Answers abound. But, after barely two weeks of President Trump’s executive orders, the nagging question still persists. Why and how did he win for a second time ? This isn’t idle speculation if he is to be resisted.
The most frequent explanation of Trumps’ victory is economic: the consequences of spectacular inequality, not least three super-billionaires earning as much as fifty percent of the American population combined, and Trump’s claims that he would deal with the high cost of living. After many years of stagnant salaries, inflation experienced by millions of workers led to their rejection of an urban elite and identification with those who challenged the injustice of it all. Trump’s own resentment is real coming from his past as a vulgar upstart shunned by sophisticated New York. Populist resentment stems from feeling humiliated ‘losers’ - a favorite Trump word – living lives blighted by inflation in a world of winners celebrating their wealth. As the Irish author and journalist, Fintan O’Toole, argues, promote a shared resentment, add showmanship and self-parodying humour and you have the key ingredients of Trump’s appeal. Trump’s campaign benefited from the massive multiplier effect of social media unavailable to a former entertainer, Ronald Reagan, his more amiable, avuncular Presidential prototype. In 1980, Reagan’s campaign slogan was ‘Let’s Make America Great’, he believed in conspiracies (communist not deep-state), and somehow turned ignorance into a virtue and source of authority. President Reagan, the charmer, won the Republican heart. President Trump, the con-man, stole the Republican soul. A feature of Trump’s rallies and public performances that doesn’t get much mention is his description of America’s glorious past destroyed by a criminal elite - a portrayal which summons like a genie out of a bottle a sense of victimhood. Voicing “we the people” while speaking of the richest most powerful country in the world, one that has maintained its macroeconomic success during hard times globally, he presents himself as at one with the victims he has come to save. An extraordinary elision. Trump may be ignorant but he is far from politically stupid and he shows remarkable – frightening - skills of persuasion. In his second Inauguration speech on January 20th. we got a gala performance. Some of that Inauguration speech was old Hollywood. We had the American spirit forged by the demands of the ‘Frontier’, the scenic backdrop to the ‘American dream’, the values and freedom of the big spaces, the wagons rolling West across the prairies. Older readers will remember Saturday morning pictures, the circled wagons surrounded by fierce Red Indian horsemen shot down by brave cowboys. I did vaguely notice that, close-up, the ‘Injuns’ looked rather like the cowboys with heavy makeup and bows and arrows. At the time, all good clean fun. It never occurred to me that I was watching a fictionalized version of the slaughter and expropriation of America’s indigenous population. Trump’s uplifting, manipulative nostalgia did not include the words cotton or slaves, words which might have tempered enthusiasm for one of the origins of America’s economic success. But mention of plantation slavery, lynching, disenfranchisement and discrimination would have been a sign of belonging to the urban elite, unpatriotically ‘woke’ when the glorious past for MAGA was bespoke. Since it was Martin Luther King Day, a black pastor from Detroit, Rev. Lorenzo Sewell, did speak of King’s famous dream during the Inauguration Benediction, but only some 10 black people, including Barack Obama, were visible in the Capitol Rotunda, capacity 600 - though camera angles were very controlled. Forgive the pop psychology but perhaps a sense of victimhood and fear arises from vestigial folk memories, the fear of slave rebellion and guilt at the dispossession of the First Nation. Custer’s last stand, the Great Sioux Wars, happened only 150 years ago. It was just 60 years ago black voting rights were fully honoured by legislation. The Statue of Liberty’s inscription (opened 1886) “Give me your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses…” once welcomed immigrants. When I was myself an immigrant living in New York in the late 1960s, you learned how to be American by watching TV. You were taught how to aspire to the American dream. Now the US government and many of its citizens are set on cruelty to immigrants who evaded border controls, and even to their children born there whose citizenship is protected by the Constitution. The ‘shining light on the hill’ that is America casts a long, dark shadow. Deep political divisions existed in America in the 1960s too. At a peace rally against the Vietnam War, held near Columbia University, a young Harlem resident politely asked us why we were there. I told him that as Catholics we had conscientious objections to the war. “Jews N*****s and Catholics must stick together bro”, he whispered in my ear and moved off. It was a conversation you would probably not have today. The FBI took some nice family photos. Yes, the USA was deeply divided about the Vietnam war but these were divisions akin to those over Gaza, not about the meaning and survival of democracy which not only Jo Biden thinks is now at stake. Cultural heterogeneity resulting from immigration may lie behind American anxiety but more likely deliberate disinformation - “them taking our jobs” - is to blame. In the first three years of Biden’s administration 14.3 million jobs were created, a 10.3% increase on the COVID years. But inflation is directly felt. The family next door getting a job – which might not exist but for Biden - isn’t. Old and newly fashioned voter suppression played a significant part in Trump’s victory. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, a respected non-profit law and public policy institute reports that, between 2021-2024, “ States enacted a total of 79 restrictive laws” suppressing voting. According to the investigative journalist, Greg Palast, an expert on controlling corporate power, before August 2024, self-styled ‘vigilante voter hunters’ accused 316,886 people voter fraud (200,000 in the swing State of Georgia alone). An audit conducted by the State of Washington (Pacific North-West) found ballots mailed in by black voters were four times more likely than white to be rejected, and a US Civil Rights Commission study undertaken in Florida found that 14.3% of black voters appearing in person had their ballots rejected. That’s one in seven, though some would have voted for Trump. Palast reckons that without such voter suppression Kamala Harris would have won in the key marginal States of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. What he calls “America’s nasty little secret” is that such election rigging has become routine. In a first past the post system the consequences can be enormous. China’s Premier, Zhou EnLai’s, “it was too early to say”, in reply to a question from Henry Kissinger about the French Revolution, is a myth: his interpreter said Zhou misunderstood and thought the question was about the student upheavals of 1968. But were Zhou alive today, he might wisely want to reserve judgement on the reasons for Trump’s second victory. Less wisely, I would highlight the years of mainly Republican-instigated vote rigging, President Biden’s damaging of Democrat chances by his delay in resigning, and the extraordinary bouquet of policies Trump offered to resentful voters who identified with, and trusted, a dangerous charlatan. See TheArticle 03/02/2025
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