Democracy and the American Election

The one image that personifies Donald Trump’s campaign for President is the Mexico wall. Good Fences make Good Neighbours! After winning the presidency, he is steadfast on that imagery – as he has says “….a wall is more appropriate. I’m very good at this, it is called construction”. Mexico, whose pesos have slid down along with the dollar, hasn’t yet received the memo to pay for it.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees

The Wall won. Ironically, more than a hundred years later, America hasn’t understood her poet’s irony.

Globalization and its effects have been felt all across the world; with migration of people and jobs being its nucleus. In the same vein as the Wall, is the 35% tax he has proposed, during campaigning, on companies that outsource production and brings products back to the US.

Job losses are not easy…on anyone. Arab land is dealing with the falling oil prices. This has affected not just the citizens of the welfare states, but the huge expatriate population for whom being a second or third class resident didn’t matter as long as jobs and comparable pay were available.

America, the biggest economy, its hiccups resonates across the world. In “Make America Great Again” the key is ‘again’. It resonates with people who have led a comfortable life, most probably in the manufacturing industry, who now feel that their children are worse off than them. And with no hope of their condition improving, especially if the person in power should be a 20 year veteran of the ilk that got America to where it is now.

But the real conversation isn’t about the unrealized effects of globalization; it’s about democracy - the strength of a democracy that allows a complete outsider to compete and become its President; and a first lady who became its citizen a mere 10 years ago.

Or a democracy where majoritarian views are coming to the fore-front – as like in India where minority appeasement has become a rallying factor for the perceived majority. Socially responsible European nations, who have enshrined human rights and equality as basis for their union, had to ultimately make a deal with Turkey for preventing refugees from reaching their shores. With rising popularity of far-right, they are at pains to keep their houses in order, especially after Brexit.

So jobs, refugees and Islamic terror have all made their mark on democracy. So, definition of this dynamic form of governance is still open. But as is nature, a people always gets a ruler it deserves.