Trump, the Art of Division

The New York businessman has finally clinched the nomination in Cleveland. But unlike Barack Obama, he’s not trying to bring people together. Rather, his strategy is to seduce a white electorate that, he hopes, will vote in droves come Nov. 8.

Accusations of plagiarism, turbulent delegate voting, the absence of party bigwigs. In Cleveland, Donald Trump has landed the nomination without much panache, despite the cheers of the Republican convention. It’s an accolade for the businessman who has no political experience.

The New York billionaire managed to identify genuine rage in a part of America and in the decline of a Republican Party with no ideas and no spine. His nomination’s legitimacy can’t be questioned. During the primaries, almost 14 million Americans supported him. And yet, the fact that Donald Trump is up for election to the White House is a serious loss for America.

The Republican candidate has made division his weapon of choice. Employing a communication technique developed within the nationalist and extreme right movements, based on lies and repetition, he twists facts and the truth. He may not have killed intellectual debate all by himself, but he’s simplified the issues of Nov. 8 into one big rant against political parties and institutions, and even more so against Hillary Clinton.

Yet Trumpism is on point in addressing the concerns of the times, stemming from technology and globalization’s disturbance of the professional world. But today, a Trump presidency would be the worst solution we could find for the problems of the world’s leading power. It’s enough to head to East Cleveland, a very African-American neighborhood crushed by the 2009 financial crisis, to get a measure of the inequalities. Donald Trump has set himself up as the sworn enemy of a multicultural society. He’s exacerbating feelings about identity and race at a critical time.

And unlike Barack Obama, who’s trying his hardest to reconcile a frightened African-American minority and shaken police officers, the New York mouthpiece appeals to the basest instincts of the electorate — with the endorsement of a Republican Party that missed the train to the 21st century by seeing its salvation only in the reinforcement of its whiteness. In Ohio, zero percent of blacks want to vote for the New Yorker. With him in the White House, America’s streets could become unmanageable.