“Trump targeted the stomach, which is closer to the heart than the brain is.”
Three days before the elections in the US of A, I was in a video call with a daughter who resides in California and asked her whether she was for Harris or Trump.
To my consternation, she picked Trump.
“How could you possibly go for an irascible felon?” I asked.
Her response did not shock. “Pa, do you know how different America has become since you last came here?”
“I cannot go to the streets of San Francisco. In fact, my younger daughters have never been there, as it is such an awful, dreadful place, and mostly because those bleeding heart Democrats won’t touch the homeless, drug-crazed derelicts that litter Union Square all the way to the waterfront,” she stated.
“The cost of living is sky-high. Aside from food, the ordinary working-class cannot afford to buy a house, let alone cope with the ever-increasing rent that landlords demand. That’s what we got from Biden, Kamala, and a Democrat governor and city mayor,” she cried out.
A friend who visited a month ago from Los Angeles, once a true-blue Democrat, has turned Republican too, and for the same reasons my daughter gave me.
I frankly couldn’t care less how America screws itself in picking its president after the senile Biden.
We Filipinos should start evaluating all those “iron-clad” promises they fool us about our security as a nation. And in a changing global economic order where America’s power is waning, we ought to look at alternative trading partners and focus on BRICS instead of the G-7.
Whether it was Harris or Trump, the economic impact of policies that would have remained or those that would be revived by either or, would be less and less. We had better get used to that reality.
That reality which Trump and the Republicans burrowed in the minds and sentiments of the American voter triumphed over the esoteric ideals of individual liberties and freedoms that the Democrats warned their public would lose if the unhinged former president returned to power.
The long and short of the recently concluded American election is — reality trumped ideals.
Truth be told, the whole world is suffering from inflation, and most of that can be traced to two commodities: petrol and food, which are inter-related.
One is mainly caused by geopolitical uncertainties, even actual conflicts, whether in the long-running Ukraine invasion, or the worsening conflict in the Israeli-Palestinian theater exacerbated by Iranian support for irredentist militias.
Due to the high cost of logistics, food supply and prices are also affected, and countries with enough land and advanced technology are fast adapting to the challenge of ensuring food availability in a climate-challenged globe. That will take a while, even in the rich countries, but a much, much longer time for countries like ours where agriculture has long been neglected, and government efforts are spotty.
Biden stepped into the picture when the world was yet recovering from a deadly pandemic which killed many and paralyzed economies, ours included. The POTUS that their population longed for was that of a can do, will do leader. Biden was simply not up to the task.
He was a good person with right moral values, while Harris was basically an unknown quantity and a mere shadow of the ineffective Biden. They were no match for the can do, will do rhetoric and character of Trump, no matter his crimes, no matter his personality disorder.
Even if I personally dislike Trump, I must concede that he had better messaging in the recent campaign than the Democrat strategists advised Kamala to mouth.
He made illegal immigrants the villains, which was a hit with lazy white and black Americans alike who feel entitled to jobs even if they underperform. He attacked Biden’s costly interference in foreign conflicts which America’s sluggish economy could not afford the dollars they spend.
In effect, Trump targeted the stomach, which is closer to the heart than the brain is. And even as Biden and Harris pointed out that the economy, based on statistics was improving and inflation was receding, the reality on the ground hit the stomach more.
Politica del estomago, the Latino dictators used to say. And even the Hispanic Americans whose paisanos will soon be deported en masse, ululated to Trump’s message.
Americans have taken a leap of faith, a leap into the known which they hope could work in the restart of their lives.
They couldn’t care less about the problems of Ukraine or Israel, Palestine or Iran. Not even China which for decades has been supplying American consumers with cheap necessities.
There is a lesson our present leaders can learn from Trump’s triumph.
