November 20, 2020
America vs America
Election 2020 witnessed on the evening of November 5 the unprecedented spectacle of an American president standing at a podium in the White House, invalidating the very legitimacy and integrity of the US electoral process. Terms like “fraud” and “corruption” were deployed – a familiar nomenclature which routinely characterizes elections in Pakistan as “rigged.” Trump, in effect, attacked America.
It sent a message that, when you scratch below the surface, there is little to distinguish the anomalies of the human condition. Trump went on to describe as “most corrupt” the cities of Detroit and Philadelphia (cities in states where the votes were very close between Biden and Trump.) Being a big businessman, he is privy to the dark underbelly of US polity. He also alleged “big money” intervention to subvert one of the institutional pillars of American democracy.
60 years ago, in one of the most intensely contested US elections, between John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960, it was widely believed that, through the shenanigans of the Mob, Illinois was handed over to JFK, enabling him to go over the line. Nixon, who was the incumbent Vice President, chose to keep quiet.
When France in late October disgraced itself over the caricatures, Western nations dutifully lined up to defend that inflammatory breach of common decency and common sense, taking shelter under the umbrella of freedom of expression. Yet, during the evening of November 5, when President Trump from the White House was berating election results, major mainstream media networks of ABC, CBS, NBC, and MSNBC chose midway to interrupt the broadcast and cut away to other programming.
One favorite exercise of pundits ensconced in Washington think-tanks is to finger-point disfavored nations as ‘failed states.’ 2020 has provided ample evidence of Washington dysfunction. If corona cannot be controlled at the White House, could it be at the national or global level? Covid-19 and its socio-economic repercussions played a huge role in the sinking of the 45th President.
Pakistanis have often been derided – with some justification – for putting a premium on conspiracy theories, but in the year 2020, it was the President of the United States who became the biggest conspiracy theorist along with millions of his passionate supporters and voters.
Hostility has overtaken civility. When Trump denigrated the media and America’s electoral process, the US media launched into the President, that he was indulging in falsity, baseless claims, unsubstantiated assertions.
17 years ago, when Bush Jr chose to attack and invade Iraq, where were the facts then? Where lay the evidence? At that time, liberal punditry joined the chorus on a misadventure, which brought untold suffering and continues to wreak havoc on the Mideast and beyond. Leading lights in the New York Times and key Democrats were enthusiastic in ringing jingo bells.
During 2016, I had a conversation with family friend Dr Mubashir Hassan (along with his brother, Dr Shabbar Hassan), both sadly deceased, at whose Lahore house at Gulberg, the Pakistan Peoples Party was founded on November 30, 1967. He told me that Trump would inflict enormous damage on the United States. Trump is not done yet. He has nearly 10 weeks left.
In a deeply polarized nation, with 70+ million votes under its belt, Trumpism has not been repudiated. Then, too, despite the power of Presidential Executive Orders, the potential for legislative gridlock hovers because the Senate is not yet in Democrat control. Also, it remains to be seen what value Kamala – Biden’s Veep pick – brings to the table. Despite the hype of barriers broken, the real transformational barriers were broken by Obama 12 years ago.
The task for Biden now would be damage control. The President-Elect owes a huge debt to the Black electorate, who were galvanized and energized by Trump’s lack of empathy on the indefensible cop-killing of George Floyd in broad daylight on May 25, 2020. According to an Associated Press survey, cited in the Washington Post on November 8, nation-wide, Biden won 90% of the Black vote. In battleground swing states, it made a decisive difference. The fast-changing diverse demography of America means that the Caucasian Republican base is narrowing and shrinking.
There is the distinct possibility that vast segments of Americans would be swayed by the narrative of widespread voter fraud, eroding American trust in America, and thereby, in effect, making the United States of America into what NBC News characterized as the “Divided States of America.”
Those overly sanguine on meaningful shifts ahead in international relations would do well to heed the projection in the November/December 2020 issue of Washington Report on Middle East Affairs that states: “a future President Biden does not intend to reverse any of the pro-Israel political measures adopted by the Donald Trump administration.” Regaining lost leverage won’t be easy.
Mass media is predictably clamoring that the system has worked. Did it?
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