End of Traditional Politics
After the primary election in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois and Missouri, it is thought that the candidates of the two major political parties in the United States for elections next November will be Hilary Clinton for the Democrats and Donald Trump for the Republicans. Although who control the GOP mechanisms are trying out all sorts of manoeuvres to prevent Trump from becoming the official candidate due the fact that his ideology or conception of political activity is totally different from those who have been operating in the GOP networks for a couple of decades.
Regardless of what party leaders can do to stop Trump, the purpose of this article is to try and understand the phenomenon of this candidate, who far from looking like a politician he is rather like a kind of comedian or actor, totally alien to the traditional political activity and basic ideological concepts that must exist in any member of a political party.
Perhaps the most remarkable fact of the appearance of this strange type of political actor is that it is a phenomenon that has appeared in the past decades in different parts of the world.
To point only a few in the West we could mention Berlusconi in Italy, Le Pen in France, Putin in Russia and Tsipras in Greece, just to mention the best known by Westerners, but we should not overlook the fact that this phenomenon also exists in countries in North Africa, for example Gaddafi in Libya and Mubarak in Egypt. Let’s not forget that similar situations also exist in the Middle East, Far East Asia North Korea and several countries in Latin America.
The vast majority of political analysts believe that the origin of this phenomenon is a kind of reaction carried out by the extreme right and a general trend to establish control by legal, military and police means so that a small elite of very high level capitalists can continue dominating worldwide and can transmit that power to their descendants and their circle of closest friends. However, there is also the idea that there is a trend around the world that is trying to radically change the formulas of existing political models, both within nations and in the international context and the facts show that traditional ways of doing policy are exhausted and society in general is now searching for procedures to improve the coexistence of human beings at all levels.
To go back to Trump’s unique case, we can see that his behaviour and world view are shared by a large segment of the US population, since the paradigms of material success, frivolity, narcissism and xenophobia are not unique to the Anglo – Saxons living in the United States, but it’s a predominant situation in all ethnic groups all aroundthe world.So that a reconstruction of the political world where those real values predominate over the fictitious values created by Western democracy, where hypocrisy and deceit exist to hide the reality of an individualist, selfish and narcissistic world does not seem impossible anymore.
Perhaps the most important factor that generated the Trump phenomenon in the United States was the fact that the middle classes has stopped growing, the average income has dropped significantly, their youth decreased enrolment in universities and all free public services have failed or have been transferred to private companies showcasing the federal government greatest failure in the last two decades.
We also witnessed the privatization of the prison system, law enforcement agencies, arms production, operation of the Army and Navy, the average education system and in high degree the judiciary system. So the old American dream is becoming a nightmare for those who failed to make a fortune for themselves during the two hundred years in which the God of Reason protected Americans. And it is for these reasons that a billionaire puppet without any culture can speak “his truths” with great success to a population whose majority is fed up with the hypocrisy of a political model of which they are barely a part of.
It will be very difficult for Trump to achieve the presidency of the United States, as apart from his opposition from his own fellow GOP he will meet opposition from the Pentagon, Wall Street and the big block of transnational corporations that control most of the trade and of the economy of the United States, Howeverit should be noted that this Trump phenomenon marks the decline of the great American empire. It is however still possible that the that the out date political model of federative democracy created over two hundred years ago willsuccessfully survive one or two decades more.
Addendum: Hilary Clinton may exercise presidential power with the restrictions imposed bythe three aforementioned powers, but it should not be forgotten that the Trump phenomenon indicates a shift that has changed the political life of most Western nations: UK, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Spain, Belgium and Holland, just to mention the ones with greater economic power.
And just in the same way as what is happening around the world, the United States, as a federal democracy, could change its political model at any time, without need to involve any violence in the process.