The Trump Phenomenon & American Politics
Ghelawdewos
Araia, PhD
June 22, 2016
Most
often, history comes up with surprises in the
social and political realms, and with the advent
of history’s enigma people are puzzled and have
a hard time understanding the power nexus, more so
the emergence of “unlikely” individuals and
ascendance to the highest echelon of power
relations. The reason why people are confused and
puzzled with respect to such kind of historical
irony, for the most part, emanates from their
existential expectations and assumptions that only
wise and astute individuals should wield state
power. Contrary to this assumption, however, many
foolish, crazy, and retarded individuals have
assumed power and became the leaders of their
respective countries in the distant past, the
medieval era, and in our modern period. Examples
abound in human history, but suffice to mention
some of them: Nero of ancient Rome; Ivan the
Terrible of Russia; Hitler of Germany; Mussolini
of Italy; Pol Pot of Kampuchea; Mobutu of
Democratic Republic of Congo; and Mengistu
Hailemariam of Ethiopia.
From
the above brief analysis and the current mood in
American politics, thus, it is not surprising that
Donald Trump has now dominated the landscape of
the American electoral process and became the
presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. Also,
it will not be surprising that Trump would become
the next president of the United States, unless
Hillary Clinton and her supporters alter or
reverse the current conservative electorate tide
and win in November.
Back
in February 2016, in response to Noam Chomsky’s
remark on the rise of Donald Trump, a commentary
posted on Facebook and elsewhere, I had my take
among hundreds of other commentators. This is what
Chomsky said: “We owe the rise of Trump to fear
and the breakdown of society,”1 and I
responded as follows:
I am in full accord with Professor Chomsky’s opinion/analysis but we
should begin to view American politics in the
context of Real Politic and centrist politics that
virtually govern the United States in all
dimensions. The rise of Donald Trump should be
attributed to “fear” and “helplessness” as
the good professor aptly puts it, but we should
also admit that Trump is appealing not only to
desperate Americans who lost their jobs due to
outsourcing but also to conservative Americans
(and the majority of Americans are conservative).
Thus, if Trump ascends to power, he would
definitely employ domestic and foreign politics
that would reflect Real Politic, but given the
nature of American political culture he would be
forced to implement centrist politics.
Incidentally, even if Clinton became president she
would be operating within the framework of Real
Politic and centrist politics. The only candidate
that would be different is Bernie Sanders; he is a
wonderful man but history is not in his favor;
reality sets in: corporations govern America and
they will make sure that Bernie never comes near
the White House.”2
One
other commentator by the name Robert Corradino
responded to my remark by saying, “profound,
pap, but profound”3 and I extended
gratitude to him then, but in due course of my
readings on American electoral politics, I came
across plethora of diverse opinions on Trump that
I will discuss below. Before I do that, however, I
like to make crystal clear the nature and
characteristics of American politics.
As
I have stated in my reply to Chomsky, to which I
got a constructive feedback from Corradino,
American politics tout court is dominated by three
political ideologies: Realism, Liberalism, and
centrist politics. Realism or Real Politic, first
expounded by Machiavelli, advocates “reality of
concrete historical circumstances” but what
Machiavelli infused in his paradigm and some
historians and politicians miss is ‘ethics’,
because he combines ‘virtue’ and ‘fear’ in
his political theory; the former implies ethical
values and the latter coercion or the use of
force.
Modern
day American neo-liberalists, however, abandoned
the ethical component of Machiavelli’s theory
and squared in rather on the national interest
(Realism) reinforced by the ubiquitous maxim,
“America has no permanent friends but permanent
interests.” Within this framework of political
ideology, thus, the US realists revel in the
employment of coercion, the use of the military
and nuclear development, including preemptive
strike in real or perceived wars.
By
contrast, although liberals are the same like the
realists in many ways, at least theoretically they
are in favor of diplomacy as opposed to coercion
and they also tacitly agree
that humans by nature are essentially good,
a proposition that the realists very much doubt.
Based on the controversial and contrasting views
on human nature, the realists followed Thomas
Hobbes’ Leviathan in which a sovereign (or ‘a strong political leader’
in modern parlance) presides over a disorderly (or
‘crisis’ that I will discuss later) ‘state
of nature’. The realist rationale by extension
means ‘dominant global power in a unipolar
world’. The liberals, by contrast, followed John
Locke’s The
Treatise of Government and embraced ‘life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ although
they too advocate “American global
leadership,” a less intimidating phraseology
compared to the “naked aggression” of the
realists.
