When it comes to politics, like toddlers, we need to learn to share
Has the US Democratic party learned nothing? In the rush of excitement about the prospect of a candidate who might be able to stop Donald Trump, has it already forgotten why he became so successful?
He may have simply succeeded because of the failure of others.
Have we already forgotten the sight of Barack Obama at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011? At that event, Democrats rubbed shoulders with elite celebrities and media, trading witty exchanges and in-jokes.
Obama stole the show — yet while he won the room, he lost the country.
It can be argued that in 2016 Trump surfed to power on a wave of discontent among almost 63 million decent but anxious American voters who felt that they had been left behind, unheard and voiceless in a changing world.
In Europe it can be difficult to appreciate the size of the US and how a coast-to-coast trip usually crosses 10 states — many as large, or larger, than Germany or France. Seven out of 10 of those states will be the mid-western states that usually vote Republican.
These are the places wise-cracking comics like to denigrate with pejorative terms like “fly-over states” or “the rust belt”. These were the people that Hillary Clinton’s speech, eight years ago this month, disparaged by saying: “As you know, to just be grossly generalist, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.”
A transcript of the speech records the audience reaction as “laughter/ applause”. And just like that, the opinions and emotions of half of those 63 million people were excluded.
As the Harris campaign gets under way, it is striking to notice how quickly and completely the media bias in the US has become evident again.
Papers of record, such as The New York Times and Washington Post, can hardly contain their enthusiasm for and accompanying lack of scrutiny of Kamala Harris, compared to that reserved for Donald Trump.
Similarly, the entertainment world is again lining up to back the trendy “brat” identity that supposedly appeals to younger voters. As a senator and later attorney general for California, the world of Hollywood came with Kamala’s territory — literally.
So, it is unsurprising that celebrity endorsements from the likes of Beyoncé, Foo Fighters, Carole King, George Clooney and Barbra Streisand
all emerged as soon as she was nominated. Again, the very out-ofreach nature of celebrities only serves to confirm the fears of being out-oftouch for ordinary Americans.
Most newly elected leaders promise in their post-election speeches to be a leader for all of the people. This notion is becoming increasingly lost in today’s virtue-signalling politics, which have little tolerance for other ideas. Something is amplified by the winner-takes-all/first-past-the-post electoral system.
These attitudes confirm a society’s drift into a world of almost childish expectations and entitlements, of believing in the right to have every opinion accommodated and every need met — regardless of the cost or consequence for others.
Good, stable societies are built on the foundation of the hard-won lessons of bad times when societies allowed themselves to indulge in the fantasies that their opinions were entitlements that justified transgressions of traditional social norms.
Judgements and certainties about right and wrong evaporate when wars end. This was exemplified by the US in framing the Marshall Plan, which generously rebuilt the vanquished post-war society of Germany in spite of the appalling atrocities committed.
History repeatedly teaches that all intolerance eventually results in horrors committed by those who are certain that they alone are right. Over and over, the world has had to learn and re-learn the lesson that the cure for the excesses of intolerance is civility and the defence of co-existence of differences.
The US was founded on ideals of tolerance and civility. Indeed, an almost excessive civility still pervades American public life, where strangers are still addressed as “sir” and “ma’am”.
The foundation of civilisation begins in the nursery, the place where toddlers are taught the importance of the idea of sharing. This is the basic building block in how we all learn to accommodate the wants and needs of others.
The polarisation of politics is not unique to the United States. Its lessons are there for all to see. Success in politics is not measured by how many are defeated in an election.
Political scientists refer to a much more important version of success — they call it “losers’ consent”. That means that real leaders ensure that no person is left behind.
Media bias within the US has become evident again