The fear of an impending collapse of many things following the election of Trump exaggerates what one man can do, writes Siphamandla Zondi.
A lot of discussion about the election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States and what it means for Africa and the world is punctuated by such fear that we must have simplified a complex situation.
We have too easily assumed Trump will do what he said, that the system will allow him to and that he has the power to do it.
We are right to be worried, but wrong to be paranoid.
Trump’s rise to power is a fairy-tale of rising against all odds, a typical “American” story.
Myth-making is an important part of the forming of modern nations and the US is itself an embodiment of many myths, including that it’s the “leader of the free world”. The myth of a new world that’s at the foundation of the US was born when by mistake Christopher Columbus arrived in the land of the Innuits and the Aztec and others thinking he was in India. The naming of this land America and its people Red Indians was part of the myth of discovery.
The part of America that is called the United States explains itself in terms of the “American” dream which carries within it many great aspirations and many horrible claims; many contradictions and many certainties, unresolved issues of nation-making and imaginaries that underpin the continuous pro-cess of projecting national power, national identity and interests.
There is a continuous invention of a once glorious past, of course.
It was in pursuit of this dream that many came out to vote for Trump for he promised to “make America great again”.
It is all part of the myth that there should two sides in mainstream US citizenry that are at each other’s throats in the battle for the soul of the imagined nation, the façade of contradictions and claims.
The fear of an impending collapse of many things following the election of Trump exaggerates what one man can do. It’s like the euphoria around the rise of Barack Obama as the first black president of the US.
It was driven by the audacity of hope that he wrote about in his book with the same title, an over-estimation of what an individual person of great skill, intellect and courage could do to single-handedly change the course of the country.
With Obama it was a sense of an eldorado; with Trump it is a sense of an impending apocalypse.
Both are exaggerations. They over-simplify a complex society and political system.
Trump epitomises something that has been troubling about US society for centuries now: this nostalgia about the land caucasians “discovered”, by which they mean the colonisation that was accompanied by massacres, ethnic cleansing and legalised racism.
It is a nostalgia for a world of white supremacy fast being threatened by cosmopolitanism and the rise of others that Obama epitomises. With demographic changes due to an increase in the Latino and black population when the white population is said to be shrinking, the shifts in the economy are leading to a decline in household incomes.
As a recent report by economists Angus Deaton and Anne Case show, significant numbers of middle-aged, middle class whites are witnessing these changes and sensing the slow dissipation of the dream.
They want to defend the survival of the dream against immigrants, liberals, Muslims, homosexuals and the others they blame for the “loss of home”.
They have given up on the establishment and mainstream politicians because they don’t promise to freeze the clock and halt the loss of a great “America” of old, the sense of homelessness. That is why when Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, the Neo-cons and others offered some hope for this part of the US society even the dumbest politicians that aligned with this looked electable.
Outsiders like Trump epitomise exasperation with the dream and its myths. His ability to project the image of self-made success and the promise to make “America great again” resonates with these US citizens. Trump does not have to speak sense on any policy matter to give hope to these “homeless” white citizens.
Trump did not invent the madness we witness among his supporters, he simply harnessed it. He didn’t start the bigotry and racism associated with his campaign, but he gave it a voice.
He knows the raw and crude sentiments of those for whom the dream is deferred. So, in fact, he does not have to believe what he says and he does not have to deliver on his promise to kick butts. He has done enough for these dejected US citizens to reconnect with nostalgia again.
As we saw with Obama and many before him, there are many limits to what incumbent presidents can achieve. The temptation to join the establishment without losing the radical or bigoted rhetoric is strong. The establishment that bore his wrath and that was ashamed by his rise, leading to many leading Republicans distancing themselves from him, is ready to receive, deceive and convert him into another version of Trump, still raw, unscripted, unconventional in many ways, but more circumspect, compromising and calculating.
His first statement recently was that he will be the president of all in the US, which means the racists and bigots that banked on him being their president to expel Mexicans and Muslims and so forth will now have to live with the fact that once in the White House Trump will have to be considerate to the interests of the Mexicans and Muslims too.
The rest of us may have seen in his imminent presidency what we fear most - the end of the world of a sort. It may all turn out to have been a waste of expectation.
The US is an established state with systems that have functioned for a long time and no single presi-dent is going to significantly change much about this.
The worst of the US foreign policy such as unilateralism, military humanitarianism, regime change designs, sublime racist world views where the free world means Europe and its diaspora, asymmetric trade agreements and so forth will not be because Trump is in power, but because the US is the sole empire around.
There is for us very little difference between Republican and Democratic presidencies beyond the power of symbolism such as having a black man at the apex of the most powerful political entity in the world.
The best of the US’s policies will remain regardless of who is in the White House.
So the terms of relationship and co-operation with South Africa and Africa defined in the Africa Growth and Opportunities Act will remain in place. Many programmes that oil the relations and manage its inherently conflictual nature will also remain.
Business exchanges involving many small businesses and some big multinationals will continue to grow.
The disturbing rhetoric, erratic decision-making and hardline attitude may change the chemistry of relations, but will not redefine the relationship.
Trump, who has already surprised many with his rise to the top of the US political system, may surprise us in turning out to be just another typical Republican president with a colourful and worrisome personality.
* Zondi is executive director of the Institute for Global Dialogue.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
The Sunday Independent