by Stephan Richter*
True, political manners – and above the standards of sticking to veracity in political statements – have declined in many Western democracies in recent years.
That is nowhere more so the case than in the United States of America. To a large extent, this is one of the direct effects of the ominously overpowering influence of Donald Trump.
He has been a one-man corrosion machine impacting the state of American democracy ever since June 2015, when he announced his candidacy for President of the United States.
A congenital liar
But for all of Trump’s bombast, and the worldwide awareness of it, people all over the globe are still scratching their heads.
They ask themselves two questions: How on earth does Trump get away with it? And why do American voters not simply and firmly reject a man who can only be described as a congenital liar in a significant majority?
Re-elect a big-time liar?
Not just inside the United States, but the world over, the post of President of the United States has long been closely associated with that of a world leader.
What then does it say about the world today when it seems quite possible, despite all the lies spewed out by Donald Trump on a daily basis, that this man may well be re-elected to the presidency in the United States?
Method to the madness
As is almost always the case with things American, there is method to the madness. Nobody should be naive about, or perplexed by, the fact that Trump lies.
The only politically relevant question is this: Why exactly is he doing so?
A systematic false-flag operation
The answer starts not with Donald Trump, but the entire Republican party. It has long made it a tactical habit to accuse its political opponents, mostly the Democrats, of committing morally, if not legally deplorable acts which, in reality, the Republicans themselves are intending to commit.
In the eyes of the public-at-large, it becomes quite unclear later on as to who actually committed the bad acts.
The Republicans’ immense headfake operation
The fact that the Republican Party is even competitive in U.S. politics, never mind positioned to realize significant gains in the upcoming election, is in itself a remarkable feat.
Let us remember that this is a party which, very adamantly and consistently, has traditionally represented the political and economic interests of the upper and ultra-rich classes in the United States.
That constituency would give Republicans, generously spoken, no more than a 10% share of the U.S. electorate.
The Republicans’ ability to extract a victory from an electorate that, for the most part, is anything but rich therefore is tantamount to performing a highly dialectic miracle.
The world upside down
The surprises engineered by the Republicans don’t end there. Even more stunning is the fact that they have managed to attract significant amounts of Americans with low levels of education to their political camp generally.
That certainly is not what the political elites in, say, Europe or Asia would consider a natural base of voter support for conservatives.
What the Democrats are always overlooking
Ever since the Clintons took over the Democratic Party, it has moved to be in tune with, and represent the interests of, wealthy Americans.
Their constituents in that sense include individuals from the tech industry, often living on the West Coast – as well as members of the country’s financial industry elites, usually centered around New York City.
This shift resulted in the Democrats not having a real eye on the wage pressures that blue-collar workers have had to endure for some decades any longer. That is a particularly painful pressure in a country with a low level of union representation.
The big globalization move undertaken in the Clinton era that opened the floodgates of the American consumer markets to Chinese producers certainly did lower the cost of goods for U.S. consumers.
However, the offshoring of production has cost jobs at home – even though the automation of production sites has had a comparatively bigger effect.
The reason why Trump hits on migrants
Viewed against this backdrop, it becomes quite clear that the reasoning behind Trump vehemently and viciously attacking migrants arriving in the United States is entirely cynical – read: political – in nature.
The 45th President of the United States offers up his inflammatory rhetoric for the sole purpose of arousing negative feelings among voters in the lower half of the U.S. income distribution in order to tie them to his political ship.
A seasoned raider
With that one move, Trump thus efficiently raids what, decades ago, used to be the Democrats’ core voting base.
It is an economic fact of life that irregular migration creates big economic pressures especially for those at the lower end of the employment spectrum.
The effect of these de facto open labor markets are obviously felt all the more vehemently as the United States does not have a developed social security system.
Trump’s connection with working folks
No doubt, Trump is a big-time huckster. To further his goals, whichever they may be, he shows no compunction whatsoever.
But, to use a cliche, with his coarseness and irrepressible sense of (often heavily truth-straining) bravado, he does have the ear of the people.
He developed that acute sense for the vox populi in his years as the reality TV host of his “The Apprentice” show.
Authenticity vs. not
Love him or hate him – at this point, Trump is authentic in a very American – read: unrefined and garish – way. That is no longer an open question, even though he makes civilized people’s stomachs turn.
Kamala Harris, in contrast, has so far only shown herself as authentic when she can find herself in a situation in which she can apply the style of a public prosecutor.
That is what she did brilliantly in her one and only TV debate with Donald Trump. And that is also what she achieved in her surprising and very tough Fox News interview. In it, she more than held her ground against a very aggressive anchorman lobbing all sorts of charges at her.
Knowing your brief vs. blind optimism
Implicitly, this also laid waste the argument that Harris would not be able to stand up to strongmen like Xi or Putin.
Her tough argumentative stance is much better suited to achieve that than Donald Trump’s bombastic, blindly optimistic rhetoric.
His constant suggestion that he is the one person in the universe who can wave a magic wand to solve the most complex of problems is simply ludicrous.
And it says something about the uninformed state of the American electorate that, at least for many conservative men, Trump’s mucho-macho attitude holds such a strong sway.
The “opportunity economy”
Harris’s problem as a person is that she comes across as somewhat detached and above the people. That is a big problem not just in today’s media.
Harris has not really managed to connect with voters on the crucial subject of the economy. That is less a matter of the Biden Administration’s record than her lack of any true grasp of economic matters.
When asked, she often told people something about her mother and her childhood. And she has tended to struggle to fill the term “opportunity economy”, which she uses again and again, with two or three sentences beyond calling for the tax credits for new entrepreneurs and new home owners.
No wonder then that the presidential race is so tight, and may in the end be lost by Harris. Unless it comes down to the women’s vote. Since they can be assumed to be more active voters than men, Harris may prevail in the end.
Conclusion
Trump lies – and uses that tool ever more grotesquely in the waning days of the campaign in order to transcend his voting base.
Harris’s main hope at this stage is that the doubts about Trump suffering from increasingly visible bouts of dementia becomes THE major topic of discussion before November 5.
What a world.
*Director of the Global Ideas Center, a global network of authors and analysts
**first published in: Theglobalist.com
By: N. Peter Kramer
