Posts Tagged ‘US election’
this disastrous election and its global consequences
A Palestinian protest held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on the day of Trump’s election
It’s November 5 in Australia, 1.32 am in the USA and their election is determined. Not already determined, but determined nonetheless – just as Trump and Harris are determined, by their respective genetic inheritances and their vastly different backgrounds. I don’t know vast amounts about those backgrounds, but enough to know that they were raised in very different circumstances by very different people.
Trump’s influences were mostly male, capitalistic and grasping, to the effect that he had a million dollars to play with, sort of, by age 8. As an adult he has bankrupted himself six times. He has of course, been a chronic tax avoider, and it’s clear that this and other traits, such as his everyday racism, his attitude to women, his big-noting of himself, and his various get-richer schemes, were laid down early in life. Trump’s father Fred was a real estate developer and businessman who lived well into his 90s, and clearly he was the principal influence in Donald’s life. His mother Mary is described as a socialite and philanthropist, presumably on the basis of her husband’s wealth.
Kamala Harris is the USA’s current Vice-President, which means, according to the USA’s rank-obsessed political system, she has already become the USA’s highest ranked female. Her father is a Jamaican-American professor of economics, and her late mother, born in Madras (now Chennai) in India, was a researcher in women’s health, notably breast cancer. They divorced when Kamala was a child of 6 or 7. Clearly these academic interests impacted on Kamala just as Fred Trump’s pecuniary interests heavily influenced Donald, but the fact that Kamala was brought up for much of her childhood by a single mother would have heavily shaped her view on women’s issues.
I’ve collected this scanty information from the public record, which of course provides very little in the way of granular detail, but enough to indicate vastly different life trajectories in a land of great contrast socially and culturally, together with the developed world’s most massive rich-poor divide.
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So twenty-four hours later, Trump has won the presidency of the USA, this time including the popular vote, which, in my view, is the only vote that should count in a one-on-one election for near-dictatorial powers (though of course no such political system should exist in a democracy and, as far as I’m aware, no other democratic system provides such dictatorial power to a single individual).
In my view, the most serious disadvantage Harris faced in this election was the fact that she is a woman. We don’t know as yet how the election, for the first time, of a convicted felon to this dictatorial position will pan out, but even if it ends in disaster, it’s my view that no woman will be given the top job – held by men in that country for over 230 years – for decades to come. And I suspect that the presidential role will only cease to be overly empowered to the ridiculous and catastrophic degree that it is today when a woman is elected to that position. Not any woman, it must be said. Not a woman like Margaret Thatcher or Sheikh Hasina, but a woman indeed like Kamala Harris or Jacinda Ardern.
I’m reluctant to think about the internal future of the USA over the next few years – I thankfully live far away from that storm – but of course I worry for the Palestinian and Ukrainian people, and for Xi’s now-boosted ambitions regarding Taiwan. The world is terribly interconnected, and we should have interconnected and humane concerns, but there’s not much use telling that to one of the most self-centred human beings on the planet, an individual who now has control of the world’s largest military-industrial complex, and who worships dictators.
My first instinct is to avert my eyes from the USA. And yet, I have that curiosity that allegedly killed the cat. I shall try to direct this curiosity to related matters. Having just read Peter Apps’ comprehensive biography of NATO, I know that this development will create something of a crisis for other NATO nations. They will have to step up their support of Ukraine, and do all that they can to avert the serious possibility that Trump and his minions will actually provide support to the dictator. As to the people of Gaza – what is there to say? Trump has no fellow-feeling whatsoever. Absolutely none. This has nothing to do with politics. Trump is not a politician, or anything like a normal human being. The term malignant narcissist has never been more apt for an individual, and it’s obvious to any reasonably informed observer, that’s why the fault of his becoming any nation’s leader doesn’t lie with him but with that nation’s massively ineffective guardrails. And the whole world is going to suffer, we don’t yet know how much, for that nation’s massive failure.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_J._Harris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shyamala_Gopalan
Peter Apps, Deterring Armageddon: a biography of NATO
First female US President? One small step for a bonobo humanity…
So how are we going with our bonobo humanity? Certainly there’s no shortage of articulate women presenting thought-provoking, dynamic, humorous stuff online, whether it be scientific, political, historical, pedagogical or bratty, whatever that is. And naturally I’m keen to see a female President of the USA at last, in spite of my view that their presidential system should be scrapped in favour of a much more distributed power system.
