The reasons for this are not specifically American, as there are many other Trumps around the world. Nor does it have anything to do with Joe Biden’s belated withdrawal, since Donald Trump had already won over half the American people months earlier.
So why?
How can we understand that the United States gave such a solid majority to an incredible liar, a rude megalomaniac who can go so far as to imitate a fellatio with his lips while holding a microphone in his hands in front of a crowd of cheering admirers? How can we accept that the fate of Ukraine, its people and its heroes now depends on a man who admires Vladimir Putin as much as he hates Europeans?
The answer can be summed up in one word: fear.
This fear, which has gripped all five continents since the beginning of the century, is felt more acutely by Americans than by the rest of the world because they have grown accustomed to being the richest, the strongest, the most industrialised and the best armed. Protected by two oceans from the chaos outside, they had never been attacked in their heartland, but they discovered their insecurity on 11 September 2001, when terrorism brought the war to Manhattan.
“Why do they hate us?” asked a major American magazine, but in 2017 – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth – Trump suspended visas for citizens of many Muslim countries.
Then the evidence of global warming became compelling, and the United States was particularly frightened by it, because it had to admit that its continent-sized country was threatened by all kinds of natural disasters, and that its economy and way of life were too, given its dependence on oil. It was in the United States that global warming most clearly signalled the end of an era, and what did Donald Trump say to his fellow citizens? “Don’t worry,” he told them, because it is all a hoax and I’m pulling us out of international climate agreements.
And then there was China, a dormant power whose awakening is shaking the world. China is de-industrialising the whole world, but it is a real challenge for the United States, because it could well relegate it to second place, and what did Donald Trump say to the Americans? “Don’t panic”, he told them: we are going to build customs walls.
And then there is immigration, the scale of which is provoking rejection everywhere. It is all the stronger in the United States because its border with the “subcontinent” is not a sea border but a territorial continuum, and what did Donald Trump say to the American voters? “We are closing the doors”, he told them, building a wall and promising mass deportations.
And then, in recent years, there has been an increase in the number of wars, which has raised fears everywhere of a third world war. The Americans are the ones who fear it the most, because they no longer want to get involved in distant conflicts, and what did Donald Trump say to them? “We are withdrawing to the safety of our borders”, he told them, when the House of Representatives was blocking all aid to Ukraine for six months.
With the balance of terror no longer there to ensure international order, with the climate itself going haywire and with the traditional political forces having no convincing answer to the challenges of this new century, there is not a people on this earth that is not afraid, but Americans are the most frightened of them all because they have the most to lose.
So there is nothing mysterious about the fact that protectionism is making a comeback, that the nationalist far right is on the rise everywhere, that the quest for “prophets” takes precedence over reason, and that a majority of Americans voted for the leader who promised them a return to their “golden age” – the time when they felt certain of their safety and forever the strongest.
(Photo: Donald Trump speaking with attendees at a rally at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona on 23 August 2024. © Wikimedia Commons. Photographer: Gage Skidmore.)
