Donald Trump in White House would be ultimate reality show

Donald Trump won the US presidential election despite being Donald Trump. While parts of a disbelieving USA are still reeling from the shock, what Trump’s triumph signifies most is the world will have to learn to live with all the contradictions that the modern age seems all too willing to throw upon us.

Dichotomy is the order of this newfangled world which is even beginning to believe social media is the new reality even a reality show TV star has emerged in the mainstream to be the avowed leader of the free world.

Theories may abound, including on whether some form of backlash is to be seen in this ‘whitelash’. The larger picture may also indicate a rightist assertion in the world as seen in Brexit and in elections around Europe. Isn’t it ironic that the right has become the voice of the people while the Left and the liberals are becoming more and more marginalised in a changing world?  Hillary Clinton’s political correctness in dealing with descriptions of terrorism may even have strengthened the case for this big turn to the right, it is said.

Trump may have inherited a Disunited States of America, but then the divisions have been apparent for so long even the blind would have seen it. The blue collar revolution seen in the outcome is also a sign if where the world’s economy stands today thanks to the wild ways of the subprime markets driven by the casino effect of people chasing money even if all of it was so illusory the blind would have seen though it.

The net result is this will continue to be a divided world with the pithy homilies of a President-elect as in he would like to be the President of all Americans unlikely to have helped assuage the hurt in the losers.

The divisions in the election were apparent out here in Chennai, which could be the farthest point from the USA politically. The expat community here voted overwhelmingly in favour of the more liberal viewpoints as expressed by the distaff side of the Clintons on behalf of the Democrats and it appears even the Ambassador to India, a PIO in Richard Verma, is likely to be headed back once the Republicans take over the White House along with a majority in the Senate and House, a rare triple in these divided days.  

A seemingly amateurish and chaotic campaign ended in the humiliation of a whole industry of poll strategists, political pundits and professional pollsters. The world had to dig deep to come up with a prescience that foretold this dramatic vote for change, although one professor of history said it all with startling accuracy, explaining in detail why he believed Trump would win. Rolling back the tapes in the backrooms of the entertainment industry it was found that the popular Simpsons show had a chillingly prescient sequence in which Lisa Simpson takes over from Donald Trump at the White House. This was in the year 2000, a clear 16 years before a seeming joke became reality.

Other poll pundits, including ‘The Monkey Seer’ of China and the fish in Chennai, may have been right too, but then they had only a 50:50 option in which anyone can be right or wrong. What the Simpsons show screenwriters had foreseen was not only Trump being a President of USA but that a woman would succeed him. As irony would have it, the groper misogynist Trump beat the woman candidate although some justice was served in Hillary winning the popular vote. Would it not be rather late to think of her as a 2020 candidate? That might just leave the field to Bernie Sanders, but then will there be swing to the Left in just four years?
Was this a genuine vote for change or a vote for change of ruling party away from the Democrats who are thought to have leveraged their hold on the diverse populations of the big cities to rule all of America? The division between metros and the rest of the country is going to be a bigger cleaving than ever in history and this will become the norm around the world too soon. There is a lesson in this somewhere for all leaders who wish to address the issue in which the rural folks are beginning to detest the liberal values of their countrymen who live in the cities and who seem to be controlling the levers of power.

It is the ultimate contradiction that Trump, the most urban of Republican candidates living in a Manhattan tower who is to be President of the small towns which voted overwhelmingly for him while the cities are up in arms demonstrating their displeasure over the President the people of USA have chosen in 2016 to lead them in 2017-2020. The entire campaign ran like a Netflix political drama and we now watch Designated Survivor on it with a sense of unease, if not dread as Trump prepares to reside in the White House.