Bracing for Trump 2.0
November 11, 2024
THE world was already bracing for Donald Trump’s return to power. And it is a stunning comeback. His clean sweep in the election, winning the White House, Senate and most likely the House of Representatives, will make him a more powerful president than he was in his first term, with a stronger mandate.
What his foreign policy will look like is being feverishly assessed across the world. Will it mimic his first term’s America First approach which translated into an America Alone policy? Will it prove as disruptive and destabilising as in the past?
Influencing assessments is the widespread view among the international community that Washington’s engagement with the world in recent years has neither been sustained nor consistent, which raises questions about US reliability. This at a time when the US is no longer the sole dominant power in an increasingly multipolar world, which places limits on its ability to shape global geopolitics and determine outcomes.
Trump’s unpredictable and impulsive personality will intensify uncertainty about the course of American policy especially given his penchant for suddenly changing course. His ‘America First’ unilateralist worldview created much discontinuity and volatility in foreign policy in his first term and dented America’s international standing. His isolationist approach also made the US retrench from its global role.
One certainty, with far-reaching implications for global stability and economy, is that Trump 2.0 will continue the well-established US policy of containment of China. A bipartisan consensus now sees China as a strategic adversary and challenge. Trump might escalate the confrontation over trade and technology issues. During the campaign he threatened to impose 60 per cent tariffs across the board on Chinese imports and end China’s most favoured-nation status. Whether he raises tariffs to this extent is doubtful as he will have to calculate its impact on American consumers; costlier imports would push up prices and that too when inflation is a challenge. It would also pose a risk to European economies as China is Europe’s biggest trading partner.
During the campaign, Trump also said he would seek a good relationship with Beijing. In a Fox News interview, he said while there was no greater critic of China than him, he respected China and President Xi Jinping. Though Trump will take a tough position on trade issues, his business instincts will urge him to be transactional and open to striking deals with China on trade and perhaps other contentious issues, including Taiwan. While intensifying the rivalry with China, Trump would want to avoid a collision course or military conflict over Taiwan. He has, in fact, been critical of Taiwan, saying it should pay the US for defending it.
Disruptions in US policy are likely at a time when the world is already in a state of chaos.
Trump has proposed a 10 to 20pc tariff on all imported goods, which will strain relations with America’s European allies, who Trump treated with derision in his first term, casting them as free-loaders. Aimed at all countries that have a trade surplus with the US, this would nonetheless be hard to implement. It would be a blow to developing economies and dampen global economic growth.
While Trump is an avowed protectionist, the question is how far he will go to press this agenda. According to economic experts, his plan to raise tariffs and order mass deportations of immigrants will further fuel inflation that Trump has promised to tackle.
Where a radical change in US policy is likely is on the Ukraine war. Often claiming he can end the war “in a day”, Trump is expected to push for talks to end a conflict he says “should never have happened”. This is cause for concern for Europe. Trump has said he will press Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin to enter negotiations for a peace deal. He may not be averse to an outcome that favours Moscow in which Ukraine has to cede territory. He is unlikely to respond to reservations of European nations in this regard.
Trump has frequently chastised Nato allies for not sharing the defence burden. He has also said in his second term, America will fundamentally rethink “Nato’s purpose and mission” and ask European nations to reimburse the US billions of dollars for military supplies it sent to Ukraine. This may be bluster but there is little doubt that Trump and the Republican Party do not want to continue military funding to Ukraine.
European allies, therefore, have much to worry about. They have to deal with a president who has shown little commitment to European security, and who declared during the campaign that “in many cases, our allies are worse than our so-called enemies”. Trump sees European countries not contributing enough to their own security and taking advantage of the US, a situation he wants to end. He has no patience with alliances. Or with multilateralism.
The crisis in the Middle East presents a clear and present challenge that Trump might seek to address by forcing a ceasefire in Gaza. While avoiding specifics, he repeatedly said during the campaign he wants to see peace in the region and Israel should end the war quickly — by winning it and “finishing the job”. He is even more pro-Israel than President Joe Biden and has no empathy for the plight of the Palestinians (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once called Trump the best friend Israel ever had in the White House).
Nor has Trump shown any commitment to a two-state solution even though that remains the US position. Any deal he might push for will be on Israel’s terms and will also aim to goad other Arab countries to accede to the Abraham Accords — his signature Middle East initiative in his first term. This will principally involve encouraging Saudi Arabia to normalise ties with Israel, although Riyadh has made it clear this will only be possible once a Palestinian state is established.
Unpredictability is likely to be the hallmark of Trump’s foreign policy. But because he has a transactional view of international relations that would also open his policies to pragmatic possibilities. The world can expect disruptions in US policy at a pivotal time when wars and crises hang in the balance in what UN Secretary General António Guterres calls an “age of chaos”.
The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK and UN.
Published in Dawn, November 11th, 2024
Trumped again
Published November 13, 2024
DAWN
DONKEYS are reputed to be stubborn beasts. That possible misinterpretation of their instinct for self-preservation characterises a party that has utilised Equus asinusas a symbol since Andrew Jackson embraced a hostile description of himself as a jackass back in 1828.
The Democrats’ election symbol might be an insult to a species whose intelligence has been underrated since donkeys were domesticated 6,000 years ago, but its traditional implications accurately reflect the party hierarchy’s mindset after last week’s devastating defeat.
The post-mortems began pouring in as soon as it became obvious that Kamala Harris had been trounced by Donald Trump. Yesterday, the president-elect was due to be hosted in the Oval Office by a man who had described him as a dire threat to democracy.
Joe Biden’s claim wasn’t exactly inaccurate, but it ignored his own party’s contribution to the promotion of plutocracy. It may not have been initiated by the Democrats, but they ran with the neoliberal trend exemplified by the Reagan administration.
The Democrats have enabled him once more.
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama lent their imagined heft to the Harris campaign, and both ignored the issues whereby their presidencies led, respectively, to George W. Bush and Trump. The Clinton presidency did not deviate all that much from the Reagan era, and Obama effectively pursued both the neoconservatism and neoliberalism of his Republican predecessor.
