Donald Trump's victory is a dent in democracy
As much as the world has been shocked by the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States of America, an aftershock of that earthquake is beginning to set in as we ask ourselves what happened to the hordes of pollsters, analysts and pundits who had predicted otherwise. In the end, the Chinese monkey proved more prescient than the collective wisdom of all those men and women who make a living out of professional projections. The simian seer in a Shanghai tourism park picked the life-sized cut-out of the Republican candidate with a kiss on the lips. That monkey ever since has thrown a monkey wrench into the vaunted world of logical deductions.
Trump's victory has trumped our common sense at so many levels. It has trumped our common sense of decency. It has trumped our common sense of propriety. His contempt for moral rectitude, disrespect for others, penchant for lies, and lack of tolerance, patience and the whole slew of other virtues are as pronounced as his contempt for women, Mexicans, Muslims, and the disabled reporter whom he mocked.
Donald Trump has won the election despite these deficiencies. He has won despite his refusal to disclose his tax returns. His taped "locker room talk" gave the world a peek into the grotty mind of a lewd man who never grew up. He groped women and called them all sorts of names. His wife gave a plagiarised speech at the party convention. He called Mexicans rapists, threatened to ban Muslims, vowed to dismantle NATO, and made foreign relations sound like gang fights. He is the first candidate in the 240 years of American history who refused to accept election results short of his victory.
The American voters took none of these things into consideration and gave him a landslide win. How was that possible in a country whose people have so long been known worldwide for their abiding faith in democracy? These voters didn't care for his character. They ignored his financial scandals. They overlooked his debauchery. They didn't give a flying fig about his eccentricities bordering on insanity.
This is a warning sign for democracy. The presidency of any country in the world isn't just about business, foreign policy or running the bureaucracy. It's also about moral leadership, and more so for an American president who claims to be the leader of the free world. The American parents won't be able to tell their children the truth about Donald Trump, and they won't be able to lie to them either. They are going to have to discuss the details of the personal life of their president under their breath like our parents discussed condoms while we were growing up.
As a matter of fact what's there to learn from the life of a casino owner, who is a self-confessed womaniser and possibly a serial tax avoider whose mouth is a running disaster? Where is the struggle in his life to inspire future generations? What's there to emulate a man who shames and irritates the world every time he opens his mouth? In the closing days of his campaign, Donald Trump's staffers had to take away his twitter account to control his image. This is the same man who said on television he would have dated a young woman if she weren't his daughter.
Whatever has happened to the American tradition that their presidents must be icons of family values? And, what family values are conjured by a thrice-married man whose wandering hands work like heat-seeking missiles around other women? It's hard to think of a family man sitting in the Oval Office knowing his penchant for infidelity.
It's said that a fish rots from its head down. Donald Trump in the White House is a dent in democracy, and many people, who believed in the American system, are scratching their heads already. If a sophisticated machine has sputtered, it needs to be fixed. Four years may be too late to wait, more so if he gets re-elected.
What desperation drove the American voters to elect Donald Trump can be explained only if we believe that the world has come to the end of common sense. Francis Fukuyama wrote "The End of History" in 1989, in which he argued that the universalisation of Western liberal democracy might be the end point of mankind's ideological evolution. That end point itself is threatened because the logical evolution of human mind may be coming to an end.
That's going to rankle in our minds more than anything. It's a blow to our hope in the exemplar of democracy, and our courage to fight for its advancement. Trump's triumph makes no sense because it has trounced our sanity.
Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is the Editor of weekly First News and an opinion writer for The Daily Star. Email: badrul151@yahoo.com