The fact is that, in the past 150 years or so, barely a blink in evolutionary time, the situation re female empowerment has greatly improved in the WEIRD world. And the more female leadership, or simple participation, we have in politics, business, law, science and the military, as the first fields that come to mind, the more we will shame those nations – some democratic, others autocratic – that cling to patriarchy. It’s a fact that being seen as backward, or even untrendy, can energise a movement towards change in our increasingly interconnected world.
There is some pressure now in the USA for Kamala Harris to name her running mate asap, but just about everybody is saying that it would be a bad, nay disastrous, idea to choose a female. Of course I ‘get’ this, what with the USA’s conservatism and patriarchal religiosity, but of course I’m impatient – I don’t want to wait 1,000 years for a ‘world turned upside-down’, and there are quite a few capable women to choose from. But I’m always too impatient and too optimistic. Wouldn’t it be something, though, if the USA – for so long overly authoritarian in its governing system, overly conservative in its laws and cruel in its policies regarding healthcare, education and social security, became something like a pioneer… though I suppose it’s a bit late for that?
So I don’t think Harris will go for Gretchen Whitmer, and even Whitmer (who is said to have ruled herself out) might regard a double female ticket as ‘too risky’, and the impressive Pete Buttigieg would perhaps also be considered too ‘extreme’, not politically but for obvious other reasons. Again, my hopes are too high. I listened to the Democratic campaign rally in Pennsylvania (I think) featuring Whitmer and Josh Shapiro, and found both to be excellent, at least in terms of eloquence.
But again I can’t get over the weirdnesses of US politics. One pundit was saying ‘and by gosh and golly there’s only 100 days until the election’. Exclamation mark! Nobody wakes up to a Federal election in Australia until about thee weeks before the event. There are a handful of campaign ads from the different parties, and there are no ‘rallies’ that I’m aware of. And there’s certainly not the kinds of funds raised – we have very strict regulations about campaign finances (a $15,000 limit without disclosure). The US seems to have no regulations whatsoever – it’s the money country after all.
Anyway, weird or not, this is a very important election, not just for the USA. As an eternal optimist, I’m expecting a Trump loss, but what if, somehow, Trump actually wins? Much of the bullshit he spews (sorry for the mix-up of orifices) about his plans as Dictator will fall by the wayside, and I selfishly am not so concerned about what happens within the USA (and fortunately individual states have a fair amount of power), but there’s no doubt that dictators elsewhere will take advantage of the situation, at great human cost. What happens in the USA has global implications, unfortunately. For example, an essay, ‘Winds of Change: Ukrainian Politics Reacts to the US Electoral Drama’, linked below, and posted only two weeks ago, was mostly downbeat about Ukraine’s future given the likelihood of a Trump victory in November. Meanwhile, many of Ukraine’s rightist politicians have been looking forward to warming relationships with both the USA and Putinland. What a difference a fortnight makes!
But I’m not sufficiently au fait with US elections and such to know whether a President Harris would be able to make a difference in Ukraine, Palestine or in US-China relations (and I wouldn’t really have a clue what to do about China myself, apart from farting in Xi’s general direction). But the very idea of a woman being the person these regions – especially the Arab and Moslem nations – have to negotiate with gives me quite a thrill.
Okay, Harris hasn’t won yet. And, as mentioned, the feverish US ‘election period’ is interminably long compared to those of any other nation. And people do tend to get shot quite often over there. Just saying. And, my optimism has let me down many times before.
The FiveThirtyEight polling website, which I followed closely in the run-up to the 2020 US election, called it correctly enough, though they certainly couldn’t predict the bullshit about fake voting, or the fake electors scheme, and I must admit I was too focussed on the general vote and not enough on the Electoral College shite that has favoured Republicans for decades. I now know it’s as much about ‘swing states’ as anything else, and realize that the Democrats will have to do much more than gain a popular majority. Just another failing of their woeful federal system.
Anyway, we all need to take our protein pills and put our helmets on. It’s a long ride to November…
Vive les bonobos!
References
https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/winds-change-ukrainian-politics-reacts-us-electoral-drama