For the last few days I have been trying to collect my thoughts regarding the prospect of Donald Trump inhabiting the oval office as the President of the United States in January. For those who follow western politics, this should not have come as much of a surprise, especially if one reflects on Brexit. For the people in the US to vote a clueless, misogynistic, racist, climate change denying, narcissistic bucket of puke, things must have been pretty bad.
Sadly the conditions were perfect and the writing had been on the wall for some time, democracy in the US has failed, more specifically neoliberalism. Whichever flavour of the establishment you chose you ended up with same crappy taste in your mouth. You were left with the unsatisfying feeling that nothing tangible was going to change for the average citizen. Regardless of the tribe, Republican or Democrat, the game would be rigged for life’s winners to continue reaping the benefits, while the peasants suffered year upon year. Some social justice crumbs were thrown off the table during the Democratic Party years, while military spending usually escalated during times of Republican rule, but mostly things stayed on track. The rich got much richer, whilst the poor were completely disregarded. This continues unabated today, inequality is wider than ever and the rich with an army of lobbyist at their disposal makes sure that it stays this way. The vulnerable in society are at the mercy of an unforgiving machine, whilst the working and middle classes have no sway on policies at all. They are given an illusion of democracy in the form of a vote, in between times they do not matter. The rich have used their money to influence government, hence after 40 years of neoliberalism what exists is a plutocracy, an establishment consisting of CEO’s and government facilitators.
Following the financial disaster 2008 Obama was swept to power on a wave of hope and excitement. Eight years later he has achieved next to nothing; a watered down healthcare plan, partial military de-escalation in some regions and a dubious Noble peace prize. On the other side of the ledger; wars have escalated all over the world, nothing discernible has happened regarding climate change and inequality has sky rocketed. People in working class areas and the poorer end of society watched bankers go unpunished despite destroying the economy, while their jobs disappeared overseas, for others pay and benefits diminished out of sight. While all this occurred the neoliberals of varying shades stood by and watched this unfold. People started to get angry, very angry.
This wasn’t the type of anger that is often expressed in mass marches, with hordes of brightly dressed people with face paint, music, placards and whistles, that you often see when liberals are disgruntled. It was a fury that was most probably directed at the TV while watching the news after 
work or reading the paper. This was the rage of people who worked in car plants, farms, steel mills for 30-40 years, who were witnessing nothing but unemployment and destruction in their hometowns. The enraged were often but not exclusively white, working class, they were seething and desperate. You didn’t hear about them in the polls particularly, but in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin their numbers escalated. No political party or politician could meet their needs or understand their plight, then along came Donald Trump.
If you are a liberal, before this event you may have been relatively happy with the status quo, college educated, maybe living in a diverse community, you will probably have no idea why people were drawn to Trump. You might have watched Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and concluded that the world isn’t great, but it’s not too bad and that ‘steady as she goes’ is just what the country needs. For many
in the liberal world Hillary Clinton was deemed ‘a safe pair of hands’, if not too spectacular. Sure many liberals would like to withdraw from war, reduce racism, close the gender pay gap among other things on their wish list, but on the whole Hillary didn’t seems too divisive. From the opposite perspective Hillary represented everything the ‘forgotten’ were fighting against; steeped in governmental bureaucracy, massively rich, totally embedded within Wall St and the ruling elite. For them she was the very symbol of the demise and ultimately the collapse of US democracy. Sadly for Hillary Rodham Clinton she proved in boxing parlance to be ‘tailor made’ for Donald Trump.
I’ve heard people dismiss the near 50% of voters in the US as racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic. While this may be true of the man himself, judging by the debates and media reports, this doesn’t necessarily directly translate to the bulk of his supporters. There is no denying his rhetoric towards Mexicans and Muslims would delight the racists within the movement. Likewise his crass comments regarding women, the disabled and the LGBT community may comfort the odd dinosaur who hasn’t quite made it into the 21st century. This doesn’t mean the millions of people who voted for him are bigoted. Trump managed to harness all that anger among his believers and direct it towards practically anyone who was different to them. Minorities as in most parts of Europe currently, were used as scapegoats, to the converted, this sounded like a plausible reason as to why the wheels had fallen off. He used the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’, it was vague and empty, but it tapped into some feelings of nostalgia and a yearning for an America that probably never existed. His debating skills were akin to a bully in the schoolyard, but this didn’t matter. Policies were never mentioned, only baseless boasts and insults aimed at Hillary Clinton. The problem is, it worked, people were so lost and desperate they hung on to every bombastic word that came out of his intensely narcissistic mouth.
During the aftermath over this last week we have heard a lot of opinion from liberal hacks, there was one who declared it’s a white thing and that ‘they’ had nothing to be angry about because other people have it worse. While Amanda Marcotte stated in her article that the male white anger was used as a weapon to maintain their superiority and therefore wasn’t valid. These articles and others like it are dangerous, primarily because they serve to further divide the people by race or gender. They continue to ignore the underlying issue, which is a systemic failure of neoliberalism. Instead they approach this global problem of a broken economic and social entity through myopic ‘single issue’ lenses. In a way they are no different to Trump supporters as they are only interested or angered by issues that are important to themselves.
There is no doubt that this will be a tremendously difficult time for all minorities, as the lunatic has taken over the asylum. This will encourage fellow sociopaths to act out their wildest racist, misogynistic, homophobic dreams. We must be aware, however, even though incidences of hate crimes have increased since the election, these people have always been there, they are the minority, but they will feel temporarily empowered. We need to fight against this kind of abhorrent bigotry, it has no place in a civilized society, these people however should not be confused with the millions of confused but not so dangerous voters who we need to strike up a dialogue with. All sides need to find what binds us together rather than what tears us apart. Most people want safe societies, great education for everybody, clean warm dry living conditions, jobs that pay fair wages, affordable good quality transportation to get us there, excellent health services and many others. These are not race issues, gender requirements or LGBT only problems, these are basic needs that everyone should have access to. If we look towards what we have in common rather than what our differences are, we may create a better society.
Left the building 