No one can claim with any certainty that the 2024 result would have been different had Biden butted out after the 2022 midterm elections, in which the Democrats did not fare quite as badly as the polls and the mainstream media projected, but they might have made amends that bolstered their support two years later. No such luck. Biden did propose some healthy measures on the economic and renewable energy fronts, but they made no immediate difference to most of those who were suffering from the consequences of the Covid pandemic and its inflationary aftermath.
The Democrats offered no alternative to the status quo beyond gradual improvement over the years, bolstered by pundits who proclaimed that the economy was going gangbusters, with rising employment and declining inflation. Too many voters did not feel the joy that Harris sought to project, recalling that their grocery bills were lower before Biden took over. Among the many promises Trump is unlikely to fulfil, he vowed to bring down grocery bills, cut taxes and end all wars.
Back in 2016, he emerged as a potential disruptor of a status quo that wasn’t working for most Americans. He could not reclaim the perch in 2020, after four years in power. That he was able to achieve a far more convincing victory than eight years ago is a testament to the decrepitude of the Democrats.
That does not only mean that Biden ought to have ruled himself out a couple of years ago on the basis of his senescence, but also that his successor should have diverged from a self-defeating formula by offering viable alternatives to both an economy whose supposedly thriving aspects are not trickling down to most voters, and to a foreign policy that involves prolonging a nasty war in Europe and promoting a genocide in the Middle East.
Harris focused, instead, on slamming Trump and saying that she wasn’t Biden — the latter of which was obvious given her gender and ethnicity, but less so when it came to her ideology. Much of the Democratic elite that has ridiculed Bernie Sanders for accurately claiming that the working class was only returning the favour when it deserted the Democrats have also claimed that Harris ran a wonderful campaign but was derailed by unavoidable obstacles. That’s nonsense. It’s true she had only 100 days to stake her claim, thanks to her geriatric chieftain’s obduracy and his party’s inexplicable obeisance, but her rallying cries consisted of little more than hollow platitudes, and her oratorical skills don’t match those of Barack Obama.
Sanders consistently reminds the electorate that real wages haven’t increased since the 1970s, the minimum wage is far too low, and it’s a travesty that so many citizens of the world’s richest nation live in poverty despite full-time jobs, and struggle to pay their medical bills and education debts. While the Republicans’ ridiculous response is to privatise everything, the Democrats are petrified by the prospect of proposing anything more than a bit of tinkering on the edges of neoliberalism.
It’s easy to empathise with the likeliest victims of Trump’s non-consecutive second term, an achievement previously pulled off only by Grover Cleveland in the 19th century. And he was a Democrat back when the Republican Party was relatively progressive.
Trump’s unpredictability means we can only wait and see how far he will go in carrying out his threatened atrocities at home and his promised peacemaking abroad.
The Democrats’ election symbol might be an insult to a species whose intelligence has been underrated since donkeys were domesticated 6,000 years ago, but its traditional implications accurately reflect the party hierarchy’s mindset after last week’s devastating defeat.
The post-mortems began pouring in as soon as it became obvious that Kamala Harris had been trounced by Donald Trump. Yesterday, the president-elect was due to be hosted in the Oval Office by a man who had described him as a dire threat to democracy.
Joe Biden’s claim wasn’t exactly inaccurate, but it ignored his own party’s contribution to the promotion of plutocracy. It may not have been initiated by the Democrats, but they ran with the neoliberal trend exemplified by the Reagan administration.
The Democrats have enabled him once more.
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama lent their imagined heft to the Harris campaign, and both ignored the issues whereby their presidencies led, respectively, to George W. Bush and Trump. The Clinton presidency did not deviate all that much from the Reagan era, and Obama effectively pursued both the neoconservatism and neoliberalism of his Republican predecessor.
No one can claim with any certainty that the 2024 result would have been different had Biden butted out after the 2022 midterm elections, in which the Democrats did not fare quite as badly as the polls and the mainstream media projected, but they might have made amends that bolstered their support two years later. No such luck. Biden did propose some healthy measures on the economic and renewable energy fronts, but they made no immediate difference to most of those who were suffering from the consequences of the Covid pandemic and its inflationary aftermath.
The Democrats offered no alternative to the status quo beyond gradual improvement over the years, bolstered by pundits who proclaimed that the economy was going gangbusters, with rising employment and declining inflation. Too many voters did not feel the joy that Harris sought to project, recalling that their grocery bills were lower before Biden took over. Among the many promises Trump is unlikely to fulfil, he vowed to bring down grocery bills, cut taxes and end all wars.
Back in 2016, he emerged as a potential disruptor of a status quo that wasn’t working for most Americans. He could not reclaim the perch in 2020, after four years in power. That he was able to achieve a far more convincing victory than eight years ago is a testament to the decrepitude of the Democrats.
That does not only mean that Biden ought to have ruled himself out a couple of years ago on the basis of his senescence, but also that his successor should have diverged from a self-defeating formula by offering viable alternatives to both an economy whose supposedly thriving aspects are not trickling down to most voters, and to a foreign policy that involves prolonging a nasty war in Europe and promoting a genocide in the Middle East.
Harris focused, instead, on slamming Trump and saying that she wasn’t Biden — the latter of which was obvious given her gender and ethnicity, but less so when it came to her ideology. Much of the Democratic elite that has ridiculed Bernie Sanders for accurately claiming that the working class was only returning the favour when it deserted the Democrats have also claimed that Harris ran a wonderful campaign but was derailed by unavoidable obstacles. That’s nonsense. It’s true she had only 100 days to stake her claim, thanks to her geriatric chieftain’s obduracy and his party’s inexplicable obeisance, but her rallying cries consisted of little more than hollow platitudes, and her oratorical skills don’t match those of Barack Obama.
