Mick Clifford: Looking at the US, it’s no wonder autocratic figures are feeling good
Former President Donald Trump, centre, flanked by his defence attorneys, Alina Habba, left, and Chris Kise, at his civil business fraud trial at New York Supreme Court. Picture: AP
The whole world really is in a terrible state of chassis, with apologies to Sean O’Casey . We are all familiar with what is unfolding in Gaza — and the West Bank — with the slaughter of the innocents.
For some global powers, the killing is merely a chess move. The Middle Eastern conflict is the latest example of where power is draining away from America as it is seen to be upholding blatant double standards. Either it doesn’t have the power to rein in Israel or it is not using it.
Since the USA went to war without a plan in Afghanistan in 2001, and went to war with nothing more than a desire to unseat Saddam in Iraq in 2003, it has been downhill for the country on the international stage. It was as if the events in the dawning of a new century were explicitly designed to herald the ending of the American century.
Meanwhile, China is sitting back and watching the show, ready to call Middle Eastern nations, and those in the global south, to its standard as American values and power hit the skids. And cheering on from the sidelines are Russia and Iran, both of which have far more in common with autocratic China than democratic America.
All of that would be merely contributing to a rebalancing of power were it not for the internal dynamic in the USA right now. America has always considered itself as the flag bearer for liberal democracy.
Yet its operation as a democracy now must be having the autocratic heavyweights around the world falling around the place with mirth.
It would be nice to think that we, a grand, open country clinging to the edge of the European mainland, could be mere spectators at what is unfolding. Unfortunately, if liberal democracy’s flagbearer combusts, we are all in trouble.
Last week, a major opinion poll in the USA showed that Donald Trump is ahead of Joe Biden in five crucial swing states. If the result were replicated on polling day in just under a year, Trump could well be elected.
Joe Biden is a decent man and an old-school American politician, attuned to the imperative of compromise in a political firmament. He has credible values but is not of a disposition to disparage those with whom he disagrees.
He has done a pretty good job as president. The economy is humming away, although, in an echo with our domestic experience, not everybody is feeling the benefits. He is due far more credit than he gets. Yet his whole persona is dominated by one salient fact that is inescapable and from which the voting public apparently can’t turn away. The man isn’t just too old but he really looks his age.
He turns 81 later this month and will be 85 going on 86 if he were to serve another full term. There are eighty-year-olds who retain the vigour and appearance of youth. There is much value and fulfillment and even public service that many of his age can and do contribute. Age for some is merely a state of mind, and medical science and personal care have ensured that it is quite possible to be younger than your years.
But running a world superpower? Many people two decades younger than Biden would have difficulties keeping up with that.
Then we have the other guy. Last week, Donald Trump gave evidence in a civil trial in which he has already been deemed guilty of fraud. His company overvalued assets for an extended period in order to acquire loans based on the inflated values. The judge is to decide the extent of any penalty.
In the witness box, Trump was asked if he’d received copies of the Trump Organisation’s financial statements in 2021. “I was so busy in the White House with China, Russia and keeping the country safe,” he replied, explaining that he had other priorities.
Apart from his civil law problems, he also faces four trials for alleged crimes. Two of these relate to the attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 election. The others concern misappropriating classified documents and paying hush money to a dancer in contravention of campaign finance laws. (The dancer’s real name is Stephanie Clifford, no relation, unfortunately, or I would have got the scoop of my life).
At 77 years of age, Trump is not some vigorous young thing mad anxious to usher in a new era. He has already served a term in which he patently hadn’t a clue how to run a country. Yet he retains attraction for a huge chunk of the electorate.
columnist Frank Bruni recently had a go at explaining the phenomenon.
“Trump is so deliberately and flamboyantly outrageous — such a purposeful cyclone of noise and distraction — that the normal metrics don’t apply to him,” Bruni wrote. “He transcends mundane realities like age. He’s Trump! He’s a horror-movie villain, a Saturday-morning cartoon, a parade float. Those things don’t have ages (or four indictments encompassing 91 counts).”
That such an individual is regarded as the future goes to the heart of the problem. It’s as if a critical mass of people have woken up from the American dream. The promise of fulfilling it was always an illusion for the majority, but it still had the power of promise. Now that optimism has faded.
Filling the vacuum is a snake oil salesman retailing the lie that he can make America great again, even if he didn’t manage it the first time around.
That’s how far the country has fallen in just forty years from the optimism of Ronald Regan’s shining city on the hill.
Trump continues to prosper because there is nobody on the right of American politics capable of exposing his con. Neither, it would appear, is there anybody bar Biden on the other side to scramble the more optimistic values and face confidently into the new world order. In such a milieu it’s no wonder that the autocratic figures around the world are feeling good about themselves and their prospects.
