The post-mortem analyses of Donald Trump’s shock victory in the US Presidential election are still running hot as I write.
How the world will cope with a racist, sexist, xenophobic climate-change denier as the President of the world’s most powerful nation is entirely uncertain.
It’s hard to imagine it ending well, and difficult not to imagine Trump being the architect of his own undoing, in some way that is impossible to specify, but almost certain to happen.
Many commentators have speculated that his campaign successfully tapped into the growing anger and frustration of a declining, mostly white, American middle-class, who, as Bernie Sanders - Hillary Clinton’s key contender for the Democratic nomination – declared, are “tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and establishment media”, and just wanted change.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t “politics as usual”, and the ripples – or tidal wave - will be felt around the world.
Some commentators are already pronouncing the death of neo-liberalism, and its failed policies of deregulation, privatisation and free trade, and the wealth inequality, loss of jobs, and environmental destruction they’ve created.
Unfortunately, it’s been easy for right-wing demagogues playing patsy-politics to whip up and direct the pain and anger felt as a result of these policies at vulnerable scapegoats (refugees, immigrants, ethnic and religious minorities, and even women).
It’s a classic case of victims victimising victims.
Australia, of course, is a different case. In so many ways, Australia has built a better society than America, especially with our much more effective social safety-net.
But the warning signs are there.
Australia, too, has its losers from neoliberalism, and its governments captured by neoliberal ideology.
Australia, too, has its far-right extremists (e.g., One Nation) who target vulnerable scapegoats (refugees and Muslims), as though they are the cause of the problem.
Like Trump, they tap into insecurity and discontent, but provide no useful or humane vision for a better society.
In the US, Trump supporters rallied behind his superficially clever “Make America Great Again” slogan, which taps into a general feeling of nationalism and discontent (message: “America used to be great, isn’t any more, but will be again if you vote for me”) but is so meaninglessly malleable that it can be pitched and interpreted in any way to suit any listener (“great” in what ways, for whom and how?)
Does “Get the Job Done” ring a bell? (message: “the job isn’t being done, but could be if you vote for me”. But what “job”, for whose benefit, and how?).
In that case, “the job” ended up having more to do with handing over envelopes of money to politicians in the back of a Bentley, and handing the city’s rail line to developers.
We know how that turned out, but in the 2012 Newcastle Council election the slogan resonated with voters who were so disenchanted with what they had and just wanted change.
The Donald Trumps, Pauline Hansons and Jeff McCloys of politics are snake-oil salesmen, trading on the genuine and understandable anger of people at politicians and governments who have continually let them down to serve the vested interests they really represent.
The grievances these “I’m-not-really-a-politician” politicians play on are real, but the analysis and “solutions” they offer are as vapid as the slogans and clichés they peddle.
Inevitably, their support wanes, and they fade to be replaced by the next charlatan hawking the next empty slogan and pointing at the next hapless stool pigeon.
We won’t create a better society by blaming and lashing out at victims, but by developing a vision for an equitable, compassionate and sustainable society for those with whom we share the planet, and for those to whom we’ll pass it on.
