The Agony of American Democracy

By Satendra Nandan

The Unites States of America is a divided nation. Its wounds are deep and suppurating on the streets of New York and burning other areas of darkness in  the vast and varied landscape of the USA.

It’s also in the minds of Americans everywhere: the psychic damage of the four divisive, chaotic years may find expression in the processes of a democratic election for a president on November 3–barely a week away. Elections can be cathartic.

 The process of democracy itself has been compromised by statements made by the Commander-in- Chief of the USA. The results of the impending elections are uncertain; worse the acceptance of the results by Mr Donald J Trump has been thrown into jeopardy by the man who should be most concerned about its validity and integrity.

The pandemic adds its own grim statistics to a nation that seems to be sailing into uncharted waters of stormy seas of populism never seen in the oldest constitutional democracy in the world.

In normal times this would be a cause of worry world-wide. But these are not normal times and Mr Trump seems a new normal, rather abnormal, for a President.

The presidential elections, held on a fixed date every four years, is a spectacle for the world to witness: through many crises in American life, the president has always been elected and inaugurated in the American winter.

The circus must go on.

One is enthralled by the primaries, campaigns, nominations of candidates and all the unsurpassed tamasha of a vibrant,media-fuelled democracy :the final election results and celebrating the winner are the icing on the cake.  Nothing like it happens anywhere else.

Finally  the  peaceful transfer of administration for at least four years.

Most observers see the forthcoming elections for a President as the most consequential in modern history not only for America but the world.  Some have predicted too pessimistically that it will break America.

 Genuine democracies, like the spirit of a free people, have an inbuilt resistance and resilience. This may be an exaggeration but it is an exaggeration of a vital truth.

Whatever you think of the present President, he has turned America into a entertaining laughing stock. A man with no record of public service became the President in a shocking victory.

Reality TV became a frightful daily reality and it casts its long shadows across the world.

So many people have an apocalyptic vision of the future as if some terrible revelation is at hand. Trump has even hinted ominously that he may not vacate the White House if he loses.

Our world has changed drastically and COVID-19 has added its own deadly statistics that boggle the mind and send us reeling in search for a vaccine, rebuild economies, re-establish relationships and bring some equilibrium to a shattered, terrified world.

In such a world the current President of the world’s richest and militarily most  powerful nation on Earth bluffs his way with his tweets.

Born out of colonial conquests, genocide, slavery, racism, religious bigotry, civil wars, technological transformation, the USA also created a sense of freedom that is the envy of most nations. It is also the most immigrant and inventive nation built by Whites and Blacks, Brown and Yellow.

America often carries the hope of the Free World despite its inexplicable support of brutal dictatorships in so many parts of a deranged universe.

After the dismantling of the Soviet Union in 1989, the USA  became the only superpower until Mr Trump became the unexpected President.

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Now of course it’s China that is the emerging superpower.

Chinese civilization is an ancient one: its population is four times that of the USA; its burgeoning military power is slowing swallowing adjacent lands and seas from Tibet to Taiwan, from Hong Kong to the borders of India. It invents its own imperial borders and manufactures its own maps.

The inscrutable leadership of China seems accountable to no-one except to itself.

Mr Trump and his experts and allies have no idea  how to deal with the dragon of such fearful dimensions breathing down their necks. The experts are floundering in the Chinese seas despite their meaningless military exercises. China is not in the Middle East.

No country in world history has been like China: its regime can drive tanks on its own children.

The only hope until genuine democracy dawns in China, we may counteract its brutal ambition for world domination through economic and international relations.

 It took Stalin’s Soviet Union 70 years to collapse; it may take Mao’s China at least one hundred but collapse it must because its foundations are built on repression and a cancerous political ideology.

It is not a free thinking or free society. Nobel laureates are jailed; writers and journalists are imprisoned. Minorities sent to camps to be reformed, reeducated.

 Democracy will prevail but the price will be huge and heavy. All dictatorships, benign and brutal, are finally dismantled from within.

