Trump’s politics and Exploitation of Fear – An anatomy

The 2016 election campaign has seen a new curve of fear-driven politics, with some Republican candidates repudiating everything that the Democratic President Barack Obama has pursued in the last seven years as inimical to American interest. While Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have largely been constructive and pluralist in their political outreach, they too have occasionally invoked fearful consequences of some Republicans’ particularly Donald Trump’s rejection of “the other.” Trump’s Republican rivals have also used scary scenarios to bring in the element of fear in the campaign.

But it is billionaire businessman Trump, who has used alarmist politics in a tone and tenor that has rarely been witnessed in recent American history. Having cast Mexicans, Muslims and Democrats in derogatory terms as threats to America, he has been successfully building up a constituency among disgruntled citizens as his followers, who buy his angry narrative, and have been responsible for catapulting Trump to the frontrunner status. Often, Trump says he will make America great again. He has offered no organized plan to do so. Does his “fear-mongering” suggest that he would follow a radically different path like making American an all-white country, beating out China economically, or expelling all Muslims.

Some of the leading American and international analysts have tried to interpret Trump, questioning his unethical techniques to attract voters – and offering a series of interesting analyses.

On Dec. 23, 2015, a senior journalist and opinion maker, George F. Will wrote in his column in Washington Post about the Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump, “If you look beyond Donald Trump’s comprehensive unpleasantness — is there a disagreeable human trait he does not have? — you might see this: He is a fundamentally sad figure. His compulsive boasting is evidence of insecurity. His unassuageable neediness suggests an aching hunger for others’ approval to ratify his self-admiration. His incessant announcements of his self-esteem indicate that he is not self-persuaded. Now, panting with a puppy’s insatiable eagerness to be petted, Trump has reveled in the approval of Vladimir Putin, murderer and war criminal”.

Time Magazine, in its publication of April 2011, wrote about 10 gambles where Donald Trump put his name behind and busted : Trump Airlines, Trump Vodka, The Bankruptcies, The Hair, The Marriages, Trump Mortgage, Trump : The Game, The China Connection, Trump Casinos and The Middle East Policy.

The question is, how, with all those failures, Trump is winning the primaries one after  another with significant margins, although so far only about 5 percent of the total delegates have been awarded. But over coming weeks, 595 will be on Super Tuesday and 368 more until March 12.  After March 14, the primaries will be on winner-take-all basis and the candidates will compete for another 292 delegates to get to the Convention.

Experts see certain reasons that explain the Trump phenomenon. In November 2015, two prominent Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton published a paper where they analyzed the data of the mortality rates (deaths per 100,000 Americans) from 1999 to 2013, with respect to different races and education levels.  Their thesis revealed that among the Black Americans, the mortality rate fell by almost 27% and among the Hispanics the rate declined by little over 19% during this period.  However, this mortality rate increased by about 9% among white middle-aged 45 to 54 year old Americans which is around 22% among this category with High School diploma or less.  Case and Deaton attributed this dramatic spikes to drug overdoses, suicides, and liver disease as the main causes for the rising death rates, specially, among the less-educated, where the poisonings tripled between 1999 and 2013; suicides due to depression went up by 78%; death by liver disease due to alcoholism increased by 46%.  According to the paper, in countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany – where the population is predominantly White — the death rate among middle-aged people has been decreasing over the last 20 years.

Some of the problems facing the White Americans are genuine but they are not of immigrants’ making.

Coincidently, as a new Washington Post-ABC poll reveals that, 46% of Trump supporters are disproportionately white Americans without college diplomas.  Polls say that the same kind of people — older, less-educated whites — are the ones so far giving Donald Trump an edge over other contenders and bought by the Trump’s fear-mongering and his promise to “Make America Great Again”.

Recent history offers several examples how politicians and dictators have used fear for their survival and perpetuation. Dictators in Latin American, the Middle East, Pakistan, Iran have often banked on striking fear in the hearts of people.

A chief reason behind the rise of Adolf Hitler in pre-II World War years in Germany and his practice of murderous movement, and in recent history, George W. Bush’s use of WMD pretext to invade Iraq also rested on raising fear and fearful specters.

But what makes Americans support Donald Trump at this particular time?  What are the fears? Are these fears of losing the cultural hegemony over their land or being overshadowed by immigrants in in modern fields of progress?

Donald Trump recently commented, “Our country is out of control.  People are pouring across the southern border”.

Analysts point out that actually Trump is distorting facts and many media reports suggest that the illegal immigration from the south is almost at standstill.  He sells fear and provokes hatred towards a significantly large Muslim population by telling his supporters – incorrectly of course – that he saw on TV Muslims were celebrating the 9/11.

Like former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Donald Trump, is considered a cause of misery by the liberals and large number of intellectuals.  However, he is a hero for those common people who make their worldview by looking at some TV channels and listening to ultra-right wing commentators.

As Rula Jebreal, an Italian-Palestinian journalist, wrote in September 2015 in the Washington Post, “Italy’s longest-serving prime minister, Berlusconi started out as a wealthy demagogue on the brink of bankruptcy, whose celebrity was — like Trump’s — rooted in both real estate and popular entertainment culture. Berlusconi presented himself as Italy’s strongman, speaking like a barman, selling demonstrably false promises of wealth and grandeur for all. He made the electorate laugh while stoking fears of communists and liberals stripping privileges and increasing taxes.”

Just a week ago, editorial boards of Washington Post and Boston Globe condemned Donald Trump and urged the Republican Party to somehow reject Trump as a candidate. Boston Globe’ Editorial titled “Massachusetts voters must stop Donald Trump.” The editor wrote that “stopping Donald Trump is imperative — and not just for his fellow Republicans.”  After Trump’s victory in the Nevada caucuses, the Washington Post gave editorial titled, “GOP leaders, you must do everything in your power to stop Trump,” where the paper urged the GOP leadership to abandon Trump. The editorial board of the Washington Post warned, “…history will not look kindly on GOP leaders who fail to do everything in their power to prevent a bullying demagogue from becoming their standard-bearer”.

Editors of The Des Moines Register, The New York Times, Arkansas Online, The Wall Street Journal, have also decried the possibility of the Trump Presidency.

However, Jeffrey Lord, Former Reagan White House Political Director believes that these editorials are ignoring the voice of the voters.  He reminded Angelo M. Codevilla’s (introduced by Rush Limbaugh) small best seller, “The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It”, which argues that we got a ruling class in this country’s elites, who have decided that they are smarter and intellectually superior than rest of us and they can make all the decisions.

American and international mainstream media have also been surprised at how quickly Americans with Republican Party leanings have increased their support for Donald Trump.

Trump has dismissed liberal media reporting and analyses as unfair and biased, and presented himself as voice of his supporters. He also projects himself as a successful businessman with managerial and financial expertise.

But experts also acknowledge that Trump has turned out to be a political tactician, who has exploited disaffection and the general state of the indecisiveness, and a lack of inspiring leadership within the Republican Party, and has used theatrics to advance his campaign.

Ari Shavit writes in his piece, titled, “As an Israeli who loves America, I am worried by Trump” in Haaretz Daily, “This man who offers himself as a grotesquerie of Ronald Reagan has not only brought American politics to an unprecedented low, he endangers all that America has been and all that America is supposed to be”.

According to a 19^th – 20^th century famous German-American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar, Henry Louis Mencken, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Is Trump relying on such “mischievous goblins” to keep the masses on his side or he has a real plan to roll out and implement his notions in the months ahead. But fear as a factor in politics is making its presence felt in a dangerous manner.