Sanders consistently reminds the electorate that real wages haven’t increased since the 1970s, the minimum wage is far too low, and it’s a travesty that so many citizens of the world’s richest nation live in poverty despite full-time jobs, and struggle to pay their medical bills and education debts. While the Republicans’ ridiculous response is to privatise everything, the Democrats are petrified by the prospect of proposing anything more than a bit of tinkering on the edges of neoliberalism.
It’s easy to empathise with the likeliest victims of Trump’s non-consecutive second term, an achievement previously pulled off only by Grover Cleveland in the 19th century. And he was a Democrat back when the Republican Party was relatively progressive.
Trump’s unpredictability means we can only wait and see how far he will go in carrying out his threatened atrocities at home and his promised peacemaking abroad.
mahir.dawn@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2024
An apocalypse Trump won’t see
November 12, 2024
DAWN
ON one of Donald Trump’s last days as lame-duck president in 2020, senior Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi rushed to US military generals to caution them against heeding any command from him that could start a nuclear war.
Whatever be the truth about the Democrats’ worry, the world was on edge. Then, the shoe was on the other foot. Biden followed a needle-and-thread policy — threading cavalier alliances and needling Russia and China into a rage. Much of the worried world responded by gravitating to BRICS. Biden and his secretary for state woke up every day to arm and finance the most gruesome slaughter of women and children since Hitler in Gaza. The Democrats thus helped Trump seem less menacing to the voters.
The Doomsday Clock is still at 90 minutes to midnight with Trump’s second win, continuing to remind humanity that the threat from manmade apocalypse hasn’t receded. The president-elect did sound unusually benign and even faux inclusive in his victory speech. On the flip side, he pressed the accelerator on the unfolding environmental catastrophe. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like that,” he exulted to cheering supporters, listing the cultural and ethnic mix that voted him to office. The thought alone should worry Democrats, who regard multiculturalism as their exclusive turf, in contrast to Trump’s white supremacist calling.
“They came from all corners. Union, non-union; African, Hispanic, Asian, Arab, Muslim; we had everybody, and it was beautiful,” he croaked. It’s always disturbing to hear gilded words from autocrats. Has a compulsively sectarian Trump bucked the trend to project himself as a leader of all Americans equally? In which case, the rivals are in deeper trouble than one thought.
The Doomsday Clock has kept a watch on signs of manmade calamity that Albert Einstein had feared. Global warming is somehow only now, and grudgingly, being seen as an existential threat to mankind, though Noam Chomsky had presciently called it as lethal as the bomb. Trump walked out of two momentous agreements in his first term, making the world insecure on both counts.
He ditched the Paris Agreement on climate change, and even today, remains unconvinced that the destruction Hurricane Helene wreaked on North Carolina during the election campaign could be a sign of nature paying back in kind. He also tore up the Iran pact, making it a factor today in war-gaming an Iran-Israel nuclear exchange as a possibility. Iranian officials say that a fatwa against the bomb could be lifted if the war with Israel so demands.
Trump’s cavalier comments in his victory speech on the primacy of fossil fuel ‘to make America great again’ could send shivers down the spine of climate activists gathered in Baku this week for the fortnight of deliberations at COP29. In one fell swoop, Trump destroyed any hopes environment activists may have had from Robert Kennedy Jr in the new team. He all but declared that the environment lawyer, who doubles as an anti-vaccine campaigner, could be assigned the health portfolio. Calling Kennedy to the stage, Trump anointed him. “He is going to make America healthy again.”
As for Kennedy’s concern for climate change, Trump pre-empted trouble. “Bobby, leave the oil to me. We have more liquid gold — oil and gas — We have more liquid gold than any country in the world; more than Saudi Arabia. We have more than Russia. Bobby, stay away from the liquid gold. Other than that, go have a good time, Bobby.”
Trump’s second win reminds humanity that the threat from manmade apocalypse hasn’t receded.
Trump’s astounding return, completely, albeit unsurprisingly, missed by pollsters, has brought unforeseen responses. An American-Canadian friend says she is surrendering her US citizenship because she finds Trump insufferable. Google searches for ‘move to Canada’ surged 1,270 per cent in the 24 hours after the US East Coast polls closed on Tuesday. Similar searches about moving to New Zealand climbed nearly 2,000pc, while those for Australia jumped 820pc.
It’s not dissimilar to a whole host of people who have left or are leaving India with the advent of Narendra Modi, heading not to Pakistan, where his rabid cheerleaders would have wanted dissenters to go, but to trickier climes. The recent repatriation by the Biden administration of dozens of illegal migrants from India is a good example.
Trump’s denial of climate change is envied by many of his fans who do not have the means to be as brazen. On the global stage, Narendra Modi, an ardent Trump fan, presents himself as a keen environment buff. “India is committed to clean energy and environment,” he said at the recent G20 summit in Delhi. Yet it is no secret that India will use coal for decades to come, even as it explores renewables to move towards net zero in 2070.
Three days before COP27 in Egypt, India’s finance minister showcased the doublespeak. “India needs greater investment in coal production,” said Nirmala Sitharaman at the Delhi launch of the country’s biggest-ever coal mine auction, where 141 new sites for coal mines were on offer. The move was rehearsed at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow. That’s when India, backed by China, made a last-minute intervention to water down the language of the final agreement, changing the commitment to “phase down” rather than “phase out” coal power.
The fallout is palpable in the neighbourhood and beyond. The Maldives archipelago faces a watery doom, and vast swathes of Bangladesh would become uninhabitable as the sea encroaches. Pakistan, too, is reeling from the effects of climate change, not least since the 2022 flood fury.
The prime minister’s point person for environment, Romina Khurshid Alam, was preparing Pakistan’s talking points for Baku when Trump was drooling over the oil resources of America he had inherited in his victory. Ms Alam’s terror at the speed with which the mighty glaciers of the Hindu Kush are melting contrasts apocalyptically with the sight of Trump drooling over the oil wealth he plans to plunder to make America great again.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2024
The real issues
ON one of Donald Trump’s last days as lame-duck president in 2020, senior Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi rushed to US military generals to caution them against heeding any command from him that could start a nuclear war.
