they can (the movie and movie-within-a-movie villain played by Charles Dance stated as much in Last Action Hero [1993]: “here, in this world, the bad guys can win!”).
But even outside nationalist populist circles, there were many people who seemed, I don’t know, more exhilarated than aghast about Trump’s victory. Some of them may have been conservatives who think that Trump, although by no means your regular bible-bashing Republican uncle, must be closer to their values than Hillary Clinton. They may be wrong about that, but it does explain their reaction. There were also many who – much like all too many potential voters in America – thought that Mrs. Clinton would have been only marginally the lesser of two evils. I have a very hard time accepting that argument, but again, it explains their reaction. Much more understandable to me is the fact that some anti-globalization folks could at least take some consolation from the fact that the outcome was effectively a protest against free trade. I can see that bit of silver lining, too: Farewell, TTIP!
The rest of the more-excited-than-horrified reactions to Trump’s victory were probably due to the same psychological mechanism that might cause one to feel excitement about seeing a site of some terrible accident (presuming that there are helpers there already, perhaps a police officer shouting: “Move along now, nothing to see here!”). You know: it is just awful – blood and dead and injured people everywhere – but also oh so very exciting, you just have to slow down and have a looksee. Some of my European Facebook friends may have felt something like that: At least that Trump guy is entertaining, they were saying; it will be very interesting to see what he does next.
“Interesting” is right. There is a well-known saying, usually mistakenly characterized as an old Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times” (see the Quote Investigator’s study of the phrase) Let us just hope that it does not get as interesting as it did in the 1930s soon after Sir. Austen Chamberlain, a British statesman, used this saying with reference to Hitler’s politics.
Just how bad could it get this time? Some fear it is going to be Word War III in a year or two; others say things will not change very much at all, that it will be something akin to the era of George W., or Reagan. My guess is that it is going to be somewhere between these extremes – World War III is, gods forbid, a relatively unlikely scenario; but neither should we kid ourselves into thinking that this will be a near-ordinary or perhaps only slightly over-the-top (occasionally even amusing) republican administration. Trump’s campaign was a spectacle of Strong Leader show-act, bullying and bigotry, misogyny, appalling egotism, hatred, and a barrage of outrageous untruths – countless many untruths, often just repeated time and time again until many people thought they were true. It was the very epitome of post-truth politics. (I hope to write something about post-truth politics later; no room for it here if I am to keep the length of this one anywhere near-readable.) Some say that it was all just campaign talk; that actual administration will be very different. We can only hope. But I do not think that one can run a campaign that is altogether separate and different from one’s personality; and one’s personality is bound to shine through in one’s administration and actions as president. And during these past few weeks already, the president-elect has gone back to his post-truth campaigning ways, tweeting totally unsubstantiated claims like that millions of people were allowed to vote (Clinton) illegally in the elections.
Now, Trump promised lots of changes, but we should keep in mind that, usually in democracy, changes take time. It is quite likely that, for most of his supporters, their disappointing weekdays will not change all that much; that it will be back to the same old sorry humdrum run-of-the-mill business as usual – still struggling to make ends meet, although now with the added bonus of hearing news about huge tax-cuts to corporations and to the rich that Trump and his Republican allies will be carrying out. Yes, one of the things that he promised was “to drain the swamp in Washington”; but talk is cheap – or, as it is often put in G. R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books: words are wind. What Trump is actually doing – surrounding himself with other millionaires, billionaires, lobbyists and Wall Street people, testifies to what we already knew: that he never had any intention of delivering. Helping out the poor is hard work, and not in the real interests of populist demagogues, because they would have to step on the toes of many of their rich friends; so most populists, once elected to positions of political power, join the political establishment. Indeed, like so many right-wing politicians before him, Trump and his posse will at the very least do their best to take your money and run.
And that, I should stress, would be the best case scenario. I mean, you better hope that most of Trump’s promises mean
nothing; that your money is all that his administration will take
from you. As is often the case with the most interesting times, the humdrum
run-of-the-mill is the best that we can hope for; things could turn out far
worse. Although concrete positive developments take time in democracy, horrible developments can happen quickly. As I write this, it
seems that Trump will be surrounding himself with some pretty extreme
right-wingers, climate change-denialists, fundamentalist Christians, even
people who call themselves alt-right (and who others call racists). Among other things, he aims to
put your healthcare system in the hands of an avowed critic of public healthcare; appoint
as his secretary of labor a millionaire who is against any raises in minimum wage
and has no objections to machines replacing workers; education
in the hands of a person who wants to privatize education; environmental
protection in the hands of a fossil-fuels advocating climate skeptic; and
your armed forces in the hands of an apparently trigger happy
general nicknamed Mad Dog. This is more “an anti-government” than a government, as Eugene Robinson just put it in his opinion piece in The Washington Post.
