Trump’s rise and the flaws of modern Democracy
“Donald Trump is essentially a manifestation of a sore loser complex”
Readers must have noticed how yours truly has refrained from and avoided commenting on the US presidential election show that has been hogging news cycles for the last six months. Primarily because there are other things to write about, which are more important, and secondly, there are better people to comment on the show. However, it has reached a stage where it is justified to draw a few conclusions from the most unique election cycle that I have covered in my lifetime. You might ask, how is this important and why now. It is because the rise of Donald Trump has echoes in the dark days of the 1930s. A man, with a juvenile knowledge of economics, who wants to spark a global trade war with China and Japan, and who wants to openly commit crimes against humanity in Middle East is not someone to be avoided anymore. But more important than that, it is imperative to understand the conditions that led to his rise, so that those conditions can be avoided in other Great powers. With instances of protests in China and mass dissatisfaction in India and Europe, policy makers must take note.
To start off with a caveat, Donald Trump can be for all practical purposes be a man who is carefully conning the dissatisfied percentage of American people. He could also be an actual fascist, but that is to be seen. What is startling is the amount and number of people who support him. In the 1930s, during the early days of the rise of Nazism in Germany, there was a common disbelief among Jewish population. Surely, that blonde German Christian church going family who has been a neighbor for over ten years won’t give in to the toxic rhetoric of a demagogue about Jewish people being the reason for the loss of Germany in the First World War? They were also surprised to find out, how wrong they were. The disbelief first goes to denial, and then reaches destruction.
To understand the rise of Trump, one needs to carefully analyse how Democracy changed in the last twenty years. Western liberal democracy, as we know it, started from the concept of direct democracy practiced in the Greek city states. Eventually after thousands of years of evolution, it turned to a representative parliamentary or presidential democracy as we know it. The reason being, the modern world we live in is far too complex for everyone to understand and opine on. For example, would we expect a small town farmer from deep North India to know about the benefits of using Thorium as a nuclear fuel, much less have an opinion about it? In an ideal world, with proper education maybe yes, but in a real word, unfortunately no. That’s why we have elected representatives, even who themselves don’t know much, but relies on the knowledge of the officers and assistants and bureaucrats who are there to form policy. Modern governance is therefore essentially a form of meritocracy, where people who are experts on subjects are there to form policy and take decisions. It is a fine balance to maintain, but no governance can be without experts.
That changed in the last twenty years, especially with the growth of social media. Social media gave power of information, and with it, disinformation, in the hands of people who basically, for lack of better phrasing, doesn’t know what they are talking about. They share and retweet stuff, which they “think and feel” is true…without confirming whether it actually is. The entire world is essentially a gigantic mutating case of Confirmation bias.
It breeds resentment. People, who are xenophobic by nature, for example, but whose ideas were hidden under lairs and lairs of propriety, are now openly forming their own cocooned groups, and sharing and perpetuating blatant propaganda, blaming migrants for job losses, for which they are completely unprepared anyway. The same free market competition which was promoted as a virtue since the 1980s, are now regarded evil as these same people lose jobs to competition as manufacturing goes to China and service sector back office jobs go to India. Donald Trump is essentially a manifestation of a sore loser complex, leading a pack of losers, while berating losers on twitter. The greatest irony is this, US is by no means in recession anymore. People who support Trump, are not even on the streets, or without food. The entire victimhood is perceived, because victimhood is worshipped in modern Western societies. For someone, with the luxury of tweeting from an iPad about how they are the victims of a cruel society is laughable, but that’s exactly what is happening. And no one is being called out for constantly disseminating or perpetuating these lies or propaganda on social media, nothing is controlled anymore. The greatest irony is this, social media, which was supposed to make society more open and modern, fomented the rise of some of the most undemocratic, hateful and xenophobic crowd in the history of humanity. Modern democracy is now essentially freedom without consequences, and naturally bigots are leading movements again, just like the 1930s.
And there’s a lesson that other powers should take. The greatest debate in philosophy was never between ideologies or economic policies. It was always between order and chaos. We, both in the West and East, now know how chaos spreads. We must learn how to control it.
If you want to read another controversial take on the rise of Trump, White victimhood and the destruction of society, read here.
