Weltschmerz
Eight years ago rage was the dominant emotion. Four years ago, I wrote about hope and wanting the day to linger on. Today (and indeed, ever since evening of Nov 5th, when the trend became unmistakable), mostly what I feel is fatigue and a sense of resignation. I spent much of the first four years of Trump ranting and railing and getting worked up about something or the other, almost on a daily basis. It was futile then and the foreknowledge of that only serves to compounds my despair.
In 2016, it was a genuine shock to see Trump win the Presidency and many of us tried to cope with a series of rationalizations — anything but that a majority of the country wanted him as President. If only Hillary had not made the deplorables comment, if only Comey had not announced an investigation into her emails on the eve of the elections, if only the Clintons and the Obamas had not prevailed on Biden to sit that election out, if only, if only. Most of us believed that it was only the fluke of the anachronistic electoral college that put Trump into office and that Russian meddling played a strong part in swaying the red state masses. Surely, we said, there is no way such a flawed and patently undeserving person could have become President under “normal” conditions.
Eight years on, we have come face to face with our own naivete — turns out we were the clueless ones. We can no longer hide behind the figleaf of not knowing what to expect — all of his perfidy, small-mindedness, incompetence, and plain cruelty were in full view for four years — and yet, he was voted back into office with the popular vote and an increased share of the electoral college. His actions leading up to and including the events of Jan 6, 2021, alone should have been disqualifying, but instead served only to further cement his martyrdom. The various lawsuits had the same effect. Undeniably, there was more than an element of a desire for comeuppance in the various prosecutions — it was a liberal fever dream to see Trump admit defeat in some forum, even if it wasn’t the electoral one. The Al Capone example was much bandied about. Underlying it — at least in some measure — was a sneaking suspicion of what exactly transpired — that the only way to deny Trump a second term was to disqualify him from running. Having brought the lawsuits, the prosecutors did themselves a further disservice by dilly-dallying and an inability to act decisively and forcefully. Instead, all it did was to allow Trump to continue occupying the national psyche in his favorite avatar — that of the victim and outsider — all through the four years he was out of power. Joe Biden (enabled by his family and advisors) clung on too long, allowing us to wallow in one more (perhaps equally delusional) if only.
In 2016 it was convenient to blame the result on working class White grievance in rural America. In 2024, every single demographic — however you slice it — shifted in favor of Trump. And if I am honest with myself, I cannot deny that some of the criticisms leveled against the liberals have a ring of truth to them. The Left became more interested in virtue signaling and enforcing political correctness than about genuine social change. Idealogical purity became more important than competence — witness the sight of the Democratic mayors of New York and LA mired in charges of corruption and rank ineptitude, not to mention finger pointing and buck passing. The optics of billions of dollars being sent to support far away Ukraine while inflation sky rocketed domestically didn’t help, however tenuous the connection.
Day 1 of the second Trump term has already brought in a raft of changes including a withdrawal from the WHO, a challenge to birthright citizenship and several actions to thwart migrants and refugees — legal or otherwise. Some of these will not survive legal challenges, but the vast majority of them will cause tremendous pain and suffering even if only in the short term. The promised ICE raids to deport undocumented people are yet to start and we are already hearing about children refusing to go to school because they are afraid their parents might be taken away while they are in school.
The irony is that most people I know will not be directly impacted by Trump’s actions — if anything, many of them will benefit financially from lower marginal tax rates and the business boost from a relaxed regulatory environment. The people who will bear the brunt will be those who can least afford it, those without a voice or a seat at the table.
The conventional wisdom on viral infections such as the common cold used to be that you just rode it out. A popular refrain was “A cold will last 7 days if you don’t take anything for it, but if you get some treatment, it will be gone in a week.” This seems to encapsulate the de facto liberal coping mechanism to Trump’s Second Coming — it doesn’t matter what we do, we just need to wait it out. However, that ignores the very real risk of an imperial presidency — one to which Trump has pretty much explicitly alluded to. I would love to be wrong on this one, but I would be very surprised if we don’t see legal maneuvering and posturing in that direction in the very near future.
My ennui perhaps says just as much about me as it does about the state of our politics and society. Life and the passage of time will do that to you. I also cannot deny the despair I feel when I see the rise of Hindu nationalism in India. Every story I read about the increased marginalization and intolerance of non-Hindus (or more specifically, Muslims) only serves to increase my anxiety for India’s future as a multi-cultural society. Of course, it is not only anti-Muslim sentiment that is rising, there is also increased pressure on the freedom of the press and expression. Taken in the broader context, my twin first hand experiences of the direction of the two biggest democracies — that share a justifiable claim to being melting pot societies — reinforce the growing conviction that illiberalism is on the rise around the world.
The Nobel prize winning economist, Amartya Sen, titled his biography — At Home in the World — a name inspired by Rabindranath Tagore’s book Home and the World and a nod to his own peripatetic life which found him at home all over the world — India, England, and the US. I find myself in a different reality. After having been away from India for more than three decades and faced with the current developments in the US and India, I am waking up to the realization that I may not be truly at home in either country.
