RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – (Opinion) A Trump victory in the US presidential elections Tuesday, November 3rd, is too awful for this gringo to contemplate. So let’s make the optimistic assumption that after all the sound and fury accompanying the counting of the votes (and there will almost certainly be plenty of that), former VP Joe Biden will be declared the winner and in January will be inaugurated as President.
That we will have finally awoken from the Trumpian nightmare and can contemplate the dawning of a bright new day is certain. What is anything but certain is what the broken jigsaw of what was once a proud America will look like when (and if) it can be pieced back together. Biden will certainly have his work cut out for him.
If there is anything these past four years of US misrule and mismanagement by Trump and his handmaidens have illuminated, it is the basic fragility and hypocrisy of what only a short time ago the majority of Americans believed was the rock solid foundation on which the oft-proclaimed shining citadel of ‘democracy’ rested. The solidity of this foundation has now been brought clearly into question.
How did we come to this point?
Partly as a result of Trump’s wanton moral and institutional destructiveness. But long before Trump vulgarly barged onto the scene, increasingly pointed questions have been directed at whether American ‘democracy’ (and even democracy in general) has ‘real’ substance or is little more than an elegant stage curtain in front of a cynical and rapacious effort on the part of the privileged elite to retain and increase their power at the expense of the so-called ‘democracy’.
Wrote the poet Juvenal in the declining days of the Roman Empire: “Two things only the people anxiously desire — bread and circuses.” Perhaps we have been unwittingly moving in that direction with the popular adoration for our reality-show president and the growing public acceptance of social-media-driven conspiracies. In a recent speech ex-President Obama reminded his audience: “This is not a reality show. This is reality.” One need only browse the ‘comments’ on articles posted on right-wing Newsmax or similar sites to assess the mindless, profane, ‘Bread and Circuses’ fury of its readers.
It has been imagined that on Biden’s first day as president he will preside over a symbolic bonfire, burning the majority of Trump’s regressive ‘Executive Orders’ and undoing much of the destructive mandates which have set back environmental, social and economic progress by years. Unscrambling these eggs is perhaps the easy part.
Much more difficult will be the task of developing – and selling to the toxically split American pubic – a new honest and believable narrative, one which acknowledges and promises to make amends for the failings and hypocrisy of the nations’ history and replaces old illusions with a new and robust reality.
Will Biden be able to convince the public that Black Lives Matter and is not a fearsome threat to them? Will they accept that one great aspect of America is it is a nation of immigrants; that the environment matters and is in existential danger? Will they accept that if the nation is to thrive, each of them, echoing John Kennedy, is not only going to have to answer ‘what you are going to do for the country’ but be prepare to do it instead of just sounding off about it? Will each of us be willing to take micro steps in our own lives that can bring about macro solutions and end historic hypocrisies?
Biden has, from the beginning of his presidential campaign, argued that this election is about an existential choice for the “soul of the nation”. While there is no question that this is true, it is well past time that we consider the true nature of that ‘soul’.
Famed American linguist, activist, and political writer Noam Chomsky, interviewed by Isaac Chotiner for ‘The New Yorker, makes some very strong points: “I think [American] democracy, first of all, was never much to write home about… The Founding Fathers, were committed to reducing democracy… The general population wanted more democracy. The Framers wanted to restrict that; they didn’t like the idea of democracy… James Madison explained that one of the prime goals of government is to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority, and the Constitution was designed to try to prevent what is called the tyranny of the majority, meaning democracy.”
There is no question that ‘the minority of the opulent’ has always been doing its best to make sure things stay that way.
As almost all the founding fathers were slave owners, their narrative about “all men being created equal with liberty and justice for all” is a huge overstatement, and just one example of the hypocrisy of America as the beacon of ‘equality’. That must change if democracy is to survive.
Assuming he is elected, as he peels the onion of reality and tastes its tears, Biden will have an extraordinary challenge to reset the foundational assumptions of America, about its equality, its democracy, its commitment to protecting the environment and its place in the world. America as a partner member of the international community must replace Trump’s arrogant ‘America First’.
New assumptions need to replace long-held illusions. It won’t be easy.