For Carib News 11/9/16
When this article is published, America would have elected the 45th President of the United States. Irrespective of which candidate wins the Electoral College vote, the issues that surfaced in this long and tortuous campaign will continue to ripple throughout the bodypolitic.
The make-up of American society is rapidly changing. For much of its history, the majority of the society has been white and even for the future, the plurality of Americans will remain white but the demographers citing population trends have prognosticated that by 2050, perhaps before, no racial or ethnic group will have a clear majority in America. The election of 2016 is how America can adjust to that new reality.
The 2016 Presidential Election has shown that the changing demographics have triggered a firestorm in the country. A nation that in the past welcomed immigrants, the white backlash movement is now adamant about circling the wagons. The ALT Right forces and white nationalists are bent on keeping America white. These backlash forces seek to return to a more inclined homogeneous society. The ripple impact of changing demographics has led to an ideological rejection of globalization and a fervent embrace of isolationism or America First. Globalization is seen as threatening to white America and is the cause of the loss of manufacturing jobs that has left certain parts of the Rust Belt in a state of economic dislocation.
The changing demographics have been concomitant with an economic and cultural crisis affecting mostly the uneducated segments of the white population. As the American economy becomes increasingly advanced technologically, the white workers with just a high school education or who are high school dropouts have found it difficult to compete in the post-industrial economy. Those folks have seen their wages decline precipitously and that economic crisis has triggered an existential dilemma.
This is a crisis that literally escaped the politically elected officials in Washington D.C. They were oblivious to the rising tide of heroin overdose, opioid addiction, alcoholism and the wave of suicides. Congress in the last session before the election did pass legislation to deal with the cultural or existential crisis but there has been no meaningful legislation to deal with the economic crisis of falling wages.
It is that shift in the fortunes of the white working class that has brought about the ideological transmogrification in the Republican Party and explains the rise of the quasi-fascist movement that is personified by the candidacy of Donald Trump.
Trump’s candidacy began with his ride down the escalator in Trump Towers to announce his candidacy for the Presidency of the United States of America. In terms of democratic discourse, it has been downhill from that momentous day forward.
The scapegoating of immigrants was followed by a full court press of blaming other groups for the woes of American society. Mexicans were rapists and criminals. Most of the crime in America was being committed by immigrants. The eleven million undocumented workers should be deported. There is no need for comprehensive immigration. Moslems should be banned from entering the United States. Black communities had not produced a middle class or professionals but were uneducated, jobless and ran the risk of being shot if one ventured to the corner store. That is some of the racism and xenophobia articulated by the Trumpistas
On the question of foreign policy, trump favors nuclear proliferation, backing away from age-old alliance with NATO. Bombing the hell out of ISIS. Bringing back waterboarding and torture. Trump supports tearing up existing treaties like NAFTA which he blames for the trade deficit in the economy. And frequently lambasts China as the cause of America’s economic doldrums.
What is needed is a wall to keep out the Mexicans flowing into the United States. There should be a halt to immigrants who constituted a threat to America’s national security. Donald Trump concocted a historic message of xenophobia and racism. He appealed to the worst instincts of America. The Reality Celebrity made up his own reality and what was amazing was that so many white Americans bought into this warped worldview.
As we have seen in other parts of the world, there is a new appeal to fascist rhetoric. That is apparent in the Philippines with the election of President Duterte. The crumbling of democracy in the Russian Federation and the rise of Putin and authoritarianism is another vivid example. In places like Hungary, France, the Scandinavian countries, new and old political parties vehemently opposed to the “other” have become a potent political force in the changing political landscape.
The Latino or Hispanic population, heretofore, has had low participation rates in the American bodypolitic. Whereas 68 percent of African-Americans voted in the 2012 Presidential election, only 48 percent of Hispanics chose to cast their votes. Early voting in states like Florida and Nevada, unprecedented numbers of Hispanic voters are turning out to vote. These voters have been terrified by the candidacy of Trump and the vitriol of the white backlash movement. Trump’s naked appeal to white racism has bolstered the Obama Coalition of millenials, white educated women, union workers, African Americans and Hispanics.
Irrespective of the verdict in the Presidential 2016 election, the white backlash movement will not dissipate. It represents an unvarnished new kind of racism and xenophobia which will echo throughout the pockets of the rust belt and elsewhere. America has become nigh ungovernable for the moment but as Texas and Arizona float away from the white backlash movement, what we see at work is the making of a new multi-racial, multi-cultural political hegemony. Invariably that will make America the shining city on the hill and an example to the world in the art of democratic tolerance.
