Antonio Navalón
Regardless of our stance, ideology, or way of life, it is indisputable that societies are undergoing a profound change. Of course, this change has caused great bewilderment among elites, academia, think tanks, the media, and all of us trying to understand what is happening in the world.
In what some call one of the greatest political comebacks in modern U.S. history, Donald Trump has again been elected president. Until a week ago, Grover Cleveland was the only U.S. president who had managed to serve two non-consecutive terms. Cleveland won his first term in 1884 but lost his re-election bid in 1888 to Benjamin Harrison despite winning the popular vote. Four years later, in 1892, Cleveland ran again and defeated Harrison, again becoming president. It took more than 130 years for such an event to occur again.
Against all odds, Trump won again. But it was no ordinary win; unlike his victory in 2016, this time it was a landslide. Last November 5, more than 72 million Americans placed their faith in a man who had already held the highest office. Not only that: his leadership propelled the Republican Party to a majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives, in addition to winning 8 of the 11 governorships in contention.
The last time the Republican Party won the popular vote in a U.S. presidential election was in 2004 when George W. Bush defeated Democrat John Kerry. Bush won approximately 50.7% of the popular vote in that election, while Kerry won 48.3%. Since then, in every presidential election until last week, the Republican Party had won the presidency only through the electoral college vote and not the popular vote.
What is going on, and how do we understand that despite being a convicted criminal – albeit unconvicted – Trump has been able to win the presidency again? One of the critical points is that, as happened in Mexico in 2018, the winner comes intending to settle a score. Trump believes he was the victim of “political persecution” by the incumbent government (which he always considered illegitimate after the 2020 defeat) and now plans to go after those who persecuted him, using the law to his advantage.
It doesn’t take a genius to know that no matter how little imagination his voters had – no offense intended – it was clear that by casting their vote for Trump, Americans were also granting pardon and amnesty to those responsible for the 2021 assault on Capitol Hill. With this, it has become clear and validated that will is above the law, signaling that what is most important and what a nation needs most is leadership, even if that leadership has no boundaries.
The Founding Fathers, from Thomas Jefferson to the most important of them, Benjamin Franklin – despite not having been president – are surely turning in their graves at the sight of what is happening to democracy and the Republic that cost them so much blood and effort to establish. Given all the background, what happened in the United States last week is undoubtedly about the most crucial skin change in a country that has been boasting for more than 240 years of being the greatest democracy in the world. With the election of Trump, Americans have gone against their own essence, electing someone who acts above the law.
In Mexico, we also had that notion until the arrival of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who famously said, “Don’t give me that story that the law is the law.” Today, both in Mexico and in the United States, the law is just another spectator of the barbarities that occur in the country.
It is not the time to have leaders like Trump, López Obrador, or Bolsonaro. It is time to accept, with all the consequences, that what is in crisis, what collapsed, and what we did not know how to maintain is the ideal of the democratic model. For centuries, a better world has been promised, defending that democracy is the way to guarantee development through the balance of powers. This promise has never been entirely fulfilled, and today, it is undermined by the election of leaders who impose their will.
The people felt and continue to think they were deceived, hence their volatility and extremism when voting for their leaders. After so much disillusionment and lack of results, people have also concluded that sure misery is better than success to come. Today, people have the challenge and the difficult task of finding not the balance of power, but the balance of proteins, calories, and a life worth living.
The democratic system – and the world – is paying the consequences of nature’s revenge. On the one hand, natural disasters are increasingly lethal and devastating. On the other hand, a tsunami is flooding and taking over the electoral landscapes and democratic systems of the world. Destroying democracy from the entrails of the democratic system itself is what has been happening. What is true is that it is no longer valid to continue to be astonished by the cases we have recently witnessed, for example, in Mexico, Brazil, or the United States.
Today’s societies are no longer satisfied with empty promises, nor can they be soothed with yearnings for freedoms or rights. The democratic system is seriously ill with disbelief and shamelessness. The people have lost confidence in their rulers and faith in the mechanisms that should enable them to elect or remove them.
We are facing the greatest challenge to democracy since the Declaration of Independence of the United States. If the challenge at that time was to build a solid and efficient democratic system, now the goal is to ensure its survival.
With Donald Trump, we are no longer witnessing the establishment of a “banana republic” but the beginning of an autocracy. His triumph and how he obtained it are threats to the structure that has sustained the United States up to this moment.
To dispel any doubt about what this blind bet of the people means -as also happened in Mexico-, they are handing over the control of two of the three powers to their leaders. Last June 2, Claudia Sheinbaum won a historic victory by becoming the first woman to be elected president of the country, receiving a record 35.9 million votes and surpassing even the mark set by Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in 2018. This total represented approximately 59.75% of the votes cast, a considerable difference from her main opponent, Xóchitl Gálvez, who achieved around 27.45% with 16.5 million votes. In those elections, as has just happened with Trump, the Mexican people also spoke and decided to give Morena and theirs the majority in Congress.
The problem with giving so much power to so few is that everything they do will have the legitimacy that the people themselves have given them. A nation that will not be able to see all the damage perpetrated against them, and when they do, it will surely be too late. Whatever barbarity both Trump, the Republican leaders, Sheinbaum, and Morena decide to carry out as part of their government plan, such actions will be backed by the wise voice of their people. A voice that, in the campaign, the now leaders of both countries promised them would be the most important thing and that they would watch over it. From there to, using and monopolizing the people’s voices to do anything is a very short way that is already repeated all too often.
I do not know to what extent today’s society can be considered democratic, but we must set ourselves the task of rebuilding the system that today is abandoned and rejected. We have to force ourselves to create and build a system where there is a strong power but with limits. Without limits, Lord Acton’s 1887 statement that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” becomes true.
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