American
politics, of course, is not just realism and
liberalism; as I have argued earlier, it is very
much characterized by centrist politics. For the
most part, modern US history, and the executive
branch of government presided over by the
president, has been following centrist politics
like a norm.
On
top of the nature and characteristics of US
politics that I have attempted to analyze above,
America is blessed with a rich democratic culture
and plethora of democratic institutions. A good
example of the latter, for instance, is the system
of checks and balances, a fine system of
separation of powers, by which the branches of
government are made accountable, transparent, and
responsible. For example, the president is the
commander-in-chief of the armies and can dispatch
the army to a war zone, but he can’t do so
without the consent of Congress; and in the event
the president violates the law and sends troops
without notifying Congress (unlikely scenario),
the legislative body can systematically halt his
military ventures and expenditure by not financing
it. Finance is within Congress jurisdiction, but
beyond finance Congress can also order the
executive branch authorities to testify before a
committee of the Legislative body in regards to
transgression of power or any wrong doing;
Congress can even impeach the president for
inappropriate conduct.
Now,
we can conveniently discuss the Trump phenomenon
in the context of Chomsky’s remark, my
commentary, and other views entertained on the
emergence of a business tycoon in American
politics. What kind of persona is Trump? A
significant number of media outlets, pundits, and
other commentators saw Trump as unqualified for
the office of the presidency, mainly because of
his temperament, arrogance, and vitriolic
language. Some individuals like Deepak Chopra view
Trump as a man who is emotionally and mentally
retarded.4
Chopra,
of course, is way out of line and indisputably
wrong in comparing Trump to a three-year old
retarded child. A man who singlehandedly
established a business empire possibly cannot be
unintelligent, let alone retarded as Chopra
claims, and on the contrary it shows how shallow
Chopra’s observations of a complex
socio-political reality is and the nature of
individuals and/or groups that are immersed in it.
Fellow
republicans like Mitt Romney are vehemently
opposed to Trump as well; and most of them seem to
convey messages to the public regarding Trump’s
inability to run a government and/or become a
political leader; Paul Ryan, Congress
spokesperson, was hesitant to endorse Trump;
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is worried
in regards to Trump’s dearth of knowledge on
issues. Both, however, concede that the American
people have spoken and that Donald Trump is the
nominee. In a similar fashion, but more harshly,
the Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and
Bernie Sanders attacked Trump on many of their
campaign trails as he has done unto them. There
were even protestors who attempted to vilify
Trump, but their efforts were counterproductive.
The more Trump was vilified the more votes and
supporters he got from the American people, and in
some states he enjoyed landslide victories.
All
the above stated critical remarks on Trump,
however, are not relevant to our present
discussion or to the central thesis of this essay.
The one commentary that comes very close to the
tenets and analysis of this paper is the one
reasoning presented by the filmmaker Michael
Moore, and he puts it quite elegantly as in the
following:
There is an excellent chance that Donald Trump will become the next
president of the United States and Americans need
to take that very seriously…He knows how to
manipulate a dumbed-down population…The
populations of schools has been wrecked, and the
news media is just insipid and stupid and does not
give the people the facts about what is going on.
…He is not stupid as he looks…you
should take it seriously. He knows the
manipulation that is going on here, and the use of
propaganda and the way he is doing it is just
brilliant in the way that he is succeeding and has
succeeded.”5
Michael
Moore got it right, but it is important to
systematically analyze why strong men like Trump
emerge during economic and political crisis in
which a state of exception regime is established
subsequently, but the question remains: Do we have
a crisis in the United States now? In the micro
sense of the term, we don’t really have a
visible economic and political crisis (except for
the intermittent inflations), but in the macro
sense, an underpinning crisis has been going since
the coming to power of Obama, and this unique
American crisis was manifested as a backlash to
the first ever black president who was portrayed
as “Muslim” and a “communist” as well as a
citizen “who was not born in the US”. None of
the above characterization of Obama has a grain of
truth, but the majority of white conservative
Americans believed in the falsification of
Obama’s background. Moreover, the charlatans,
racists, and relatively unenlightened Americans
were frightened by Obama and they have gone out of
their way to establish militias and began to
swagger around pompously while at the same time
exhibiting hatred to an African-American
president; they even unnecessarily displayed their
guns in public places like bars and restaurants.