Whatever be the truth about the Democrats’ worry, the world was on edge. Then, the shoe was on the other foot. Biden followed a needle-and-thread policy — threading cavalier alliances and needling Russia and China into a rage. Much of the worried world responded by gravitating to BRICS. Biden and his secretary for state woke up every day to arm and finance the most gruesome slaughter of women and children since Hitler in Gaza. The Democrats thus helped Trump seem less menacing to the voters.
The Doomsday Clock is still at 90 minutes to midnight with Trump’s second win, continuing to remind humanity that the threat from manmade apocalypse hasn’t receded. The president-elect did sound unusually benign and even faux inclusive in his victory speech. On the flip side, he pressed the accelerator on the unfolding environmental catastrophe. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like that,” he exulted to cheering supporters, listing the cultural and ethnic mix that voted him to office. The thought alone should worry Democrats, who regard multiculturalism as their exclusive turf, in contrast to Trump’s white supremacist calling.
“They came from all corners. Union, non-union; African, Hispanic, Asian, Arab, Muslim; we had everybody, and it was beautiful,” he croaked. It’s always disturbing to hear gilded words from autocrats. Has a compulsively sectarian Trump bucked the trend to project himself as a leader of all Americans equally? In which case, the rivals are in deeper trouble than one thought.
The Doomsday Clock has kept a watch on signs of manmade calamity that Albert Einstein had feared. Global warming is somehow only now, and grudgingly, being seen as an existential threat to mankind, though Noam Chomsky had presciently called it as lethal as the bomb. Trump walked out of two momentous agreements in his first term, making the world insecure on both counts.
He ditched the Paris Agreement on climate change, and even today, remains unconvinced that the destruction Hurricane Helene wreaked on North Carolina during the election campaign could be a sign of nature paying back in kind. He also tore up the Iran pact, making it a factor today in war-gaming an Iran-Israel nuclear exchange as a possibility. Iranian officials say that a fatwa against the bomb could be lifted if the war with Israel so demands.
Trump’s cavalier comments in his victory speech on the primacy of fossil fuel ‘to make America great again’ could send shivers down the spine of climate activists gathered in Baku this week for the fortnight of deliberations at COP29. In one fell swoop, Trump destroyed any hopes environment activists may have had from Robert Kennedy Jr in the new team. He all but declared that the environment lawyer, who doubles as an anti-vaccine campaigner, could be assigned the health portfolio. Calling Kennedy to the stage, Trump anointed him. “He is going to make America healthy again.”
As for Kennedy’s concern for climate change, Trump pre-empted trouble. “Bobby, leave the oil to me. We have more liquid gold — oil and gas — We have more liquid gold than any country in the world; more than Saudi Arabia. We have more than Russia. Bobby, stay away from the liquid gold. Other than that, go have a good time, Bobby.”
Trump’s second win reminds humanity that the threat from manmade apocalypse hasn’t receded.
Trump’s astounding return, completely, albeit unsurprisingly, missed by pollsters, has brought unforeseen responses. An American-Canadian friend says she is surrendering her US citizenship because she finds Trump insufferable. Google searches for ‘move to Canada’ surged 1,270 per cent in the 24 hours after the US East Coast polls closed on Tuesday. Similar searches about moving to New Zealand climbed nearly 2,000pc, while those for Australia jumped 820pc.
It’s not dissimilar to a whole host of people who have left or are leaving India with the advent of Narendra Modi, heading not to Pakistan, where his rabid cheerleaders would have wanted dissenters to go, but to trickier climes. The recent repatriation by the Biden administration of dozens of illegal migrants from India is a good example.
Trump’s denial of climate change is envied by many of his fans who do not have the means to be as brazen. On the global stage, Narendra Modi, an ardent Trump fan, presents himself as a keen environment buff. “India is committed to clean energy and environment,” he said at the recent G20 summit in Delhi. Yet it is no secret that India will use coal for decades to come, even as it explores renewables to move towards net zero in 2070.
Three days before COP27 in Egypt, India’s finance minister showcased the doublespeak. “India needs greater investment in coal production,” said Nirmala Sitharaman at the Delhi launch of the country’s biggest-ever coal mine auction, where 141 new sites for coal mines were on offer. The move was rehearsed at the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow. That’s when India, backed by China, made a last-minute intervention to water down the language of the final agreement, changing the commitment to “phase down” rather than “phase out” coal power.
The fallout is palpable in the neighbourhood and beyond. The Maldives archipelago faces a watery doom, and vast swathes of Bangladesh would become uninhabitable as the sea encroaches. Pakistan, too, is reeling from the effects of climate change, not least since the 2022 flood fury.
The prime minister’s point person for environment, Romina Khurshid Alam, was preparing Pakistan’s talking points for Baku when Trump was drooling over the oil resources of America he had inherited in his victory. Ms Alam’s terror at the speed with which the mighty glaciers of the Hindu Kush are melting contrasts apocalyptically with the sight of Trump drooling over the oil wealth he plans to plunder to make America great again.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2024
The real issues
Published November 9, 2024
DAWN
THERE is nothing complicated about Donald Trump’s win as much of the mainstream media would like the world to believe. If you live in America you know the truth, and if you watch TikTok anywhere in the world, you know the truth and more.
While the liberals have a tantrum and try to complicate the reasons behind why the Americans chose to paint their country Red this time, and in essence decided to cosy up to the Draconian Blond, the reality is easy to decipher for first-time voters, seasoned baby boomers and all generations in between.
It was as simple and down to earth as ‘roti, kapra aur makan’.
Election 2024 is a clear indication that after all is said and done, after all the soap opera, the theatrical and manufactured issues, dramatic hyperbole, staged debates, and woke issues that need no oxygen or air time, politics is still about only the real issues.