It is so systematically the very opposite of what would be good for you and good for the planet that it is just ridiculous. Working together with the republican senate, Trump’s cabinet will appoint extreme conservatives to the Supreme Court; will certainly undo most of Obama Care; do their best to increase the gap between the poor and the filthy rich; and if Trump stays true to his threats to exit from the Paris climate treaty …, well, then, there goes the planet. (The climate issue was one of the biggest concerns that, for example, Noam Chomsky had with the prospect of Trump presidency before the election.)
We better all
of us (all of us living on this planet) hope that the exit from the Paris
treaty will be one of the several campaign promises that Trump chooses to break.
There were some positive signs indicating that that might be the case (as well
as a couple other reasonable back-steps by the president-elect) in Trump’s interview with the New York Times,
so let us stay hopeful at this point.
Some people worry – and I have to admit that the thought has crossed my mind too – that things could go even worse. Truly nightmarish scenarios have been mentioned. You can probably guess what I am referring to: Life-on-earth-ending little hiccups – a “Dr. Strangelove” sort of incidence or something of that general variety. Can anybody claim to be 100% sure that Trump, given his personality – the apparently unlimited ego combined with a demonstrably thin skin – cannot be provoked to start a “War to end all wars,” or at least to inadvertently help set in motion a chain of events that later escalates into World War III?
Am I 100% sure that that cannot happen? Of course not – there is always that chance as long as there are huge arsenals of nuclear missiles on this planet pointing every which way, and Trump if anyone is famous for his unpredictability; but I do not think that that is all too likely either. Give it, maybe, a 1–2 % chance over the next four years? No more than that, huh? Well, not a hell of a lot more, at least, I would say. One would have to be much more than just very, very egocentric and megalomaniac a person, and more than just thin-skinned and prone to holding grudge: one would have to be a raving-mad fanatic to risk nuclear war, and fanatic is one thing that Trump clearly is not. A demagogue and highly self-centered, even childishly immature person he may be, and prone to authoritarian management, to hubris and bullying, yes; but a fanatic? That does not seem right. Of course, even a 1 or 2 % chance may in this particular case feel insufferable, the outcome under discussion being nothing less than the end of the world. And yes, if you allow yourself to think about that, it is a disturbing thought. We might not call it Red Alert yet, but it is a sort of Orange Alert (pun intended – yes I am referring to the color of Trump’s face in some television appearances earlier). But ca. 98–99 % chance of human life not necessarily ending due to nuclear war for another four years is pretty good, is it not? And one can only live with the odds that one is given. I mean, what else could I do but to take it as it is? I need to get some sleep, too – not lay awake all night staring at the ceiling, thinking about Trump’s stubby fingers so very close to the red button. (Then if the nukes started falling, I would have even worse chances of survival if I were suffering from sleep deprivation: it not only impacts your health, but also slows your reaction time!)
Other kinds of nightmarish scenarios has been discussed by Trump’s opponents, too. Some would remind us that quite a few democratic nations have been known to slide into totalitarianism. Could that happen to Trump’s America, too? This is a man who threatened that he might not accept the result of elections should he happen to lose; a man known for inciting racist and ethnic bigotry; plus a man who has said he is open to some pretty extreme methods (torturing suspected terrorists, “taking out their families”) in the war against terrorism.
But no, I think the chances of America sliding into totalitarianism are even smaller than those of an all-out nuclear war over the next four years. The situation there is just so different in comparison to just about any nation that has ever gone down that road: there is a long history of democracy, democratic institutions having been pretty much inalienably forged into the very core of the nation’s government. There is the freedom of speech, most crucially, including freedom of the media, which dictators would always need to suffocate in order to stay in power. To be sure, as (the professor, economist, and the Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton) Robert Reich notes, Trump has made some ominous moves that look like attempts to control or undermine the media; but at the end of the day I think the freedom of press is too deep-rooted in the American value base, right next to the Stars and Stripes, the national anthem, and the almighty dollar. That said, I do hope that you folks stay vigilant there in the U.S. and oppose any and every move toward totalitarianism. Peaceful resistance is the way to go, of course (civil unrest would only offer welcome pretext for a wanna-be despot to increase surveillance and police presence and to cut civil rights).
