Flickr
Donald Trump, the former 45th president of the United States — a braggart, a parvenu, an eccentric — caught and rode the wave of discontent among citizens frightened by the neoliberal abnormality imposed on them, and now has the chance to become the 47th president of the United States.
As of the morning of November 6, Moscow time, according to the pro-Trump TV channel Fox News, Trump’s camp had secured 277 electoral votes, more than the 270 needed to win.
It is still unclear what tricks, maneuvers, or violent actions the Democrats might resort to in order to obstruct the transfer of supreme power. But challenging the outcome of what The American Conservative called Trump’s «electoral trilogy», beginning with the 2015 campaign, will be difficult and risky for them.
Let us leave aside the rather convincing concept that the secret arbiter in presidential elections has always been and remains the Deep State (DS). But! After all, it was the DS that overlooked Trump the first time, and that is why it turned so fiercely and comprehensively against «Jack-in-the-box». Assuming that the opinion of ordinary voters matters — what positive factors in this case played in Trump’s favor?
First, the breadth and radical nature of his promises to quickly address all the accumulated problems, large and small, that have worn society down. Respectable citizens are tired. Tired of homeless addicts, unprovoked aggression, the denial of the «glorious past» through Critical Race Theory, accompanied by the destruction of monuments, the shameless propaganda of sexual perversion and gender identification — which benefits Big Pharma and ultimately serves the goal of population reduction.
Many people were attracted to Trump’s idea of deporting illegal immigrants, even if it meant breaking the law and deploying regular troops, as well as completely sealing the porous southern border through which drug cartels bring in poorly assimilated migrants, often with criminal backgrounds and ties to terrorist cells.
It’s not a fact that Trump will actually carry out this near-military operation, especially since Democrats, who see illegal immigrants as a recruiting pool for their voters, will fiercely oppose it.
Second, Trump appealed to loyal Republicans because he was different from previous cardboard politicians with plastic smiles. The derogatory nicknames he gave his opponents actually worked in Trump’s favor, creating a brutal image and a charismatic, negative charm effect.
Third, and this is no small competitive advantage for Trump, he got lucky with his opponents, such as «Sleepy Joe» and «Cackling Kamala».
What significant factors sunk the hastily outfitted and armed dreadnought named Kamala Harris? First and foremost, the whole package of new anomalies: rising rents and inflated supermarket food prices, the burden of student loans borrowed from banks for education, technological disasters like derailed trains, and man-made tragedies like shootings by deranged students.
These misfortunes didn’t begin under the rule of the Obama-Clinton-Biden clan, but they have accumulated in the minds of voters just before elections, when every four years there is the illusion that a change of guard in the White House and around it will suddenly eliminate these problems from daily life.
William A. Galston, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, correctly noted that Harris «has been unable to fully separate herself from the Biden administration on issues like inflation, immigration, the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and other policies that have undermined approval of Mr. Biden’s performance in office».
Harris was hurt by the psychological fatigue of many citizens who realized that if the current Vice President simply dropped the «Vice» prefix, nothing would change. Harris, being part of the party nomenclature, has nothing original to offer beyond what has already been tried and… has not worked. Harris is «more of the same».
Gerard Baker, another Wall Street Journal columnist, recalled that when Trump packed his bags and left the White House, his approval rating was just 34%, according to Gallup, which was «the lowest rating for the end of a first presidential term since Jimmy Carter». It is unclear, however, why 74 million Americans voted for him in 2020.
Baker believes that Trump owes his return to big politics to his opponents, summing up Harris’s spectacular failure by saying that it wasn’t the Republicans who won under Trump, but rather the Democrats who shot themselves in the foot — or rather, both feet. The author doesn’t explain exactly how this self-inflicted wound occurred, but it’s obvious: sane Americans, who still make up the core of the nation, rejected neoliberal orthodoxy and punished its prophets and servants.
What does Trump’s second coming mean for Russia and the rest of the world? Forecasting is a thankless task. First, we need to dispel the illusion, if anyone has it, that the old-new occupant of the White House will focus only on restoring order in his canonical territory and join the informal isolationist faction.
Nothing of the sort will happen. The empire still has some fight left in it — the military-industrial complex is alive, prospering, and thriving on armed conflict around the world. And there is still the evergreen dollar, through which 80% of the world’s trade is conducted. And there is also the collective West, built on the «suzerain and vassal» model, where the two largest countries with significant GDPs remain in an unspoken occupied status — Germany and Japan.
The only thing that might coincide with Russia’s medium-term interests is Trump’s intention to shift the burden of NATO’s war against Russia on the Ukrainian theater onto the shoulders of European allies. Meanwhile, the United States will continue to reap dividends from draining the economic potential of the European Union, which will remain a lucrative feeding ground for America as long as it can be milked.
It’s possible that Trump will try to conduct a strategic maneuver similar to Kissinger’s plan in 1971, which aimed to divide China and the USSR. To prepare for an epic battle with China, Trump may try to make certain concessions to Moscow to deprive Beijing of the opportunity to use Russia as its strategic rear.
Moreover, there is no reason to expect, as Andrei Gromyko used to say, «shifts in the right direction» from the US administration under the 47th president. The idea of a multipolar world based on equality and respect for civilizational identity does not fit with the Trumpist slogan «Make America Great Again» (MAGA), as the underlying subtext reads another mantra: «America First».