Other frightened elements were also organized and
rallied around the so-called Tea Party. It is this
kind of perceived fear that ultimately galvanized
a conservative upsurge and sentiment in the United
States from 2008 to present and this is what I
call crisis in the macro sense. And it is this
kind of crisis that became conducive to the
emergence of Trump, and he would have not enjoyed
a propitious moment in the electorate had it not
been for backlash-cum-crisis that I have discussed
above.
Another
strange observer and commentator on Trump is Putin,
the president of Russia. In an interview with
Fareed Zakaria of CNN (6/19/2016), Putin called
Trump a “brilliant” man in the context of
Trump’s will to restore good relations of the US
and Russia and also in contradistinction to the
seemingly new cold war atmosphere. While many
Americans and other people around the world have
perceived Trump as a war-monger, Putin on the
contrary seems to be at ease with him, and he even
implied that the coming of Trump to power would
bring peace and that Russia and the US would also
be in good terms to each other.
Putin’s evaluation of Trump obviously
undergirds Russia’s national interest, which
squarely falls within the Realist foreign policy
agenda, and the ultimate objective is that Russia
would be in good position to promote its interests
by dealing with the “lesser evil” (a Trump
leadership that is ready to talk with the Russian
leadership) than Hillary Clinton who might
continue the American policy of challenging Russia
at its turf, that is neighboring Ukraine and other
ex-Soviet Union nations.
One
curious political motive that we need to
investigate and critically examine is why Trump
became a nuisance among diverse political groups,
including the republican establishment. Is Trump
part of the establishment or he is against the
establishment? The latter concept could have a
dual meaning: 1) the elite, the “filthy” rich,
the less than 2% wealthy Americans who control the
US and global economy are part of the
establishment; 2) people who wield power at all
levels (municipal, state, and federal) are part of
the political establishment. Trump belongs to the
first tier of establishment and he is against (at
least for now) the second tier of establishment,
or more specifically the Washington establishment.
The
reason why people in the second tier of
establishment were terrified by Trump is the fact
that he has shaken their foundations; it is quite
obvious why the elected officials in Washington
vehemently opposed Donald Trump. However the more
they opposed him, the more challenge came to the
Republican party and when they continue to oppose
him, conservative Americans (apparently stronghold
constituencies of Congressmen and women) may not
vote on their behalf in the next round of
elections. Ultimately thus, the Republican leaders
were compelled to resolve two major problems: 1)
to overcome the division within the Party and
unify it further; and 2) to counter the Clinton
momentum that could possibly take advantage of the
infighting within the Republican Party; and they
have no choice but to support their presumptive
nominee and defeat Clinton in November.
If
Trump wins and become the president of the United
States, what kind of president is he going to be?
This question can be answered in the context of
the US political culture and the political edifice
that has been characterized by constancy and
change throughout the history of the United
States. Trump could have his own ‘style of
politics’ but he could not impose his own will
unto the decision making process in light of the
checks and balances system that we have in the US,
and whether he likes it or not he would abide by
the rules that govern America and the parameters
of the constitution; otherwise, he will be
impeached. In the final analysis, like all his
predecessors, Trump will find himself at the
center, not withstanding his intimidating ultra
conservative right-to-right agenda; there are no
extremities in US politics; centrist politics
govern America and solutions are found in the
center, not in the polar opposites of extreme
right or extreme left.
One
of Trump’s idols perhaps is Ronald Reagan and we
recall that Reagan came to power in the wake of
the Iran Hostage crisis and the relatively weak
Carter Administration, but before he assumed power
he was feared as a war-like ultra right demagogue.
However, after Reagan became president of the
United States, he adopted a center-to-right
politics in Washington but there were times when
he favored center-to-left politics as well. The
latter was manifested in the Immigration Reform
and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 that was signed
into law by Reagan, by which he gave amnesty to
3.2 million undocumented immigrants in the US. In
the same fashion, Trump would tone done his
current rhetoric of building a wall between the US
and Mexico and come up rather with a middle ground
solution to illegal immigration.
Trump
is a business leader and a real estate savvy and
obviously not a sophisticated political persona,
but he would hire the most talented politicians
and professionals in running the government. I
suspect that Trump knows this too well, but since
he is more like a roaring lion than a cunning fox
(the Machiavellian fox) his top advisors should
rather be persons with high caliber, astute, and
with tremendous clout.
