The rage against the Establishment

November the 9th, 6:30 Am

I woke up quite early to hit the gym, I started my daily routine packing up things, had a quick breakfast trying to avoid the inevitable, checking who had won the elections or was predicted to win at that time. It was with no surprise that I saw Trump with 244 electoral votes against 215 from Hillary.

I must admit I wasn’t shocked at all, the night before I went to bed with the feeling the next morning I would wake up with Trump being the winner and that was what happened.

How did a guy accused of sexual assault, who filed for bankruptcy more than once, who proposed to build a wall, bring back waterboarding and torture[i], ban Muslims coming in, with no political experience and all his sexist, homophobic and racist interventions manage to be seen as the most fit for the job at the oval office?

As a matter of fact people might not have seen him as that sort of candidate[ii]. Trump winning might not have anything to do with being the best negotiator to amend the deals America has signed, or his promises to be the “greatest jobs President God ever created”[iii].

Yes he might be the saviour to some people, but his landslide victory has more to do with the Anti-Establishment and Anti-Globalization movement than anything.

As always I like to look to the past to see how we got here, and in fact if we look to roughly 4 months ago we see the same signs that show us that the Anti-Establishment and Anti-Globalization movements are here to stay. I am in fact referring to Brexit, at that time the British people expressed their discontent with the current political system that is not representing them, the workers freed themselves of the anger they have towards a savage Globalization that only serves the interests of the wealthy and multinationals.

Just like with Brexit, Americans voted in the utmost sincere way against the Establishment, against a status quo system that is not representing them and it works for the few and not the many, as Sanders said in a recent Facebook post:

A vote against a system where the candidate with more money wins the elections[i], against a system that allows people like Hillary to have close ties with Goldman Sachs, but especially a system that is no longer working for them. A good indicator of this is the percentage of votes Trump got on median income ($25,000-$30,000 a year) counties, a total of 52% beating Clinton by nine points.[ii]

Of course Anti-Establishment and the Anti-Globalization wave don’t explain it all. The increasing fear of “the other” be it of immigrants that are supposed to “steal” the American jobs, or the fear that “Muslims will take over this country” played an important role and many people voted in a xenophobic way due to the fear that was placed inside them by Trump and his group. Probably one of the saddest things of this election is the fact that groups like KKK and other white supremacist groups have endorsed Trump as their candidate, when we think mind-sets like that no longer exist “C’mon it’s the 21st Century”, and we see this it makes us rethink our faith in humanity.

I guess the million dollars question the next days will be “How did we got into this mess?”

We can’t blame the media like we did in 2000 and 2004, far from it. This system that has not been working for the many but the few for more time than it should have and the Democratic Party and their Third Way policies supporting Neoliberalism should be held accountable for it. From disconnecting from the Middle Class to considering Sanders to be unelectable the interests installed on the Democratic Party[iii] made this possible. Had Bernie been the democratic candidate and the outcome could be different? I like to think so but we’ll never know…

We know what Trump promised during his campaign, we don’t know if he will stick with all the promises[iv]. What we do know is that after what happened no longer can we see someone as unelectable. This wave of anti Establishment and anti Globalization is here to stay and will not stop with Trump’s election it can mean Le Pen as the next French President, Geert Wilders in Netherlands and so on. It’s up for the Left to rethink its whole agenda or in a short period of time we will wake up in a world run by “unelectable” folk…

Luís Carvalho, Economics Student and proud 2015 graduate of democracy

Disclaimer: This Post reflects solely the author’s opinion it does not represent the whole platform

[i] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/campaign-finance/

[ii] http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-how-trump-won/

[iii] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/09/donald-trump-white-house-hillary-clinton-liberals

[iv] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-president-election-muslim-ban-immigrants-website-statement-removed-a7408466.html?cmpid=facebook-post

[i] http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/09/politics/donald-trump-campaign-promises/

[ii] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/why-did-people-vote-for-donald-trump-us-voters-explain?CMP=fb_gu

[iii] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2015/jun/16/donald-trump-us-president-republicans-video