The Shillong Times
Established 1945
The Trump Tremor: The President of “Forgotten people”
PUBLIC | THURSDAY,
NOVEMBER 17, 2016
By Jyotirmoy Prodhani
It was unexpected. At least going by the Twitter trolls, FB posts, TV channels,
print media, opinion polls, long panel discussions, academic discourses and the
hectic corporate activism in her favour, Hillary Clinton was on the verge
making history to restore everything that the rational society believed as
right. But on the result day there was hardly a moment that gave a pause to
indicate any possibility for Hillary’s win, it was Trump all the way, fiercely
unstoppable. A very significant section of the world lamented with horror, “The
worst has happened”. What actually went wrong?
Despite being one of America’s richest, he seemed to have lacked the finesse
and polish one expects from a prospective POTUS, some kind of suavity and appeal
that Pierce Brosnan and George Clooney exude. Obama had it. As for Hillary she
reflected the subtle nuances of her class, a Yale returned former First Lady
occupying a significant political post to have enough exposure to world
politics, she truly belonged to her class. For many, being a woman added to her
qualification, she gave America the great opportunity to choose their first
woman president. She personified almost a heady mix of perfect and ideal
discursive proprieties, a sophisticated blend of everything correct. Against
such circumstances Trump’s win has turned out to be dumbfounding, generating
astonishment and at the same time desperate anger. The supporters of Hillary,
the Twitterati, social media enthusiasts and the powerful mainstream media
including television and print, are up in arms against Trump with the intention
to create a possible blockade on the road to the White House forcing Trump to
be stranded on the road despite the absolute verdict in his pocket. Desperation
is so acute, leading to a campaign to sabotage the process, quite in Indian
style, by trying to convince the Republican Electorate College vote for Hillary
instead of Trump on December 19 in blatant disregard to the faith with which
the common people voted them to the Congress. Trump, actually, is seen to have
risen from the ashes of an apocalypse. His victory is widely interpreted as the
assertion of White supremacy as well as a vicious manifestation of anti
immigration anxieties.
Trump has legitimately won the election through a constitutionally valid
electoral process of the land. But the amount of hatred and indignation
inflicted on Trump after his victory, quite curiously, is symptomatic of what
is generally attributed to Trump- deep seated hatred towards the ‘other’. Trump
has quite clearly been rejected by the elites, the university and college
educated sophisticated lot, the economically affluent well earning metropolitan
section, by the powerful group that arguably control and regulate opinions and
views, by the mainstream media barons, the corporate powerhouses that operate
at the global scale and, of course, the majority of the non White and immigrant
Americans. Then how come has he won?
Instead of taking a grand stand to define what the US election this time meant,
it can also be seen from simpler vantages. It was an election between the
Democrats and the Republicans; between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. When
Hillary got 232 of the electorates, Trump got a whopping 306. The Democrats were
in power for the last sixteen years with Bill Clinton and Obama’s consecutive
two terms each (with four years in between of Republican George W. Bush). The
Democratic rule, however, has not been all about great glories, nor was the
Republican interlude. But this time the election was largely determined by the
poor, unemployed, less educated, vulnerable and insecure citizens though mostly
comprising the Whites as against the White elites. It is evident that the rule
of the Democrats and their jealous campaign for globalisation brought wider
gaps to make clear division among people as beneficiaries and victims. It is
the victims who had voted Trump to victory this election. 64 percent of the
White Americans who form 45 % of the electorate do not have college level
education. They are deluded with the great capitalist dream of globalisation.
Most of them live in abject poverty and cannot afford even Obamacare health
facilities nor can they meet the very basics of human needs when retrenchment
has become for them a familiar fate.
Ashutosh Varshney has revealed the curious pattern of votes cast in this
election. 67 percent of non college educated voters voted for Trump and 28
percent for Hillary. This was expected. Which is perplexing is that when 49 percent
of college educated voted for Trump, Hillary got only 45 percent of their
votes. Besides, the minorities, the Hispanics, the Asians, the Blacks did not
go for Hillary gung ho. In fact, she polled much less votes from these
constituencies than what Obama had got. Trump even polled 8 percent Black votes
and 29 percent Hispanics. Apparently Hillary was not an overwhelming favourite
even for the traditional voters of the Democrats. More importantly, when
Hillary has been projected as the natural choice of the feminists, the women
vote she got was far from impressive. Though she has got more overall women
votes, 54 percent women votes as against 43 percent for Trump, but among White
women 53 percent voted for Trump when 43 percent voted for Hillary. Evidently
Hillary Clinton was not the universal choice even among women. After all,
Hillary Clinton is not the epitome of all those ideals, a personification of
those great values what Trump is not. As a politician,
holding powerful positions, she cannot boast of an impeccable career that was
beyond any trace of visceral allegations. Her stint as the Secretary of State
was mired with some of the nastiest of controversies. Besides, after a
long and largely disappointing Democratic rule in terms of economic and social
security, the people of America deserved a change, more so, the people whom
Trump addressed as the “forgotten men and women. The people who work hard but
no longer have a voice.” Trump wanted to be their “voice”. America’s
‘voiceless’, America’s subaltern, as it were, deserved to elect a President of
their own as they believed, writes Katty Kay of the BBC, “he gets me, he
understands my struggle”.
This election has opened up a new territory for the rest of the world- the
odious underbelly of the opulent America, beyond California and New York, the
two of the major states where Hillary swept the election. The world is hardly
aware of the rural angst, the perennial existential anxieties of the working
class in the urban conurbations of America, who were the ones seemed to have
made a point. This is the group of people nobody bothered to take into account
while framing their strategies to ensure Hillary’s win. This election has
also made this imperative to reconfigure the perspectives and discourses on the
issues of globalisation, demographic anxiety, sense of economic and social
insecurity, question of mass influx, lack of employment even in the first world
and so on. Instead of enforcing ruptures and be constantly accusative of the
host entities, there is a need to address the issue with mutually appreciative
and respectful idioms in order to create a congenial climate of mutual trust
and confidence. So far the liberal discourses on the issues have been
mono-directional, resulting in the extreme consequences like Trump victory.
Despite the despicable record of his utterly politically incorrect campaign
trail, Trump’s victory speech on November 9 was laudably inclusive for he
proclaimed to be the President for “everyone” and pledged to work for America
by reaching out to all, even to his opponents. However, his
prospective presidency is not devoid of any uncanny premonitions either. It was
George W. Bush, a Republican, who had changed the world forever through his contemptible
craze for devastation; similar predilection in Trump, if cultivated, might well
spell another regime of irrevocable doom. Trump now has to prove what he meant
in his victory speech, after all the cards are now in his hands to lay it
right.
(Jyotirmoy Prodhani is
a Professor in the Dept. of English at NEHU, Shillong and can be reached
at rajaprpodhani@gmail.com
(NB: As for popular vote Trump got 62,972, 226 when Hillary got 62,277,750)
Read more at http://www.theshillongtimes.com/2016/11/17/the-trump-tremor-the-president-of-the-forgotten-people/#yRpyGHwlxshTY32a.99
