AMERICA IS NOT ONE COUNTRY ANYMORE

No matter how this election turns out, the fundamental issues that have torn the fabric of American democracy apart will remain unchanged.

Another American election has come and gone. And, another time, enlightened pundits on each sides of the Atlantic are scratching their heads. How is it feasible that some 70 million American electorate could forged their vote for a boorish, incompetent, lying buffoon, a misogynist racist hypocrite, with out the most basic human emotions including empathy and compassion? How is it possible that a president who now not best has established a fundamental lack of challenge for the protection and properly-being of even his own entourage however even ridiculed those who do could be taken into consideration worthy of a second term in office? but tens of millions of citizens throughout the us did, and are proud of it.

what is unexpected is not the final results of this election, but the marvel of these surprised by means of it. in the end, over the past four years, dozens of books, articles, papers and blog posts had been written purporting to give an explanation for why Trump won in 2016 and why he endured to hold on to his constituency, notwithstanding the whole thing. yet four years later, few appear to have taken the findings to heart.

Simple motives

lamentably sufficient, in today’s global, simple causes no longer suffice to get to the coronary heart of factors. Social scientists like easy, monocausal explanations. Rational choice theories maintain that what counts for citizens is their pocketbook. As a famous adage has it, It’s the economic system, silly. but as Thomas Frank, in his famous e book “What’s the problem with Kansas,” maintained in 2004, during the last few decades, among normal human beings, cultural problems have increasingly outweighed economics as a count number of public problem. To be sure, Frank’s conclusions encountered tremendous opposition, however latest tendencies seem to substantiate his interpretation.

Take the tale of West Virginia’s coal mining network. In 2016, Trump promised to resurrect coal, that “clean lovely coal” that had assured properly-paying jobs in one of america’s most depressed regions, the Appalachians. but after four years in office, Trump had finished nothing to halt the final of coal mines. And yet, coal mining groups persisted to support Trump. Why? partly due to his “america First” slogan, but also because of his anti-abortion stance and, last but now not least, due to the fact he seemed to be the “simplest one status inside the manner of the entire industry closing down.”

Nationalist satisfaction mixed with cultural issues and monetary wishful wondering — that is the ideational brew that has appealed to great components of the american voters and, seemingly, keeps to do so. citizens in the nation of Michigan are a case in point. Michigan became once the hub of the usa’s automobile enterprise, supplying well-paying jobs to thousands of yank employees. Detroit’s nicely-deserved moniker was Motor metropolis. For some time, Detroit become additionally regarded for a new sound in tune, Motown. Motown moved, the automotive enterprise collapsed, people fled the town. In 1950, Detroit boasted a populace of 1.eight million, the fifth-largest town inside the usa. with the aid of 2019, its population had declined to a chunk more than 670,000, the metropolis a shadow of its former self. In 2016, Trump promised that the automobile industry could come lower back to Michigan. It didn’t. Trump 2020 claimed otherwise: “We brought you a number of car vegetation, Michigan! We brought you a variety of car plants. you already know that, right?” His enthusiastic supporters knew it. Why? due to the fact Trump told them so.

irrespective of that reality was the opposite. In fact, no longer most effective for the reason that “coming of Trump” had not one car plant been built in Michigan, but, as Mark Danner writes inside the big apple evaluate of Books, “considering the fact that his ascension not much less than 3 thousand Michiganders had misplaced jobs in the critical car quarter.” seemingly, the power of make-perception trumps whatever, even facts. but then, records are not anything but the machinations of the lamestream media, out there to discredit the exceptional work of the exceptional chief.

Reality not Counts

If fact now not counts in politics, what's left? it's been cautioned that present day American politics is “near a religion.” Religions generally tend to have a Manichean bent, focused upon a fundamental battle between the forces of suitable and of evil, between mild and darkness, God and devil. satirically sufficient, the notion of political religion entered the social sciences inside the context of totalitarianism — fascism, Nazism and Stalinism. This glaringly isn't intended to conflate Trump with any of those regimes. Trump, as i have said before, is a populist, and populism need to no longer be mixed up with totalitarianism.

modern populism, as exemplified in its crudest form by means of Donald Trump, follows the common sense brought by using the German political theorist Carl Schmitt. relevant to Schmitt’s questioning is the notion that politics is above all grounded within the difference among buddy and enemy. a variety of of new surveys advocate that this antagonism, popularly called polarization, has grow to be principal to understanding cutting-edge American politics. Donald Trump has been a grasp in evoking and fueling a range of emotions, from disgust to resentment, from anxiety to rage, that have contributed to and have exacerbated existing political animosities, widening, inside the process, the present partisan divide.

Surveys display that the Schmittian spirit has deeply penetrated American society and the voters. In December final year, for instance, in a complete Pew take a look at on partisanship, 55% of Republicans said that Democrats, and forty seven% percentage of Democrats stated that Republicans, have been “extra immoral” whilst compared with different people. Anecdotal proof indicates that this spirit, with its quasi-spiritual overtones, has even reached into American families.