One may choose to hate Trump for his crassness or his politics, but he ran on what matters to an average American — no foreign wars, no inflation, no crime, no illegal immigration and the impact on a household. In contrast, Kamala Harris ran on feelings, vague abstract vibes, oxygenating fears, a high horse with a Hollywood saddle, constant virtue signalling, appearances on SNL, and a zero-sum issue-driven campaign. Being uncharismatic didn’t help. She lacked authenticity and charisma and the Democrats’ overall message was focused on vilifying Trump and the Republican voter. That backfired.
This time it was all about making sure that Harris lost.
She clearly chose not to separate from her boss on most agendas. Plus the constantly invoked moral high ground — ‘We are better than the Republicans’ — did not work when tens of thousands of unarmed people were being obliterated in a genocide on her watch. And endorsements from the likes of warmonger Dick Cheney, which should have caused revulsion, were worn like a badge of honour. Bizarre!
Flashback 2020: Biden picked a losing vice-president in order to ensure he would do eight years. Her campaign had zero momentum from the get-go and a late arrival left no runway time for the campaign to take flight. She is no Barack Obama. And while Obama’s politics may not be ideal, his persona was absolutely dynamic.
It seemed Harris only ran on the abortion issue, and despite her calls from the pulpit, the country figured out that Trump is not really pro-life, as the Democratic rhetoric would like them to believe. Trump ran an intelligent campaign and perceptively pulled ahead of the Democratic rhetoric by clearly rejecting a countrywide abortion ban.
What was Harris left with?
She beat the drum on ‘cry wolf’, when the wolf wasn’t really there. The wolf wasn’t interested in eating the sheep.
Another sensitive issue that Harris championed was the gender choice for minors — an issue that did not sit too well at the ballot box regardless of what the pundits or the extreme left wing might have had the campaign believe. The Red sweep clearly told the Democrats that if a child can’t get a tattoo before the age of 18 without parental presence, then something as consequential, life-altering and monumental as gender change has to be off the table.
And here we are today and America has made its choice. It chose to let a felon into the White House, and as a friend (who hails from occupied Kashmir, and has faced persecution) said, “America decided it did not want undocumented immigrants no matter how persecuted they feel in their country of birth. Misogyny does not bother the majority, hate speech and dangerous rhetoric isn’t that bad, reproductive rights for women aren’t that big of a deal after all, and the list goes on.
But nothing, and I mean nothing, compares to normalising a yearlong genocide. Liberals worked overtime to make a fascist sound normal to the people who do not agree with what has been going on this past year. They thought we could focus on safe abortions instead.
He might turn out to be just like his predecessors and continue America’s Middle East policy, but he won’t feed the world lies about it. Those who did not vote for Kamala or simply abstained as an act of defiance or for the lack of a better choice, you have my respect.’’
Cue the Muslims in the US who chose to make their voice heard.
While in 2016 there was a feeling of deep depression at Trump winning, this time it was all about making sure that Harris lost. America voted, and it voted for a better life by tuning out the noise.
And while the mainstream media looks for more rhetoric as to why Trump won, the answer is simple; real issues always trump vague feelings. Period.
The writer has published two books and is a freelance journalist.
Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2024
The Donald supremacy
An empire unravels as the "short-fingered vulgarian" reclaims the throne.
THERE is nothing complicated about Donald Trump’s win as much of the mainstream media would like the world to believe. If you live in America you know the truth, and if you watch TikTok anywhere in the world, you know the truth and more.
While the liberals have a tantrum and try to complicate the reasons behind why the Americans chose to paint their country Red this time, and in essence decided to cosy up to the Draconian Blond, the reality is easy to decipher for first-time voters, seasoned baby boomers and all generations in between.
It was as simple and down to earth as ‘roti, kapra aur makan’.
Election 2024 is a clear indication that after all is said and done, after all the soap opera, the theatrical and manufactured issues, dramatic hyperbole, staged debates, and woke issues that need no oxygen or air time, politics is still about only the real issues.
One may choose to hate Trump for his crassness or his politics, but he ran on what matters to an average American — no foreign wars, no inflation, no crime, no illegal immigration and the impact on a household. In contrast, Kamala Harris ran on feelings, vague abstract vibes, oxygenating fears, a high horse with a Hollywood saddle, constant virtue signalling, appearances on SNL, and a zero-sum issue-driven campaign. Being uncharismatic didn’t help. She lacked authenticity and charisma and the Democrats’ overall message was focused on vilifying Trump and the Republican voter. That backfired.
This time it was all about making sure that Harris lost.
She clearly chose not to separate from her boss on most agendas. Plus the constantly invoked moral high ground — ‘We are better than the Republicans’ — did not work when tens of thousands of unarmed people were being obliterated in a genocide on her watch. And endorsements from the likes of warmonger Dick Cheney, which should have caused revulsion, were worn like a badge of honour. Bizarre!
Flashback 2020: Biden picked a losing vice-president in order to ensure he would do eight years. Her campaign had zero momentum from the get-go and a late arrival left no runway time for the campaign to take flight. She is no Barack Obama. And while Obama’s politics may not be ideal, his persona was absolutely dynamic.
It seemed Harris only ran on the abortion issue, and despite her calls from the pulpit, the country figured out that Trump is not really pro-life, as the Democratic rhetoric would like them to believe. Trump ran an intelligent campaign and perceptively pulled ahead of the Democratic rhetoric by clearly rejecting a countrywide abortion ban.
What was Harris left with?
She beat the drum on ‘cry wolf’, when the wolf wasn’t really there. The wolf wasn’t interested in eating the sheep.
Another sensitive issue that Harris championed was the gender choice for minors — an issue that did not sit too well at the ballot box regardless of what the pundits or the extreme left wing might have had the campaign believe. The Red sweep clearly told the Democrats that if a child can’t get a tattoo before the age of 18 without parental presence, then something as consequential, life-altering and monumental as gender change has to be off the table.
And here we are today and America has made its choice. It chose to let a felon into the White House, and as a friend (who hails from occupied Kashmir, and has faced persecution) said, “America decided it did not want undocumented immigrants no matter how persecuted they feel in their country of birth. Misogyny does not bother the majority, hate speech and dangerous rhetoric isn’t that bad, reproductive rights for women aren’t that big of a deal after all, and the list goes on.
