Liberals are seen as necessarily an evil as extremists are an avoidable one. It would, therefore, be politically incorrect and intellectually unaesthetic to say nice things about Donald Trump, the egomaniacal real estate baron, roulette player of beautiful wives and mistresses, and maverick opinionist who is the leading GOP candidate for president of the US. Liberal evangelism coexists in the US comfortably with ferocious prejudices, with a willing audience to buy into both.
In January, Barack Obama chastened the Narendra Modi government about “intolerance”. Indian clones of American intelligentsia warned that “intolerance” encouraged by the Modi government was throtling the free thinking tradition of our creative class. The establishment was even warned that it is driving away foreign investment.
Then Obama and his fellow chastisers get egg on their face. Donald Trump echoes the feelings of most Americans that Muslims should be barred from entering the country. There was a liberal howl of protest, but a silent poll showed that most of them were in sync with his attitude.
The US faces social, cultural and demographic problems similar to India. Trump’s rhetoric is simplistic and alarmist—illegal immigrants are taking away jobs and young Americans are being radicalised over the Net. India’s illegal refugee problem has changed the electoral mood of Assam, West Bengal and Delhi, at the cost of resource planning and local culture, because they are a big vote bank. The country’s intelligence agencies are seriously worried about indoctrination of Muslim youth by recruiters from IS and al-Qaeda: young Muslims, including girls, want to travel to Syria to fight everyone else. Some already have, and died in the process. The police, last week, arrested many al-Qaeda operatives.
Trump’s advice is to put a firewall to prevent radical cyber seduction. “We’re losing a lot of people because of the Internet, and we have to do something,” he said at a rally earlier this month. “We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people... We have to talk to them maybe in certain areas closing that Internet up in some way.” This is akin to China’s official web policy, which, however, offers virtual private networks (VPNs) to a selected elite.
Trump is just revealing America’s “intolerant” side, offering knee-jerk solutions. The US was built on profits from the slave trade. American police are scandalously trigger-happy with blacks, even the children. American progress and prejudice destroyed Native American culture. Mosques and gurdwaras are vandalised, and Sikhs, mistaken for “towel heads”—local slang for Arabs—have been attacked and killed. The US is also one of the most misogynist of societies—the nationwide rape rate was 41.2 cases per lakh of the population in 2014.
Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down, who interviewed Trump for Playboy magazine, found him unlikeable, egomaniacal and garish. Bowden writes, “Apart from the comical ego, the errors, and the self-serving bluster, what you get from Trump are commonplace ideas pronounced as received wisdom.” Trump’s is the kind of pop advice that hoi polloi love. His solutions are not thought through, or a result of consultative analysis. Perhaps, Modi, who is balancing muscle and dialogue with Pakistan, could lecture America on “intolerance”? Putin would love that.
ravi@newindianexpress.com