We have our own; the Americans have theirs

The Americans did not see the writing on the wall till it was too late.

Just as most Indians disbelieved the writing on their wall in 2014.

India has its Narendra Modi; the Americans now have their own in Donald Trump.

I am not referring to the perplexing ideology of the individuals concerned.

I refer to them in the context of both of them being political outsiders, the “pariahs” as the self-claimed insiders called them.

Their anxiety to keep themselves relevant  won them their day on the day their day came. They didn’t actually have to do anything. They just needed to be there, at that moment.

Albert Camus described the modest beginnings of their fanatic perseverance in L’Etranger long ago: “I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.” 

Donald Trump, if he wins,  did not win the US Presidential elections; the corrupt cabal lost.

Just as it was not entirely Modi magic at work; the coterie of coalitions lost.

In both cases, the people triumphed even though the world did not expect them to rebel and later, never gave them credit for the change.

Hillary Clinton represented perhaps the brazenly low of American interests to ever come together to protect their turf.

These interests ranged from the politicians of all hues, the industrialists, the military manufacturers, the think tanks, the media, the FBI, Hollywood, literally everyone who could name someone in the Capitol or the New York bourse.

Never before had Americans seen such a devastating, below-the-belt, personal, vulgar campaign to try and neutralize a presidential candidate. Like Trump.

Of course, Trump helped matters coming out as a true psychopath as the campaign progressed.

But the voters did not see the psychopath in Trump. They knew him. Of course, he is that bad boy who gropes girls, who abuses power and people, who comes across as a charlatan and a bigot.

They saw in Trump, instead, the man who spoke their language. The language of the wretched. The language of those who did “not” belong anywhere, who were middle class only in name and without even $40 cash left at the end of the month, who for the last two decades were drawn into wars not of their own making, who were finding it difficult to send their kids to college, who were unable to pay the insurance premium or the home installments. They wanted a square meal and a sound sleepl; the cabal instead gave them a look at the next-gen fighter craft on its way to a distant client in a distant land.

And the ordinary Americans rebelled. The cabal tried all measures – portraying Trump as anti-Hispanic, anti-gay, anti-God, anti-child, anti-girl, anti-Black, etc. The cabal tried the favourite trick: Tell Americans Trump would put the image of their America as “the” super power at risk, that he would lower America’s prestige as a power to reckon with. What the cabal failed to see was that the ordinary American wanted peace at home first. He or she had paid a heavy price for the cabal’s tryst with geo-politics outside American shores that brought war their own homes.

The Americans wanted the status-quo – which was profitable for everyone that was part of the cabal, including the anti-Trumpers among the Republicans – to simply go. It went.

Just like the coterie went out of power in India in 2014.

During the years the Congress was in power, it ruled with a live-and-let-live policy, throwing crumbs at other centrist and left parties in the name of common political interest. Thus, this political coterie kept at bay other parties which did not fit their interest groove. The BJP, by default rather by intention, became to represent this “outside” party, later on, in the 1990s cloaking itself in impractical nationalism that would one day kill the coterie and even threaten secularism. When the Congress could not rule alone, the coterie turned into a coalition to help the Congress rule. It was anti-BJP, but essentially it was pro-Congress. 

The people saw through the charade, finally. Modi was the result.

Now Modi is drawing up his own political coalition.  Just as Trump will, in the coming days.

Politics has but one direction, one end, if not today, tomorrow.