Goodbye to a liberal-tinted view of America

We think we know other people – even a whole country — but we never really do. Do we? We imagine that our shared past creates a mutual perception of what the future should look like. But we’re often wrong.

Donald Trump is back. The Republican party he leads could see a clean sweep: the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives. To which we might add the Supreme Court. A royal flush.

Whether, as many predict, Trump will come back with a vengeance remains to be seen. To quote the ex-Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Trump is not an unknown unknown. But he is, to those of us who see the world through liberal-tinted spectacles, a known unknown. We don’t get it. 

The last time he was hemmed in by cabinet picks and advisers who curbed his wilder instincts. This time his campaign is vastly better organised. He is unlikely to pick a team that will frustrate him at every turn. So who knows what he will or won’t do? 

We can pick over the bones of his triumph as much as we like if it makes us feel better. Or worse. Many will, ad nauseam. But peering into the entrails of why he won, why Kamala Harris lost and why the pollsters got it wrong (yet again) doesn’t change the simple fact that those of us who wanted him to lose were blindsided.

Trump’s victory is a defeat, not just for liberalism, but for the way in which liberals choose to see and interpret the world. Liberals are not the only ones who suffer from blurred vision. But we are especially prone to wishful thinking.

The Roman triumph ( triumphus ) was a civil ceremony and also a religious rite conducted with great fanfare to celebrate military victories. The triumph offered the Roman emperor the coveted opportunity to claim that his victory (there were no female emperors) was inspired by the gods.

We can expect to see plenty of that from Trump. Popular rejoicing by those who voted for him (not least the Evangelical Right) will be accompanied by obeisance from his fellow strongmen. The markets are already ecstatic. Vladimir Putin, Benjamin Netanyahu and Viktor Orban may be expected to pay tribute. As well they might.

Trump will, once again, be the most powerful man in the world, with the resources to change the course of history. Their standing, their ambitions and, in some cases, their survival, depends on the patronage of the man in the Oval Office.

Others will be fearful. American women who might need an abortion. Illegal immigrants (11 million of them at the last count) whom Trump has threatened to deport en masse. Ukrainians holding off Russian occupying forces. Palestinians and Lebanese dying in their tens of thousands in retribution for the massacre of Israelis on October 7.

In his victory speech, Trump said: “ A promise made is a promise kept”. We shall see. Will he start a trade war with China by slapping hefty tariffs on their exports to the US? Will he pull out of NATO or cripple it by cutting support?

Politicians are not known for keeping their promises. But then Trump is not your usual politician. In fact, he’s an anti-politician which is partly why he won. He’s a rule-breaker by temperament. And now that he has the full-throated support of more than 80 million Americans, he can make his own rules.

I said in my last piece that I thought Kamala Harris would struggle to win . America isn’t ready for a woman president who is also black. The handover from a faltering President proved a serious handicap.

Her campaign was flimsy despite the fortune she raised and spent on advertising. The glitter of star-studded endorsement didn’t do it. In fact it may have played badly in America’s struggling heartlands. And it wasn’t the economy. The American economy is bigger and better than ever, as the Economist said in its last cover story.

Nor was it (just) Elon Musk and the trolls. Trump won – big – and Harris lost because a majority of Americans wanted him back warts and all. They have their reasons and they’re not all part of a coherent whole.

Americans have signalled loudly and clearly that the liberal world is moving too fast for them and that they find what they call the woke agenda – transgender rights, gay marriage, immigration- makes them feel uncomfortable.

We, the liberal bien-pensants, can go into a defensive crouch as Trump heads to the White House for a second time, shaking our heads and saying: “How could they?”

Or we can take a long, hard look at our comfortable assumptions about liberal democracy, about the power of nationalism and the complexity of human aspiration. A world free of misogyny, racism and crushing inequality is worth fighting for. But it requires us to be clear-eyed about what stands in the way.      

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