But nothing, and I mean nothing, compares to normalising a yearlong genocide. Liberals worked overtime to make a fascist sound normal to the people who do not agree with what has been going on this past year. They thought we could focus on safe abortions instead.
He might turn out to be just like his predecessors and continue America’s Middle East policy, but he won’t feed the world lies about it. Those who did not vote for Kamala or simply abstained as an act of defiance or for the lack of a better choice, you have my respect.’’
Cue the Muslims in the US who chose to make their voice heard.
While in 2016 there was a feeling of deep depression at Trump winning, this time it was all about making sure that Harris lost. America voted, and it voted for a better life by tuning out the noise.
And while the mainstream media looks for more rhetoric as to why Trump won, the answer is simple; real issues always trump vague feelings. Period.
The writer has published two books and is a freelance journalist.
Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2024
The Donald supremacy
An empire unravels as the "short-fingered vulgarian" reclaims the throne.
Published November 8, 2024
DAWN
It wasn’t even close. But also, it was never going to be.
As the 2024 polls conclude, the global hegemon may be entering its own late Soviet Union phase: ancient leaders, vomiting soldiers, and the collapse of a rules-based order that, even in its prime, never quite applied to those writing it.
And yet such obituaries are a risky business: while the West’s neoliberals make up the dying regime today, they’re not going the way of the communist bloc just yet.
After all, America remains the greatest economy, the mightiest military, and the uncrowned keeper of the world’s reserve currency. It is empire, and empire is everywhere.
America picks Trump, again
But one would be hard-pressed to think, after yet another toxic election, that the American experiment isn’t flailing hard. Described over three decades ago as a “short-fingered vulgarian” in Vanity Fair, Donald Trump is displaying a different sort of hand gesture to elite magazines these days.
Fresh from a hero’s journey grosser than the reality TV he headlines, Trump is cruising past two assassination attempts, two impeachments, even a criminal conviction, to become the 47th president of the United States. “We love winners,” he said during his last term. “We love winners. Winners are winners.”
And losers are losers. Surely, asked The Guardian, didn’t the world see “Kamala Harris’s competence and expertise, her decency and grace, her potential to be the first female president?”
If the world saw it, the voter didn’t, handing the God & Oil Party its first popular victory in two decades. And the emotional meltdown on the other side is silly, self-indulgent, and self-delusional.
Because Kamala Harris was never going to win. Let’s face it: how many times has it happened in America that an unpopular incumbent won amid economic anxiety? Kamala hadn’t to distinguish herself from Trump so much as from Sleepy Joe. She decided not to. She couldn’t attack Trump’s corruption. Biden was corrupt. His harassment of women; Biden did that too. His age: Biden is ancient. His mental acuity: Biden is demented.
So Kamala was left with Kamala, and a politburo of Pelosis and Obamas lurking in the hall — a dizzy ex-prosecutor that had never won a single primary, couldn’t carry her own state in 2020, had no recognisable ideas as vice-president, had no core beliefs in general, and sold out each of her positions from the wall to Palestine. Should she have run?
Because the core theme of this election, same as the one before it, was simple: if Bill Clinton’s boys had come up with “It’s the economy, stupid”, the same dinosaurs were now too high up the managerial class to let Kamala know it was the economy again, and that those amid it were suffering.
Instead, the donors, operators, and hopey-changey Ivy Leaguers that form the Dems’ shadow party — the ones that knifed Biden when his brain froze on the debate stage — went on and on about Joe’s economic miracle: more growth, more jobs, more recovery all around.
And if median income was taking a beating, and food insecurity was at a high, and health insurance was on the wane, who cared? As Charles Schumer shrugged in 2016, for every blue-collar Democrat that dropped off, the party would snatch up two suburban Republicans. It was a poor trade to make, and it wasn’t going to work anyway, given the massive workers’ exodus from the left across the board.
“It should come as no great surprise,” said Bernie Sanders, forever the thwarted king across the sea, “that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”
And how: nearly 80 per cent of voters that thought the economy was their top issue voted for Trump.
Racist orange billionaire beats deep state genocide enabler
In the other corner was Harris as a sad parody of Hillary — courting vapid celebrities over unions, and vile chicken-hawks like Liz Cheney over decent human beings. Say what you want about the state of Biden’s brain, he’d been in politics long enough to do a populist feint when needed, from laying track to splurging on jobs (all watered down once in office).
Not Kamala — she was content with just saying she’d be better than the brownshirts coming back. And why not; standing against something is still a stand. It’s just that the last time America defeated fascism, it required a titanic reorientation of the entire economy, near-full employment, and a war that killed 4pc of the world’s population.
What Kamala had were bumper stickers. “Never again,” she enjoyed telling crowds. “Never again. Never again.”
Interestingly, it may well have been never again: as of this writing, Trump is bagging the same number of votes as his losing bid in 2020, if not less. In essence, the Dems lost more than Trump won.
Yes, a fair few wealthy suburbanites feared, correctly, that Trump would take a gold-plated wrecking ball to their democracy. For everyone else, however, there were more immediate crises at hand. (“Did America really elect a dictator because Frosted Flakes hit $7.99 at the grocery store?” asked the Jacobin.)
But inflation’s a desperately dull subject, one almost as dull as social stratification — the kind that breeds status anxiety; the realisation that a certain standard of life can now only be the province of rich idiots that live in gated communities, go to the same schools, inter-golf, and inter-marry. Why not vote for Trump?
Instead, the rest of the world gets to listen to how America’s rotten id let the Donald win again — a triumph of racism, sexism, fascism, this-ism, and that-ism; that the barbarians have disarmed lady Liberty, and the Capitol will be toppled next. If it was Jan 6 then, it’ll be blood in the streets now.
The hysteria is so loud, it’s almost as if this hasn’t happened before: that a void so carefully nourished over generations — a culture that sanctifies capital, and a politics bereft of class — wouldn’t be filled by right-wing populists.
