The last 12 years at least have shown an increasingly fractured country. The election and response to it shows it is close to a fracture. Below is a commentary by a British SF writer who like de Tocqueville has a pretty perceptive view of our country. It doesn’t matter who you supported in the election or your view of the results if we can’t find a path forward there is little hope for a positive future.
Musings on the US 2020 Election
by
chrishanger
I spent a bit of time putting together lists for each candidate, ideas for reasons behind their victory/defeat ... without committing myself, because I couldn’t say, with any real certainty, that one candidate had an edge over the other.
And most of those reasons were inaccurate.
I listed reasons that the winner would win. Many of those reasons appear to have been largely irrelevant. I listed reasons the loser would lose. Ditto. Both sides predicted a landslide victory, propelled by a wave of silent voters.
Both sides appear to have had a wave of voters. Trump may have lost, both in the popular count and the electoral college, but he did astonishingly well in many ways. This bodes ill for the future. Indeed, in many ways, this result was the worst possible.
First, Trump may have lost the election, but ‘Trumpism’ has not been discredited. The populist vote cannot be discounted. Indeed, now that Trump himself is shuffling off the political stage, it will be easier for his lukewarm supporters to raise the banner of his ideology - insofar as it really exists - without the colossal inconvenience of the man himself. In short, as I have said before, Trump is a symptom rather than a cause of the US’s problems and the election result proves it.
Second, Biden did not deserve to win. The Democratic Party as a whole did not engage in a period of soul-searching, reconfiguring and eventual production of a candidate who could appeal to lukewarm right-wing voters as well as the left - in short, someone who could appeal to the majority of the country. Biden himself was parachuted into the nomination by the party elites, while Harris failed to get through even the first hurdle when she tried to snare the nomination for herself. The party, in short, learnt nothing from 2016. Biden won, at least in part, because he wasn’t Donald Trump. Ironic as this is, it promises problems for the future.
Third, the media - both the mainstream media and social media - completely abandoned all pretence of impartiality. This is, as far as anyone on the right is concerned, blatant foul play. Open censorship - openly biased - undermines trust in the media and the system itself, ensuring - for example - that if a recount was held tomorrow and Biden won fairly, a sizable percentage of the country wouldn’t believe it (even though it was true). The media - too - learnt nothing from 2016. Instead of realising their mistake and cooling down, they created a fertile ground for conspiracy theories.
Fourth, and perhaps worst of all, trust in the voting process has been badly undermined. The red flags may or may not be signs of fraud, as is currently being alleged, but it should go without saying that they should be investigated openly. Given the importance of the process, every precaution should have been taken to ensure that the voting system - mail-in ballots, for example - was airtight. Instead, there seems to have been a degree of sloppiness that would be unacceptable elsewhere. Again, this created a fertile ground for conspiracy theories.
It is common, these days, to blame everything on Donald Trump. And yet, the problems facing the United States - the problems that propelled Trump into the Oval Office, existed well before the idea of ‘President Trump’ was anything more than a
Simpsons joke. Upon taking office, Biden will have to tackle them or face a far stronger challenge in 2024. This problems include:
One - a political/economical/corporate elite that has become increasingly detached from the realities of life, both in America and the rest of the world. This elite, lacking understanding of how things really work, repeatedly makes mistakes that do immense damage to America’s power and prestige. Worse, this elite is steadily closing ranks against newcomers both Left and Right. They worked hard to exclude Trump, but they are doing the same to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her ilk.
Two - a federal bureaucracy that is increasingly incompetent, unrestrained, uncontrolled and indeed uncontrollable, working more for itself than for the country as a whole.
Three - an ever-growing network of activists, both Left and Right, that are making increasingly absurd demands and, now they see Biden as President, will expect him to produce (or else). This is matched by increasing
loathing for such activists.
Four - a media complex, as I noted above, that is longer remotely impartial and thus untrusted (even by the people it favoured).
Five - an endless series of economic problems that are making citizens increasingly desperate and thus more likely to turn to populists like Trump and Ocasio-Cortez (who has a fair claim to being the left-wind version of Trump).
Six - a worsening global climate, caused by elitist mismanagement and geopolitical realities that the US was unable or unwilling to tackle.
Seventh - a growing sense of political disenfranchisement, amongst both the Right and the Left. The Right believes that Washington doesn’t give a damn about them (and, now, that the election was stolen): the Left believes that Washington forced them to accept Biden and Harris as its candidates, rather than Sanders, Warren or anyone else.
None of these problems were caused by Trump. But it cannot be denied that Trump, and the response to Trump, made them a great deal worse.
The problems facing Joe Biden would daunt Lincoln, who was perhaps the last true American statesman. It is very easy to carp and criticise when one is not responsible for actually fixing the problems. It is a great deal harder to actually
fix the problems, particular when one side regards you as an illegitimate president and the other expects you to bring a New Heaven and a New Earth (as Trump will happily testify). Biden must follow a policy calculated to steer between those two poles, a task that would be extremely difficult for a man in his prime.
He must push for sensible politics and, perhaps more importantly, shut down the nuts on his side of the aisle while reaching out to lukewarm Republicans. This will not be easy. The loonier left-wingers could say whatever they liked, as long as there wasn’t much chance of them ever being anything more than a tiny vocal minority. Now, with the prospect of actually having to
govern the country looming ever-larger, Biden must keep them under control. They will see this as a betrayal, of course.
There’s a sense that Biden’s victory means a return to normal politics. That, I think, is not true. Trump failed to fix many of the problems facing the United States. Biden will not find it any easier. And, as Trump recedes from the stage, the problems that put him in power in the first place will start to loom large once again.
Click to expand...
