From Nezavisimaya gazeta, Nov. 8, 2024, p. 1. Complete text:
Unprecedented and even sensational by contemporary historical standards, the return to power of 45th US president Donald Trump, who led the country from 2017 to 2021, is evidence of the fundamental tectonic shifts taking place in today’s America – the America of the 21st century. In the Nov. 5 presidential election, Trump not only gained the support of a convincing majority of Electoral College members, but also won almost 5 million more votes than his opponent – US Vice-President Kamala Harris. This is not something that Republican candidates have been able to achieve over the past 20 years, since the 2004 presidential election, or, in fact, over the past 30 years, beginning with the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections.
In the victorious Trump the US has gained a major political figure who can be safely placed among the great American presidents, regardless of whether he is recognized by historians as “the greatest villain” or a “transcendent” genius of political cunning and staying power. It appears that Trump was fairly successful in borrowing from the Democrats, and in particular from President Joe Biden, who was completely routed by him, the slogan that in today’s America, the battle is not for the Oval Office or for the “warm seats” on Capitol Hill, but for the “heart and soul” of the American nation. Here Trump brilliantly played on Biden’s characterization – which may or may not have been deliberate – of Trump supporters, who are mainly white Americans, as “garbage” – refuse from the progressive evolution of American society. In fact, Trump managed to crack the code of the development of American civilization, drawing the “silent majority” of the American nation into the political fight. As a result, the Republican Party, united under the banner of Trump’s “Make American Great Again” ideology, managed to take the executive branch of government, wrest the Senate from the Democrats and, according to preliminary data, retain control of the House of Representatives and the governorships, of which 27 are held by Republicans and 23 by Democrats.
Trump and his supporters were, in fact, opposed by what is known in the US as “the deep state” – the very establishment, oligarchy and bureaucratic corps that do not change from election to election. It openly made itself known on the eve of the election with appeals in support of Harris from hundreds (!) of high-ranking generals, admirals and members of the US intelligence community, who urged American voters to keep Trump and his supporters out of power. This election revealed to a certain extent the de facto intellectual bankruptcy of both “the deep state” and the oligarchy at the top of the Democratic Party, which placed its bets on Harris. In this sense, we can say that the Nov. 5 election was not so much a victory for Trump as a loss for Harris. Over the past four years, the US has seen the emergence of a political system that is not so much unique as it is fantastical. A nuclear superpower ended up under the control of a politician in a state of dementia and senility, who in 2020 selected as his understudy a woman known to be unfit for performing the duties of vice-president. She stood out for one not unimportant advantage – her absolute lack of initiative – and was simply unable to go over her boss’s head regardless of the breakdown of political forces on Washington’s Olympus.
In this connection, it can be noted that after Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 presidential election, the abiding conviction emerged, even among Democratic politicians, that based on the role that the US plays in the system of contemporary international relations, a woman cannot and should not lead – not only America, but also the collective West, regardless of her strengths or shortcomings. The Harris fiasco in the recent election could possibly form a persistent “gender syndrome” in contemporary America, similar to the “Vietnam syndrome” in the second half of the 1970s and the 1980s, closing the door to the Oval Office for women for a long time to come. In this regard, it is telling that the abortion issue, as just about the top issue facing today’s America, clearly did not play the driving role that the Democrats had hoped it would. Instead, economic problems, namely the growing cost of food, are at the top of the list of concerns for American women.
The figures of the infirm Biden and the eccentric Harris had the most pernicious impact on the main thrust of the Democrats’ ideological groundswell against Trump, which presented him as an existential threat to American democracy. In fact, the Democrats themselves eviscerated the characterization of Trump as a “fascist” and the “heir to Hitler and Mussolini,” reducing them to a figure of speech and transforming him into a kind of paper tiger. If the Democrats truly believed that Trump is a politician from the class of mid-20th century world dictators, then how could they bring the “warm and fuzzy” Biden and Harris to the forefront of the fight against universal evil? By the same token, official Washington’s characterization of many prominent political figures from other states as “ruthless dictators and autocrats” who cannot be dealt or negotiated with was also undermined.
Recalling recent American history, namely the events of Jan. 6, 2021 [when Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol after Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election was announced; see Vol. 73, No. 1‑3, pp. 3‑7 – Trans.], it is important to note that Biden repeatedly – albeit in a rather convoluted fashion – said that he would not allow a peaceful transfer of power to Trump. Therefore, it is likely that in the next two and a half months remaining until his constitutional powers to perform his presidential obligations expire – that is, at noon on Jan. 25, 2025 –we can expect both “December” and “January” surprises. The struggle between “the deep state” and the “silent majority of Americans” and its representatives did not end on Nov. 5, but instead entered a new, perhaps as yet uncharted phase.