Because it’s hard to imagine it was Nazis that re-elected the Squad: Rashida Tlaib, who refused to endorse Kamala, was returned to Congress by the same Michigan voter that had so humiliated Harris, in a stunning 20,000-vote swing away from Biden’s haul in 2020.
“Genocide is bad politics,” said an activist in Dearborn. Unless, of course, we believe the Democrats: that the minorities have turned into white supremacists overnight. Could it be, instead, that they sensed the liberal order’s self-immolation in Gaza; that the bodies of shredded children on hooks was no longer international law as usual?
It was hard to come to any other conclusion, especially with Bill Clinton being trotted out to tell potential voters their family members deserved ethnic cleansing at the hands of Eretz Zion. Incidentally, the man thought best-suited to soothing Muslim horror over an ongoing genocide was the same president that had let Serbs slaughter their way to the last Bosnian enclave before stirring himself awake (and was still celebrated by the Muslim street for it).
In fact, the Republican Party, despite boasting the world’s most diverse range of war criminals — from Kissinger to Rumsfeld to Bolton — sounded more moderate on killing kids overseas than the Democrats this round. And if the Kamala voter was being expected to ignore a genocide, why should the Trumpist be made to blush over race riots?
As for policies at home, the blues seem to have decided that victory, via a happy left-wing, would still be worse than defeat by grandpas in red hats. If there was a coalition the Democrats wanted to win over last week, it was, well, the Republican coalition. And the Republican coalition couldn’t even recognise itself: the neocons were dead, the blazers-and-slacks bunch was cowed, and the MAGA Trumpers were legion.
Because politics in America is no longer about bettering social conditions; it hasn’t been since Reagan. Politics in America is about target selection — a perverse culture war that helps people forget what’s attributed to Tanzania’s Julius Nyrere: that the US is a one-party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.
So it is that a racist orange billionaire beats a deep state genocide enabler, in what the press calls our “most crucial election” — even as both are united on backing Israel, fighting China, protecting guns from their victims, deporting illegals en masse, drilling record amounts of hydrocarbon, and building up defence-tech. The big stuff is settled.
If there are differences, it’s on the second-string issues — tax cuts for the rich, anti-trust enforcement, crackdowns on even-legal immigrants, and whether or not Elon Musk is a white replacement weirdo.
And yet, if Trump remains the anti-war provincial he pledges to be, that will be more than enough for millions of innocents so removed from his universe — the kind of indifference that drove Bush-era torturers like Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales into the Democrats’ loving arms.
As for Pakistan — and depending on the politics of the Pakistani saying so —he’s a breath of fresh air for the country’s largest party, the PTI, and bodes well for the imprisoned Imran Khan; alternatively, say those partial to the current regime’s jailers, Pakistan’s not important enough to care about anyway. The first assumption is still premature; the second is already wrong.
What’s beyond argument is that the Donald returns older, angrier, and more extreme. He’s mopped the floor with America’s traditional dynasties, the Bushes and the Clintons, and carries a party remade entirely in his image. Meanwhile, the Senate has flipped red; the House is on knife-edge; and a third of the Supreme Court sits as his appointees. A broader realignment, towards the populist roar, is ensuring his surname becomes an era.
“This will truly be the golden age of America,” he says. Ever since its supervillains took the controls in 2000, it hasn’t been.
The author is an advocate at the Lahore High Court. He is a partner at Ashtar Ali LLP, where he focuses on constitutional law and commercial litigation. He is also a columnist at Dawn.
DAWN
It wasn’t even close. But also, it was never going to be.
As the 2024 polls conclude, the global hegemon may be entering its own late Soviet Union phase: ancient leaders, vomiting soldiers, and the collapse of a rules-based order that, even in its prime, never quite applied to those writing it.
And yet such obituaries are a risky business: while the West’s neoliberals make up the dying regime today, they’re not going the way of the communist bloc just yet.
After all, America remains the greatest economy, the mightiest military, and the uncrowned keeper of the world’s reserve currency. It is empire, and empire is everywhere.
America picks Trump, again
But one would be hard-pressed to think, after yet another toxic election, that the American experiment isn’t flailing hard. Described over three decades ago as a “short-fingered vulgarian” in Vanity Fair, Donald Trump is displaying a different sort of hand gesture to elite magazines these days.
Fresh from a hero’s journey grosser than the reality TV he headlines, Trump is cruising past two assassination attempts, two impeachments, even a criminal conviction, to become the 47th president of the United States. “We love winners,” he said during his last term. “We love winners. Winners are winners.”
And losers are losers. Surely, asked The Guardian, didn’t the world see “Kamala Harris’s competence and expertise, her decency and grace, her potential to be the first female president?”
If the world saw it, the voter didn’t, handing the God & Oil Party its first popular victory in two decades. And the emotional meltdown on the other side is silly, self-indulgent, and self-delusional.
Because Kamala Harris was never going to win. Let’s face it: how many times has it happened in America that an unpopular incumbent won amid economic anxiety? Kamala hadn’t to distinguish herself from Trump so much as from Sleepy Joe. She decided not to. She couldn’t attack Trump’s corruption. Biden was corrupt. His harassment of women; Biden did that too. His age: Biden is ancient. His mental acuity: Biden is demented.
So Kamala was left with Kamala, and a politburo of Pelosis and Obamas lurking in the hall — a dizzy ex-prosecutor that had never won a single primary, couldn’t carry her own state in 2020, had no recognisable ideas as vice-president, had no core beliefs in general, and sold out each of her positions from the wall to Palestine. Should she have run?
Because the core theme of this election, same as the one before it, was simple: if Bill Clinton’s boys had come up with “It’s the economy, stupid”, the same dinosaurs were now too high up the managerial class to let Kamala know it was the economy again, and that those amid it were suffering.
Instead, the donors, operators, and hopey-changey Ivy Leaguers that form the Dems’ shadow party — the ones that knifed Biden when his brain froze on the debate stage — went on and on about Joe’s economic miracle: more growth, more jobs, more recovery all around.