A latest article inside the Jesuit evaluation recounts the story of a Catholic Trump supporter whose 4 children, all of them running in technology-associated fields, “hate Donald Trump” and assume “he is evil.” the father manifestly disagrees, reflected, as an example, in his refusal to put on a protective mask while in public. In response, one in every of his sons advised him that if he have to ever have kids, he could now not want his father round considering that he become a “terrible impact.” That, the father is quoted as announcing, “simply broke my heart.”

A latest the big apple times article tells the tale of a twin who no longer feels close to her brother due to his perspectives on Trump, with which she does now not simply disagree however which she finds “unfathomable.” Any strive to talk about the divide separating the 2 siblings end in anger and mutual acrimony, placing a severe strain on their courting.

over the past years, there has been some of money owed of american citizens canceling participation in family Thanksgiving and xmas gatherings which will keep away from having to deal with household from the alternative facet of the political chasm. A ny times article from late 2016,  “Political Divide Splits Relationships — and Thanksgiving, Too,” recounts the particularly poignant case of a software program designer who decided “to transport her wedding ceremony in order that her fiancé’s grandmother and aunt, sturdy Trump supporters from Florida, couldn't attend.”

Visions

To make certain, anecdotal evidence is what it's miles, anecdotal proof. but together with representative surveys, it presents in addition assist for the deep chasm that divides current American society. The motto of the american seal is E pluribus unum — Out of many, one. The past few years have certainly proven — and the result of the latest election has reconfirmed it — that the motto ought to be changed, at least for the time being, from E pluribus unum to E pluribus duum. What we are seeing nowadays even extra so than 4 years ago is a territorial entity with a population not handiest living in two diametrically hostile realities, however with two diametrically antagonistic views on reality.

in the european literature on radical right-wing populism, one of the more outstanding interpretative frames of evaluation is the notion of  visions informing electoral help for or towards the radical populist right — visions of either an open or of a closed society. In today’s global, a better characterization of these significantly divergent visions is probably cosmopolitanism as opposed to parochialism. Sociologically, cosmopolitan inclinations are specifically typical in metropolitan regions and worldwide towns, parochial dispositions in rural, small-city regions. A cursory look at the yank electoral map offers an nearly best example of those dynamics. Anecdotal proof fills within the information.

Take, as an instance, a latest big apple instances exposé on farmers in Nebraska, maximum of them ardent Trump supporters. They were pleased when Trump claimed in 2016 that he could stick up for the “forgotten ladies and men of our u . s .,” who, he promised would “be forgotten no longer.” 4 years later, Trump supporters in “locations like rural Nebraska say they experience remembered. To them, those four years have delivered a experience of belonging in a rustic led via a person who sticks up for, and is aware, their most cherished beliefs.”

This feel of regained dignity and recognize, and a renewed sense of belonging amongst big elements of what has grow to be known as flyover u . s . a . — the big landmass between the 2 coasts, domestic to all the ones individuals who in recent a long time have increasingly felt not best not noted however like “strangers of their personal land” — explains to a huge extent why they have got continued to stick with Trump. The truth that he has largely didn't supply? no longer important. however Trump’s tariff warfare with China harm Midwestern farmers in particular, forcing the Trump administration to provide you with a multi-billion rescue bundle — on the cost of the american taxpayer.

religion is primarily based on faith, not records. you need to agree with that God created the arena a few 10,000 years in the past, even supposing technological know-how tells you that 250 million years in the past, a cataclysmic occasion worn out an awful lot of life on this planet. you need to trust that international warming is not anything but a hoax, every other the sort of liberal ploys to prevent you from pursuing the yankee dream. This yr, roughly two-thirds of Democrats idea that climate change turned into an essential difficulty; among Republicans, much less than 15%.

Political faith is a zero sum recreation. there is no compromise between those who consider that lifestyles starts with thought and people who think that women must have a desire on whether or not or now not to deliver their being pregnant to complete time period. there may be no middle floor among those for whom Black Lives count is a fundamental civil rights issue and those for whom it is nothing however an excuse for huge-scale violence. there may be not anything that folks that believe women are at a scientific downside and those who agree with that the most discriminated man or woman in today’s world is the white male.

no matter the ultimate final results of this election, it is not going to change the fundamental political disaster that manner precedes the appearance of Donald Trump. As has regularly been referred to, Trump is not its purpose however its expression. As i have written before, Trump is not anything but an empty signifier, which lets in all those who have been dissatisfied with the trajectory of american history and politics during the last many years to undertaking their disenchantment and rage, their frustrations and ressentiment, their disgust and fears onto one man.

The remaining outcome of this election goes to exchange nothing with reference to the deep-seated problems that have sundered apart the cloth of what once turned into, for all of its faults and blemishes, a dynamic democracy. In a recent ballot , a two-thirds majority of respondents stated they feared that democracy within the united states became in grave peril. regardless of who's in the long run going to lead the united states come subsequent yr, it's going to take notably extra than mere rhetoric to repair self belief inside the workings of what, in spite of everything, is one of the global’s most established democracies.