Talk about a divided America. In absolute numbers, the votes for Hillary Clinton (59,814.018 or 47.7 percent of the total) were only slightly more than those for Donald Trump (59,611,678 or 47.5 percent).
Trump won because America uses an Electoral College system, where, for each state (except Maine and Nebraska), the winner takes all, meaning whoever gets the most votes in that state gets all the electors’ votes. Using this system, Trump ended up with 279 electoral votes and Clinton only 228.
A divided America made Trump win. Researching for today’s column, I was amazed at the number of books that have been released in the last two years on the rise of populism worldwide and the constant references to divided nations.
Cas Muddle, a Dutch political scientist, has studied populist movements throughout the world and proposes a definition for populism as “a thinly centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’ and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonte generale (general will) of the people.”
This clearly happened in America, with Trump whipping up fears of migrants, terrorists (sometimes the two categories lumped together) and, yes, the economic elite, which he then identified as being Clinton’s main supporters. Although a billionaire himself, Trump was projected as a political outsider, the guy who never held public office and is, therefore, to use Muddle’s description, “pure,” ready to defend the interests of the working class—well, the white working class in particular.
Performance politics
Last May, shortly after our own Rodrigo Duterte’s election as president, I wrote a column referring to a new book by Australian Benjamin Moffitt, “The Rise of Global Populism,” where he writes about how populist leaders need to perform their politics. Central to the performance is an attack on people who are different, who can be blamed for the nation’s woes. In America’s case, Mexicans were attacked for taking away jobs, and a generic “Muslim terrorists” identified as the cause of much of the violence in US society.
Populist victories have startled us because they seem so unpredictable. For example, during elections politicians need to dig up dirt, or scandals, about their rivals. This happened on a massive scale in the last US election, but Trump thrived on those scandals, which is a main characteristic of populist politics.
When the New York Times exposed Trump’s not paying income taxes for more than 10 years, he countered that, precisely, the tax system worked to favor the superrich, including himself. (Yes, read that sentence again, then think of how many Americans saw it as proof that Trump was so smart about corporate tax-evading that he would make a good leader to crack down on tax loopholes.)
And when scandals broke out about how Trump sexually harassed women, we saw a bizarre replay of what happened more than 20 years ago, when Joseph Estrada, who predated Mr. Duterte as a successful populist candidate for the presidency, was attacked for his mistresses and extramarital forays. The exposés only won him more votes, with some twisting of logic: If a man (what a man) can handle so many wives, he should be able to tackle an entire nation’s needs.
Macho bluster was particularly important in this last US election as Clinton strived hard to become America’s first woman president. In the end, though, her image as a strong woman became part of the Trump camp’s card, described by journalist Susan Chira as a “pink versus blue American divide”: men feeling they have been pushed aside by strong women, with a looming threat to the entire nation in the person of Clinton.
Moffitt’s “The Rise of Global Populism” has a long discussion on “bad manners” as being important for male populist leaders. We’ve certainly seen that in the Philippines with Digong, who makes Trump look almost saintly, at least when it comes to language. More than four months with Mr. Duterte and his swearing, Filipinos seem almost resigned now to accepting the presidential profanities, and never mind the bad press… or rather the bad international press, who will never understand Filipinos anyway.
Shipwrecked
Mark Lilla, an American political scientist and historian of ideas, has a book, “The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction,” describing how people can be “shipwrecked” in the present, completely bewildered by seemingly rapid changes. For shipwrecked minds, there is a nostalgia for some mythical past when “things”—an abstract word that can mean the economy, politics, culture—were better. Trump talked of a past when America was great. The myth-making here is of a time when there weren’t so many immigrants, which of course is nonsense because Trump’s family originally migrated from Germany, so the problematic immigration today is really one of Mexicans and Central Americans … and Muslim terrorists. So far, no references yet to Filipinos.
There’s more, of course, than talking about migrants taking away jobs. Trump wants to bring jobs home as well from abroad, and that could affect our call centers and other outsourced jobs.
Populism is triggered by fears of the unknown, projected onto people who are different because of skin color or accent. (Think of how our call center agents have to go through “accent modification” classes.)
People’s fears are stoked by anger against those people who are different. We have similarities in the Philippines, not based on race but on the demonized “drug addict” lurking in every corner, ready to rob you, or worse. So when these “addicts” are shot down, we are initially shocked, but then seem ready to resign ourselves to the argument that this is necessary to purify the nation.
What now for the United States, and other countries that voted with populists? It depends pretty much on populist leaders keeping people angry and fearful, which shouldn’t be difficult because we will never run out of problems—and scapegoats on whom to blame those problems.
Welcome, America, to the Philippines.
mtan@inquirer.com.ph