There are other ways besides a full-scale nuclear apocalypse and establishing a totalitarian dictatorship that Trump could cause immeasurable suffering in this world. Besides bombing and using drones against terrorists (or “terrorists”) and their families and supporters – much of which has been going on under Obama administration, too, let us not forget – Trump might be willing to use extreme techniques like torturing suspected terrorists. And I suppose he will use trade embargos that could deny some populations sufficient food and medicine. Lacking food and medicine can kill you just as surely as bombs. Yes I do worry about that sort of things. And in this connection, it is not his thin skin that worries me the most: rather, it is that Trump, like all true egomaniacs, seems to lack compassion. (Can you imagine him shedding tears in public, like Obama did after the school-shooting in Connecticut? I do not think so, not unless those were angry tears that Trump would be shedding for someone insulting his fingers or something.)
Moving over to Europe now, there is also the very scary possibility that the fact of Trump’s victory will precipitate the rise of nationalist populism here: that far-right nationalists will soon be governing every other nation here, too, and that this will spell the end of EU and of much of international cooperation that has helped prevent wars between major military powers since the World War II. The worry is that international politics might head back to the dark ages, to something like Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes amongst nations. Next spring, there will be presidential elections held in France, and gods forbid should Marine Le Pen win. That sort of development – a sort of chain reaction or domino effect of nationalism – is the horror picture painted by Tobias Stone, among others, in his blog for the Huffington Post. Stone raises worries that Trump’s U.S.A. and the nationalist, anti-EU governments in Europe might be unwilling to stand up against Putin’s Russia, thereby allowing it to grab some more lebensraum (or whatever that word is in Russian) by occupying, for example, the Baltic states (for geopolitical reasons, perhaps, or because motivated by domestic pressures – trying to suppress civil unrest by creating external enemies). Needless to say, that sort of development would be extremely dangerous.
Yes, chilling nightmare scenarios aplenty in the air these days. Interesting times, I keep saying. But to end with a somewhat smaller-scale – or, at least, less apocalyptic, although such that will almost certainly impact millions and millions of people – worry, one that most people may have not thought about yet because there are all those more prominent apocalyptic visions occupying our minds: consider what it will be like raising children in America over the next four years, trying to teach them to be nice to other people, tolerant and honest, unselfish and not too self-centered. Try teaching that to your kids, and then Trump comes on TV – ranting and raving, threatening people, making outrageous, unsubstantiated claims, boasting how great he is. “Yes, little Johnny, that is indeed our president, the highest-ranking man in this country, elected to lead us; but nevertheless it is wrong to be a self-centered narcissist, a mean bully and a bigot, to lie to people and threaten them.” It will be a hard sell when the evidence stares you right in the face, showing that a self-centered, mean, lying bully can get to the highest, most prestigious positions in your society.
Presidents may not be role models to grownups these days but they do matter a great deal to the worldview of a small child. The first female president of Finland, Tarja Halonen, likes to tell a story she heard when in office: apparently, some young boy had actually asked his parents: “Can boys become president too?”
Halonen served for twelve years – two terms, which is the maximum these days in our country, too – so there was a whole generation of children growing up thinking that a woman president is the most natural thing in the world!
Another anecdote to wrap this up: when I was a child myself, there were no restrictions on the number of terms that a single person could serve as the president of Finland, and there was this one bald dude, Urho Kekkonen (1900–1986) who reigned (and boy did he reign – in those days our president had more power than nowadays (though not nearly as much as the U.S. president)) for a good quarter-of-a-century no less, from the mid-fifties to the early-eighties (apparently because people knew that Kekkonen had good personal relations with the Soviet leaders and they were afraid how our big bad neighbor might react should we fail to elect their favorite man). So in the late-seventies, early-eighties anybody just over twenty years of age, young adults, in this country, would have known no other president than Kekkonen. Indeed, the very name Kekkonen had effectively become synonymous with president, at least in the minds of children. No wonder, then, that when I was like four in the late-seventies and someone asked me, what would you like to become when you grow up, it seemed obvious to an ambitious young man to go for the top job in the country, and I replied: “Kekkonen!”