And if median income was taking a beating, and food insecurity was at a high, and health insurance was on the wane, who cared? As Charles Schumer shrugged in 2016, for every blue-collar Democrat that dropped off, the party would snatch up two suburban Republicans. It was a poor trade to make, and it wasn’t going to work anyway, given the massive workers’ exodus from the left across the board.
“It should come as no great surprise,” said Bernie Sanders, forever the thwarted king across the sea, “that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”
And how: nearly 80 per cent of voters that thought the economy was their top issue voted for Trump.
Racist orange billionaire beats deep state genocide enabler
In the other corner was Harris as a sad parody of Hillary — courting vapid celebrities over unions, and vile chicken-hawks like Liz Cheney over decent human beings. Say what you want about the state of Biden’s brain, he’d been in politics long enough to do a populist feint when needed, from laying track to splurging on jobs (all watered down once in office).
Not Kamala — she was content with just saying she’d be better than the brownshirts coming back. And why not; standing against something is still a stand. It’s just that the last time America defeated fascism, it required a titanic reorientation of the entire economy, near-full employment, and a war that killed 4pc of the world’s population.
What Kamala had were bumper stickers. “Never again,” she enjoyed telling crowds. “Never again. Never again.”
Interestingly, it may well have been never again: as of this writing, Trump is bagging the same number of votes as his losing bid in 2020, if not less. In essence, the Dems lost more than Trump won.
Yes, a fair few wealthy suburbanites feared, correctly, that Trump would take a gold-plated wrecking ball to their democracy. For everyone else, however, there were more immediate crises at hand. (“Did America really elect a dictator because Frosted Flakes hit $7.99 at the grocery store?” asked the Jacobin.)
But inflation’s a desperately dull subject, one almost as dull as social stratification — the kind that breeds status anxiety; the realisation that a certain standard of life can now only be the province of rich idiots that live in gated communities, go to the same schools, inter-golf, and inter-marry. Why not vote for Trump?
Instead, the rest of the world gets to listen to how America’s rotten id let the Donald win again — a triumph of racism, sexism, fascism, this-ism, and that-ism; that the barbarians have disarmed lady Liberty, and the Capitol will be toppled next. If it was Jan 6 then, it’ll be blood in the streets now.
The hysteria is so loud, it’s almost as if this hasn’t happened before: that a void so carefully nourished over generations — a culture that sanctifies capital, and a politics bereft of class — wouldn’t be filled by right-wing populists.
Because it’s hard to imagine it was Nazis that re-elected the Squad: Rashida Tlaib, who refused to endorse Kamala, was returned to Congress by the same Michigan voter that had so humiliated Harris, in a stunning 20,000-vote swing away from Biden’s haul in 2020.
“Genocide is bad politics,” said an activist in Dearborn. Unless, of course, we believe the Democrats: that the minorities have turned into white supremacists overnight. Could it be, instead, that they sensed the liberal order’s self-immolation in Gaza; that the bodies of shredded children on hooks was no longer international law as usual?
It was hard to come to any other conclusion, especially with Bill Clinton being trotted out to tell potential voters their family members deserved ethnic cleansing at the hands of Eretz Zion. Incidentally, the man thought best-suited to soothing Muslim horror over an ongoing genocide was the same president that had let Serbs slaughter their way to the last Bosnian enclave before stirring himself awake (and was still celebrated by the Muslim street for it).
In fact, the Republican Party, despite boasting the world’s most diverse range of war criminals — from Kissinger to Rumsfeld to Bolton — sounded more moderate on killing kids overseas than the Democrats this round. And if the Kamala voter was being expected to ignore a genocide, why should the Trumpist be made to blush over race riots?
As for policies at home, the blues seem to have decided that victory, via a happy left-wing, would still be worse than defeat by grandpas in red hats. If there was a coalition the Democrats wanted to win over last week, it was, well, the Republican coalition. And the Republican coalition couldn’t even recognise itself: the neocons were dead, the blazers-and-slacks bunch was cowed, and the MAGA Trumpers were legion.
Because politics in America is no longer about bettering social conditions; it hasn’t been since Reagan. Politics in America is about target selection — a perverse culture war that helps people forget what’s attributed to Tanzania’s Julius Nyrere: that the US is a one-party state, but with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.
So it is that a racist orange billionaire beats a deep state genocide enabler, in what the press calls our “most crucial election” — even as both are united on backing Israel, fighting China, protecting guns from their victims, deporting illegals en masse, drilling record amounts of hydrocarbon, and building up defence-tech. The big stuff is settled.
If there are differences, it’s on the second-string issues — tax cuts for the rich, anti-trust enforcement, crackdowns on even-legal immigrants, and whether or not Elon Musk is a white replacement weirdo.
And yet, if Trump remains the anti-war provincial he pledges to be, that will be more than enough for millions of innocents so removed from his universe — the kind of indifference that drove Bush-era torturers like Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales into the Democrats’ loving arms.
As for Pakistan — and depending on the politics of the Pakistani saying so —he’s a breath of fresh air for the country’s largest party, the PTI, and bodes well for the imprisoned Imran Khan; alternatively, say those partial to the current regime’s jailers, Pakistan’s not important enough to care about anyway. The first assumption is still premature; the second is already wrong.
What’s beyond argument is that the Donald returns older, angrier, and more extreme. He’s mopped the floor with America’s traditional dynasties, the Bushes and the Clintons, and carries a party remade entirely in his image. Meanwhile, the Senate has flipped red; the House is on knife-edge; and a third of the Supreme Court sits as his appointees. A broader realignment, towards the populist roar, is ensuring his surname becomes an era.
“This will truly be the golden age of America,” he says. Ever since its supervillains took the controls in 2000, it hasn’t been.
The author is an advocate at the Lahore High Court. He is a partner at Ashtar Ali LLP, where he focuses on constitutional law and commercial litigation. He is also a columnist at Dawn.
