Public anger is what made Americans elect Trump as president

I have been writing headlines for so long that I think, not in complete sentences, but in headlines. As I watched, stunned, as the impossible happened, headlines flitted through my ahead: “Make America Grope Again”, which I had seen in a placard, kept ringing in my head over and over in some kind of psychotic loop.

So what happened? Why did the land of the free vote for a fascist who wants to bomb Isis, kill their families, and steal their oil? There are many explanations, from racism to the corruption of the Clintons — Trump is a casino owner given to sexual depravity, for God’s sake — but in my mind it all boils down to public anger.

Why are Americans angry? Because their country, which they believe to be the greatest nation on earth, is losing power and the people are getting poorer. They feel disempowered and dispossessed in their own country and they are desperate to go back to the good old days when opportunity and jobs were plentiful, America’s word in global affairs was law, and the white man was supreme.

There is growing poverty in the North. I was reading a piece on the internet by a researcher in which he said that after the economic crisis in Europe and all that bailout fiasco, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal on average have more poverty than what used to be called the Second World former communist countries of Eastern Europe which joined the EU recently — Czech Republic, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Poland, and so on.

GROWING WEALTH

There is growing wealth in the South. In 2009, 369 million people in the G20 could be described as middle class, that is, people who could afford to consume more than just the essentials. That number will grow three times by 2030, meaning that developing countries will be carrying a bigger share of the global middle class than the traditionally rich countries, “a shift in relative wealth of historic proportions (In Search of the Global Middle Class: A New Index by Uri Dadush and Shimelse Ali).

The American dream basically means achieving a middle-class existence with a house, a car or two, college for the children, money for hospital, holidays, and some to spare. But I have read that even in America, the middle class, which is the real engine of American wealth with its massive demand for goods and services, is in retreat. It is shrinking, I have read, because governments have been pursuing policies that favour the rich — those who own factories and companies — rather than those who work for them.

The factory owners send production to Mexico or China, where costs are lower and they make more money, but their accountants, managers, and factory workers are rendered jobless. The factory owner gets richer, the rest exit the American Dream and sink into likely poverty.

BLAME FOREIGNERS

Many of the people who find themselves in this situation blame foreigners for taking their jobs, which explains the rise in anti-migrant sentiment. They also blame open border policies, which accounts for the rise in anti-free trade sentiment and agreements such as the North America Free Trade Area. In many parts of America, “open border” may as well be an obscenity.

The newly poor look at the emergent nations of the Third World and see countries pursuing unfair trade and currency policies and robbing them of a livelihood. They look at Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Isis challenging American power and are enraged by their own government’s apparent determination to do nothing.

Hillary Clinton — accused of using her office to line her pockets and being in the pay of the big banks — offers more of the same: a continuity of the enlightened policies that have not rolled back the clock or undone the damage of globalisation.

In rides a billionaire casino owner who promises to stop the migrants by walling them out, bring back the jobs, put the uppity job-stealing Chinese in their place, shoot Isis, and generally solve all problems and make everything beautiful again.

I never thought Americans would elect a man like Donald Trump. What it means is, of course, that I do not know Americans, which is a fair point. The world of Barack Obama, I guess, is not the real America.

***

I am very sorry, but I think Mr Ban Ki-moon is an indecisive fool. By presuming to sack Lt General Johnson Ondieki, Mr Moon has dishonoured our military and acted with breathtaking ingratitude for the heavy lifting Kenya has done for the UN for decades.

The poorly armed, crazily structured UN peacekeepers could not have stopped heavily armed, battle-hardened SPLA soldiers from raping aid workers or attacking tribal rivals, be they civilian or not.

I am no an expert but from what I hear, UN forces are armies run by committees of fools who spend too much time speaking English and achieving very little. If Mr Ban wants a force capable of protecting anyone, he should overhaul the entire UN military template. Does he think the force under its Chinese commander is now capable of facing up to the SPLA?

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@mutuma_mathiu