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After shocks of a tremor, we all felt!

Published : Friday, 13 November, 2020 at 12:00 AM  Count : 417

After shocks of a tremor, we all felt!

After shocks of a tremor, we all felt!

Just a week ago, Americans were struggling with their hopes. As America had traversed forward in its journey through the night, the election optics suddenly began to fade away into a void. Regardless whether Trump or Biden would ultimately become the next president--this country was likely to face a bigger, longer-term challenge.

To start with the first of these eventualities: Trump's first term has obviously damaged American democracy as we know it. And, it is not an exaggeration to wonder whether a second Trump term, even if he turned out to have won legitimately, could have been equally terminal.

International precedents have suggested that illiberal and authoritarian leaders are often far more radical once re-elected than they were in their first terms. The sense of impunity and endorsement, and the familiarity with the levers of power, spurred them to be far more confident and aggressive in gutting institutions, breaking norms and weakening centres of opposition.

That at least, had been the case following the re-elections of Narendra Modi in India, Viktor Orb�n in Hungary and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey. All had provided examples of how democratically elected leaders can in office accumulate dictatorial powers, how the move to autocracy can happen gradually over several years, one rupture at a time.

The typical riposte--that America's checks and balances  have made its democracy uniquely robust--to dissolve, on contact with the Republican-controlled Senate's record of feeble deference towards Trump--over his first term.

That night, we felt--what if Joe Biden ended up as president? The temptation in such a moment would be to assume that all is once more well. And that.....would be a mistake. The past four years, and particularly the experience of a chaotic election campaign and aftermath, have left deep scars on a civilized nation. Even if he had finally conceded Biden's electoral victory....Trump would continue to claim that the election was stolen. He would remain a large presence in US politics. The seeds of doubt give rise to a huge forest.

The reason: Donald Trump's more extreme supporters may seek to form some sort of resistance, possibly violent. Again, many more will simply consider Biden not to be a legitimate president.  Trump had made certain that shadows of doubts crept into our conscience!

In the coming days, Trump wing of the Republican Party may disintegrate, or--at least as likely, or more so-steel itself to obstruct Biden at every step of his presidency and challenge him (or his Democratic successor) for it in 2024.

Mike Pompeo, Trump's secretary of state, Donald Trump Jr, the president's son, and Tucker Carlson, a prominent Fox News host, could all be names to watch. Trumpism is unlikely to leave American politics with the man himself.

Solid yellow Lines have been crossed in American politics that cannot be uncrossed-even under a President-elect, determined as Biden professes to be, to restore decency and honour to the White House. In state politics as in federal politics Trump has normalized the politicisation of public servants, flagrant lying, corrupt and self-serving behaviour, co-opting of official institutions, and obsessive tribalism and paranoia to a degree unimaginable even in America's previously imperfect democratic landscape.

Even if Trump has gone down as a one-term president who had to be praised out of the White House following his election defeat, it will remain the case that those politics had taken k a celebrity huckster, to the presidency in the first place and may (had it not been for the pandemic) have kept him there. And his methods may well retain their potency for as long as the underlying causes of Trumpism - the deep inequities and divides in America - persist, renewing widespread anger, disillusionment and polarization.

Can the United States move on through its ongoing test? The republic has muddled through past crises even when its system threatened to fall apart. It is to be sincerely hoped that it does so again. But to hope should not be the same as to assume. History provides lessons and principles, but it is not an oracle.

This time, things may be different...
The writer is a former educator
based in Chicago











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