Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election may very well mean an end to democracy soon
Lightning never strikes twice. Donald Trump has undoubtedly struck the White House a second time, underlining that his first victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016 was not just a one-off. After being defeated by Joe Biden in his 2020 bid for re-election, Trump has made a spectacular comeback by becoming the first Republican president in two decades to win the popular vote. The fact that a misogynistic, foul-mouthed and convicted felon has won the popular vote and the presidency reveals the rot at the core of not just American democracy but the theory and practice of liberal democracy across the world. Apologists of a thinly attenuated democracy will proclaim, with declarative finality, that the people have spoken. They may well have, but in tones pushed and prodded by the algorithms of Trump’s exuberant backer, Elon Musk, and in a way that they may not speak again for some time to come. Trump’s victory reveals that democracy is incorrigible once it has gone down the path of demagogic doom, as it has in the US and many other parts of the world, there is no possibility within it of effecting a course correction of redemption.
The great mistake many made, especially political scientists, was unwisely thinking that democracy would be an enduring feature of the international global order. It was felt that wave upon relentless democratic wave would make democracy spread to every corner of the world, even China and Russia. In American writer Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here, a demagogic candidate called Buzz Windrip wins the race to the White House in 1936, edging out Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the nomination by promising hope to the hopelessly poor. This book should be read widely as it feels like it was written for our time. It challenges most peoples’ complacency about the actualities of democracy. The novel’s central character, the editor of a small-town Vermont newspaper, Doremus Jessup, reflects on perverse assumptions that Americans are prone to making: “Depressions had been only cyclic storms, certain to end in sunshine; Capitalism and parliamentary government were eternal, and eternally being improved by the honest votes of Good Citizens.”
