T-Rex

Trump Rex! 

Okay, I wrote I did not care, but I do. In a different way! 

I don't think I should still be concerned who Americans vote as their President. There is no such thing as the 'free world'. If there ever was an iron curtain, it was over a long time ago. 

However, even if I haven't voted for Trump, I can't ignore that a large number of people in a very educated and technologically advanced country did. I am also painfully aware that someone like me could have written a similar sentence back in 1932, and perhaps many of them, like me, decided that it didn't really matter. The least I could do is to try and understand why such things happen.

To be clear, I don't see these things as strange. There are a number of reasons why such things happen. After all, there is a cognitive bias named after Warren Harding (see 'Warren Harding error'). I have been labouring on Will Durant's Story of Civilisation since the beginning of 2024 (and have now reached The Age of Louis the XIVth) and know that there is nothing new under the Sun. We live in the prisons of our ideas, and the current one is - Trump would be good for the economy!

Indeed, it makes no sense at two different levels. First, I wish someone could now say, paraphrasing Margaret Thatcher, that there is no such thing as the economy - just individual men and women and the families. It is about whether we feel we are able to look after ourselves and our neighbours. So all the nonsense about cutting government debt and indulging in a battle of all against all - the proverbial free society - we should ask how we should live, rather than consoling ourselves with stock prices (which we don't own), billionaire stories (which we will never be) and GDP numbers (which we can't feel). If I go out now, have a motor accident, write off my car and get myself treated in a hospital, it would be good for the 'economy' but I won't want that. 

Second, that what's good for the GDP numbers, will be good for businesses, which will be, by extension, good for us. Have we not tried enough, and failed enough, with the neo-liberal ideas? We have bought this narrative so much that we have started measuring our well-being through how much our houses are worth rather than by how healthy we are, how much time we have or whether our relationships are working.

Of course, I don't think if Harris won, anything significantly different would have happened. We would have still believed in this fairytale - economic growth means more money for ourselves and more money means good life - and the same old would have continued unabated. No other idea is possible. If anyone wants proof, one could perhaps look at the Labour government in Britain, which is busy convincing people that though they are doing exactly the same things as the Conservatives (cutting benefits, raising taxes and raising university fees), they are very different. 

Which actually made me think about 'ideology' in a different way! I have come to see ideology not as manifesto promises but the underlying ideas that everyone seems to be subscribing too. It is not about different sides of a debate, but the ground rules which define the debate itself. [For example, Shashi Tharoor's polemic against colonialism at the Oxford Union debate is impressive but just a rhetorical performance; the ideological point is really to expect that if it was spoken at an Oxford Union debate, it must be significant and worth paying attention to. And, indeed, the rules of 'civility' that comes with it - it is okay to mention the economic exploitation but not the various atrocities, corruption and misconduct that the imperial rule involved.]

Therefore, voting for Trump is fully explanable, as many people are living within a bubble where 'good for the economy, good for business' logic is accepted without question. And, for me, I know Trump is no Hitler: He is not trying to break the ideological prison of his time, but rather taking advantage of it. He is not insane, just an opportunist; someone who doesn't believe in anything other than in looking good and making money. 

With this reassurance, I am now ready to enter the Trump era.