It is this kind of advisors that are going
to formulate policies for him and render him the
ABC of politics; and in light of the latter
reality, the Mitch McConnell rationale that Trump
“does not know the issues” becomes untenable. But,
McConnell’s worry should not be dismissed
altogether, because Trump will face a major
challenge in delivering a coherent foreign policy
even if the latter is to be made ready for him by
his advisors.
As
Ernesto Stein et al argue, “Policies are complex
undertakings. Bringing any particular “policy
reform” to fruition is a process that involves
multiple actors through many stages of the policy
process. It requires specific responses from
economic and social agents, and therefore
necessitates several forms of cooperation and
positive beliefs about the durability and other
properties of the policy. That is, policies
require a great deal more than a magical moment of
special politics to introduce “the right
policy” in order to produce effective
results.”6
If
all goes well, the business
tycoon-turned-politician will be exposed to the
complexity of policies and their implementation
following his induction to the presidency; his
mentor advisors will introduce him to 101 on
foreign policy and other aspects of governance.
By
way of conclusion, I like to address the views and
stance Trump would have on Africa. When Donald
Trump was confronted by some media outlets and
pundits as a bigot and racist, he responded by
saying that he is “not a racist”. May be he is
not a racist, but there is no doubt that he has
racial prejudice against minorities in the United
States, other ethnic groups, and Africans. His
remark on African leaders has some truth but his
contention that “Africa should be
re-colonized” manifests the height of arrogance
and ignorance of history.
According
to NAIJ, an online blog on Nigerian Daily
Newspapers reports, responding to a question from
a South African journalist in Nebraska, Trump
said, “It is shameful for African leaders to
seek exist from ICC. In my view, these leaders
want to have all the freedom to oppress their poor
people without anyone asking them a question. I
think there is no short cut to maturity and in my
view Africa should be re-colonized because
Africans are still under slavery. Look at how
these leaders change constitutions in their favor
so that they can be life presidents. They are all
greedy and do not care about the common people.
When I saw them gang up against ICC yet they
can’t even find an amicable solution for the
ongoing quandary in Burundi. I thought to myself
these people lack discipline and humane heart.
They can’t lead by example. The only thing they
are interested in is accumulating wealth from poor
tax payers.”7
I
am not in a position to defend the corrupt African
leaders, but Trump’s contention of
“re-colonizing Africans” is simply out of
historical context and reflects only an ignoramus
cliché of former European colonizers who came up
with the idea of neo-colony and are still
extracting African resources. On the other hand,
Trumps rationale of the re-colonization of Africa
is not surprising because it fits very well into
the ambition of imperialists and disgruntled
philosophers like Hegel who argue that ‘Africa
does not belong to history’ when in fact history
began in Africa. The continent of Africa is cradle
of humanity and civilizations; all major
civilizations of antiquity (Egyptian, Nubian, Kush,
Ethiopian etc.) and the medieval period (Ghana,
Mali, Songhay, Zimbabwe etc) flourished within
Africa. All human beings all over the world have
their roots in Africa; they have the same
mitochondria DNA (transmitted from the mother
only) that has descended to all humans from the
great grand daughters of Lucy or Denknesh
(Ethiopian name for Lucy). I highly recommend Mr.
Trump to watch The
Real Eve a documentary put out by Discovery
Channel, so that he can absorb a refined history
of humanity and redeem himself from racial
prejudice.
Notes:
1.
Matt Ferner, The
Huffington Post, February 26, 2016
2.
Ghelawdewos Araia response to Noam Chomsky,
Facebook, February 2016
3.
Robert Corradino, Ibid
4.
Deepak Chopra, interview with radio host
Alan Colmes, Fox News, 6/10/2016
5.
Reported by Sandy Fitzgerald, NBC
News, Friday 10 June, 2016
6.
Ernesto Stein et al, The
Politics of Policies, Harvard University,
2006, p. 15
7.
NAIJ.com, Donald Trump Attacks Buhari,
other African leaders, May 22, 2016
All
Rights Reserved. Copyright © Institute of
Development and Education for Africa (IDEA) 2016;
Dr. Ghelawdewos Araia can be contacted for
educational and constructive feedback via dr.garaia@africanidea.org
The author is a Columbia University alumnus and
professor of African and African American Studies
at Lehman College, City University of
New York.
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