When year after year, you stir up anger and contempt toward your own institutions, one day or another, a catastrophe like Donald Trump will come along.
In a country like Canada, where the prime minister doesn’t hesitate to call himself a feminist or to wear a pink shirt, we believe that we can be safe from a Trump-like phenomenon.
How quick we are to forget that just last fall, Stephen Harper was using American-style Republican strategies to get himself re-elected. Just recall the negative advertising about Justin Trudeau, or even the niqab strategy, a classic of the politics of division.
But that’s nothing compared to Trump.
We’ve watched in shock how the American billionaire has been radically contaminating the democratic environment of the United States, without even slightly lessening his chances of winning the Republican nomination.
He insults his adversaries in the most offensive ways possible. He makes one xenophobic statement after another. He spits at the traditional media and the establishment. Trump lowered the intellectual level of the U.S. political debate to a reality show. And to think that his supporters applaud him, and ask for more and more!
By making an increasing number of incendiary statements without suffering the consequences, Trump is making what was once unthinkable a reality.
In New York City, when he said that he could shoot someone on the street and still wouldn’t lose any votes, pundits thought he signed his political death certificate. Instead, he won most of the states on Super Tuesday during the U.S. primaries.
How could a vain, racist and populist billionaire rise so quickly in the world’s largest democracy?
For a fringe of the electorate that is tired of politicians’ dubious statements, Trump seems to tell it like it is — even if it’s an illusion, even if his statements are as fake as his simplistic promise to build a wall on the Mexican border to stop illegal immigration.
For Trump supporters, the most important thing is not that their hero tell the truth. It’s for Trump to prominently stick up his middle finger to the establishment. Trump’s reductionist discourse seems reassuring in a world that Republicans jump over themselves to depict as dangerous and full of peril. By demonizing the state and its institutions, you just end up eroding its foundations.
Trump is like a virus contaminating the United States, and Canada is at risk of catching the infection.
Democracy depends on a million tiny little things that we take for granted. Every time a politician, pundit or public figure dabbles in populism or demagoguery, takes intellectual shortcuts, or engages in dirty, petty politics, little by little, they wash away the little things that make us a civilization.
One day, this slow erosion will turn into a gigantic landslide.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.