But one should remember that all imperial powers of the West have met their Waterloos in Asia.

 And here Mr Trump has no answer for his knowledge of history and geography is minimal: a man who relies on tweets and doesn’t read even one book in one year. Many of his appointed experts have left him in the swamp to write their own books, while telling the world that Donald Trump IS the Washington swamp.

Further thought becomes unnecessary.

This to me is the deepest worry, if he wins a second term.

Today what America needs is a President of character. Mr Trump is essentially a shallow man with a  vulgar sense of humour. There is very little honour in his heart, who doesn’t seem to care for the anxieties, anger and anguish of his own countrymen and women.

So my bet is on Joe Biden–a man who has rendered public service for almost 50 years.He seems a decent man with enough suffering in his life to extend his empathy to others and share their sorrows and understand our common human predicament.

November 3 is not far away–less than a week from now : the global impact will be so vast on our lives, from islands to continents, is to realize the phenomenal importance of this election.

The hope is that the voters will give their verdict in no uncertain terms.

 Some people fear Mr Trump’s violent reaction , if he loses. I do not.

 Mr Trump is basically a bully: and bullies usually slink away with their tails between their legs when confronted by a greater moral force of a free people.

History is full of inspiring examples. Sadly many don’t go quietly until they have so shamelessly inflicted damage to our minds and bodies and to the soul of a nation.

Every individual has a soul: it’s this unseen presence that determines that we won’t descend below certain levels of human decency common to all, come what may.

But some people seem to have a bottomless pit inside them.

Politics is not a business: it is more than a matter of life and death. It carries faith of millions and trust of billions. The vote of a single individual determines the fate of a nation.

That is the gift of a great democracy that Gandhi gave to a vivisected India and because of that the largest democracy survives like a functioning anarchy.

Abraham Lincoln gave that vision to a nation during the Civil War in 273 words at Gettysburg. The Union of America lived to see the light of the day.

One hopes now that the American electorate is aware of Mr Trump and his abilities, they would vote for a new President. This is not 2016.

Trump has been divisive within the USA–race and racism  have  become corrosive  weapons in this election and Trump has done nothing to condemn the supremacists who support him en masse. He fans the flames of a fierce fire that is self-consuming.

Issues of Climate Change and saving our planet should be uppermost in the mind of a world leader. By withdrawing from UN’s Paris Agreement, the USA has done irreparable damage to our living planet that is dying a slow, suffocating death.

Terrorism is not the only threat when life itself is on the verge of extinction. And it IS American lives: by  Christmas more than a 250,000 American citizens will perish–victims of COVID-19.

Instead of taking the lead to end this scourge, America has withdrawn from the WHO.

 It’s no use shouting it’s Kungfu or China virus and dancing on the stage: it’s a lethal reality to millions and none of us is safe anywhere.

By withdrawing from the nuclear treaty with Iran, once again we’re in the nuclear arms race.

America is isolated and has lost the leadership of free nations. This is a tragedy of infinite proportions.

Its effects will be felt for at least a generation before our faith in democracy is restored and free nations form new partnerships so that we can breathe freely.

What takes centuries to be built can be destroyed by the actions and words of one man.

We’ve been through this even in Little Fiji                                                        *

I believe that the American citizenry will have a new President and vice -president in the USA on November 4.

America may be able to regain its lost role and prestige in the world. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris carry the hopes and healing power of more than the USA.

Long ago I read V S Naipaul’s compelling novel The Mimic Men: it’s an excoriating portrayal of colonial politicians  relevant to Trinidad and  resonant  in Fiji.

But the book we should all be reading is Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America.

Fiction and truth often become indistinguishable. History doesn’t repeat itself ever: it enters our lives from the back door like masked gunmen in a Parliament.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Always and everywhere.

 Elections can assist but much often depends on the elected and the electorate.

Satendra Nandan’s book, Girmit: Epic Lives in Small Lines, is being published on Friday. His Gandhianjali was published in Fiji and Canberra last July. He’s currently working on a work of fiction.