THE American elections have come and gone, Donald Trump has been conferred with the distinction of being the first United States President in 130 years to be elected to a non-consecutive second term.
This is a minor point. The election’s real resonance is that it marks the end of an epoch and marks the beginning of something dark and malevolent in US politics.
It is the end of decent conservative politics and the beginning of near-to-far right extremism in American politics.
It is a cogent point to make that American politics can only go down from here. When history does its rounds, it shall be acknowledged that Trump was a transitional candidate for the far right.
What the far right has managed to do in America is to use Trump as a Trojan Horse to smuggle their repugnant ideas into the mainstream.
Ten years ago, no one could have said the things Trump has said and survived politically. Those views were viewed with universal opprobrium.
Then came Trump, the candidate with nothing to lose. He could afford to be as offensive politically and socially as he liked.
If it cost him, that was okay. He was a long shot candidate. Anyway, if it didn’t, he would hit the biggest political jackpot of all time.
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For the first time, a mainstream US political candidate could fantasise about unleashing the military on US citizens, making political appointments to key offices, labelling immigrants as vermin, be a convicted felon and get away with it. In Trump, Americans have elected a man who only “conceded” an election because he did not have the means to hold on to power.
He only believes in the democratic process when it favours him, like Adolf Hitler and Mussolini, who both used democracy to get into power and then did away with it.
Americans have shown in their millions that they are fine with this.
Those in the Republican establishment with ambitions for 2029 are watching and taking notes.
Trump has tested the waters of US politics and found them very receptive to extremist ideas, especially around scapegoating and othering minority social groups and using authoritarian rule in the name of rescuing the country. The extreme right is no doubt energised, it is not too long a step from where Trump is on many issues to the extreme right or fascism.
The far right can now realistically see a path to power in America.
Their ideas, thanks to the maverick politics of Trump, are now to an extent acceptable.
And most importantly, expressing and campaigning on those ideas is not political suicide anymore.
Those American, not on the extremes who voted for Trump, have evidently shown that they can live with the more unsavoury aspects of American social dynamics.
In this context, we must remember that many fine upstanding Americans were only too happy to live with segregation, the Ku Klux Klan and the lynching of blacks.
Voting for a near or far right figure in defence of your way of life is now considered acceptable.
Trump has not only mainstreamed extremist ideas and made them less socially distasteful to a significant part of the US population, but he has also made Trumpism an easy path to power.
Trump has shown that now in the US, a political candidate no longer has to be a decent, honest, open-minded and stable person, but can be an erratic, racist, bigoted, amoral and immoral rogue.
That lowers the bar way too low for such a diverse country as America.
All that is needed is the pulling power towards one’s base.
This could mean that come the next election, the only continuum along which aspiring candidates can compete is to out-Trump each other meaning that perhaps the vilest and meanest of the lot shall be elected.
Trump won because of his unique brand of politics.
It is inevitable that copycats shall dominate the Republican party for the foreseeable future now that Trumpism has been shown to be the only show in town selling.
When the American election season began with various candidates arrayed against Trump, there were some good, decent people there, but they all fell spectacularly by the wayside and the primaries quickly became the coronation of Trump.
None of them, no matter how erudite, eloquent or principled they were, stood a chance against Trump. The Republican party was and is all about Trumpism.
Come 2028, the man will be on the way out (hopefully). All aspiring Republicans will have the Trump template as the sure way to power.
If all candidates are competing along this one variable, ie how to be Trump, then the contest becomes who can be the best Trump plus or Trump on steroids.
Things from there on should get very, very messy.
It is possible to see a Marjorie Green or Steve Bannon as the next US President or a presently unknown right wing figure.
No candidate from hereon can be dismissed as an absurdity, even Don Quixote would have a halfway decent chance of being elected as the American president today.
American politics have taken a shameful turn for the worse.
The American people has declared that they are okay with not holding their leaders to account, they have said their leaders do not have to be decent moral, honest, law-abiding persons.
The American people have allowed transient socio-economic crises to determine and overshadow their judgement on fundamental and far reaching issues.
Emotions and near hysteria have dominated reason and genuine politics.
The real danger that Trump poses is not in the things he will do as president but the corrosive influence he will have on the institutions and culture of governance. In this election the American people have said so many things that they will perhaps one day come to regret.
As WB Yeats wrote in "The Second Coming":
“The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity”.
Surely the American political system has lost its innocence, the best of the Republican party like Liz Cheney have been cast aside and the worst in American society have come to the fore.
And as WB Yeats ends ominously:
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Now that the results have come in, Trump is the 47th president of the US, it is easy to visualise the beast as Trumpism slouching towards Washington DC for its birth on January 20, 2025.
God help America on what follows thereon.
- Ignatius Tsuro is a commentator on social and political issues. He writes in his personal capacity.
