After 25-plus years of living in the United States,
I finally decided to become an American citizen in 2010. It was by no means an
easy decision to give up the citizenship of my beloved country, India, where I
was born, raised and educated – the country that gave me so much, helping me to
become who I am today.
As I was going through my decision-making process, I
remembered the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson,
James Madison, and many other great American visionaries who created this
nation based on values of democracy, freedom, dignity and respect for all
regardless of their nationality, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or
political beliefs. It was this nation that gave birth to extraordinary
individuals like Frederic Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Rosa Parks, and
Martin Luther King, to name a few, who all helped in breaking the shackles of
slavery, segregation, Jim Crow and other laws that historically oppressed men
and women of colour in this country.
I remembered how this nation served as a sanctuary
for the oppressed and persecuted. In fact, this nation was built on the blood,
sweat and tears of immigrants. Where
would the greatness of this nation be if we didn’t have immigrants such as
Chinua Achebe, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Albert Einstein, I.M. Pei, Joseph Pulitzer,
Vladimir Nabokov, Martina Navratilova, Billy Wilder and many more who have
enriched our lives in so many important ways?
While this country stands for freedom for people
from all over the world, it’s not without its share of challenges. There’s
still racism, sexism, homophobia and laws that continue to oppress minorities.
And this is precisely why many of us were looking to have a new leader in the
White House who would be strong and yet compassionate – someone who would be
tough-minded as well as tenderhearted.
Alas, that hope was dashed to the ground when Mr. Trump was elected as
the new president of the United States.
In this bizarre, circus-like presidential election,
we had two candidates: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mr. Donald
J. Trump. While Secretary Clinton was a
unifier, Trump was a divider. Secretary
Clinton stood for democratic ideals, Mr. Trump, on the other hand, showed
visible signs of an autocrat. More importantly, Mr. Trump espoused values that
were totally antithetical to what this nation represents. His politics were
based on racism, bigotry, sexism, and xenophobia. He’s a demagogue whose idea
to unify was by dividing people by instilling fear and hatred in them.
When the elections results came out on November 9,
and I found out that Mr. Trump had won, I went through the motions of shock,
dismay, anger, sorrow, and horror.
Candidly speaking, I couldn’t fathom how so many Americans, not in
thousands, but in millions, could blindly support a person who espoused racism,
misogyny and xenophobia. I simply couldn’t reason how a person who neither had
the qualifications nor the temperament for such a position could succeed in
becoming the 45th president of a nation that extols the virtues of respect,
tolerance, diplomacy, kindness and compassion.
As a die-hard Democrat, I simply couldn’t accept the results of the
presidential election.
However, the post election information that poured
in from all media outlets regarding pro-Trump voters was truly revealing. The
findings consistently indicated that a vast number of White Americans were
disenchanted with the politics in Washington.
They thought the system had let them down; they blamed both the
Republicans and the Democrats for their woes. In interview after interview they
said that their factories or their business had closed, and many became
bankrupt, losing their homes while others survived on food stamps. They also
believed that the immigrants were doing well when their lot was stuck in limbo.
Curiously, a vast majority of these people had voted
for President Obama both in 2008 and 2012, believing in Obama’s vision for
America. They thought that their lives were going to get better only to find
that their jobs were continuing to go overseas. They felt betrayed by Obama’s
government that had promised a better future for them. Much to their angst and
dismay, the Republicans were also not interested in listening to their
issues.
There was, however, one presidential candidate who
listened to people’s narratives of pain and anguish and that happened to be Mr.
Trump. These voters not only appreciated the fact that Mr. Trump took the time
to listen to their issues but they also liked what Mr. Trump had to say about
making America great again. Mr. Trump’s vision and ideas resonated with them.
They took an intense dislike to Secretary Clinton because, to them, she
represented the broken system of Washington that had failed them. Many of them
also thought that Secretary Clinton was untrustworthy. For all Trump
supporters, the messiah had finally arrived who would help them to get to the
Promised Land.
If one were to look objectively at the results of
this presidential election, it’s really not all that shocking given the rise of
reactionary politics all over the world.
In his compelling new book, “The Shipwrecked Mind,” Mark Lilla,
professor of political science at Columbia University, points out that
reactionaries who believe in the politics of division based on race, religion,
class and so on are in the saddle right now in many parts of the world. These
reactionaries seek to unify people by exploiting their anger, fear and
suspicion of the “cultural other.” Supporters of this kind of reactionary
politics are not just limited to angry white Trump supporters. We have seen the
surge of populist reactionary politics in India, Turkey, and the Philippines.
Now, right after Brexit, we are also witnessing the rise of reactionaries in
many European countries such as Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy,
Netherlands, and Sweden, to name a few.
Reactionaries may be of different stripes but they
all share a common mentality. They are
of the opinion that they have lost their past glory and they want to reclaim
it. They believe that there was a golden
age where people had a great life only to be taken away by the elites and the
“cultural other.” This perceived loss of glory in the minds of many citizens
forms the lynchpin of reactionary movements.
According to Lilla, dreams and hopes of a redemptive
new social order and crippling fears of the present Dark Age that confronts the
nation spur these reactionary movements. Lilla also opines that reactionaries
in these movements are militant, possessing an apocalyptic mindset that is
built around mythical narratives in which the nation’s past of continuous glory
was rudely interrupted by the elites and the “cultural other.” They are willing to take extreme actions, if
necessary, to bring back lost pride and glory, making the nation strong again.
After Mr. Trump won the presidential election, hate
crimes have soared. People of colour are
being beaten up, harassed and verbally abused in many parts of the nation. Now White kids in schools are not afraid to
chant, “Build the Wall,” frightening students of colour, especially those
of Mexican heritage. White kids in several schools were even heard calling
black students by the N-word and telling them that they were not welcome in
this country anymore. We are also witnessing the proliferation of racist graffiti
and swastika signs of neo Nazi parties all across the nation.
Mr. Trump’s populist politics has divided the nation
along the crude lines of race and class. Thanks to Mr. Trump, it’s all about
identity politics now; it’s no longer about debates and discussions about
policies. It’s about personal insults and trying to put your opponents into the
box labeled “untouchables.” Reactionary politics, as practiced by Mr. Trump and
his supporters, has damaged the grand vision that we are one nation. His
politics has corroded our sense of solidarity by breeding suspicion, cynicism,
distrust and hatred for those who are different. By relying on the reactionary
politics of difference and division, Mr. Trump has done real damage to our
national life. Millions of Americans,
especially people of colour, are alarmed that a new age of bigotry and hatred
has seized the country. It is indeed sad and heartbreaking that Mr. Trump has
not made any overt gesture to allay the fears of so many people who are
terrified of his presidency. And to add fuel to the fire, Mr. Trump has just
appointed Mr. Stephen Bannon as the White House chief strategist; he is a
controversial figure closely associated with white supremacists.
Now, I have
to live with my decision to become a US citizen but I do question it, seeing
that millions of White Americans don’t want people who look like me to live in
this country and call it our home. It’s a bitter pill to swallow but I have no
choice but to accept the unpalatable truth that I’m unwelcome by many in this
country.
The writer is professor of communication studies,
Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.