The Malta Independent 7 December 2024, Saturday
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After Trump’s overwhelming victory

Noel Grima Sunday, 10 November 2024, 07:55 Last update: about 27 days ago

Some people especially in this side of the world have reacted in the blackest of ways to Donald Trump's second election as if it was a catastrophe of the first order.

They should have seen it coming. Instead, they hid their heads in the sand. And then they were shocked.

Read my last words last week: "It's the anger of the working class rising up and shaking itself free. And it's not only the UK which will see this. The coming days will be full of surprises."

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We're not talking football here - predicting (tentatively) that one side rather than the other will win does not necessarily mean one agrees with the final outcome.

Trump's victory can be ascribed to two main causes on Trump's part - the anger of the middle class as they face rising prices, inflation and increasing insecurity.

And the threat perceived as coming from immigrants.

Some people in Malta have pointed out that Trump won despite the massive attacks upon him by the mainline media, thus showing up that the media is not to be trusted.

That this is not the whole truth can be seen by the fact that Trump's pitch to the American people was built on his dark and lie-packed vision of a country in terminal decline, "swamped" by murderous "illegal aliens" and on the point of a communist takeover.

Others, again here in Malta, have spoken about their experiences in the US and the increasing number of poor people on the streets they saw.

If the economy is better under Biden, how come all these signs of advancing poverty?

Despite her efforts, Kamala Harris could not shake off the fact that for the past four years she had been at the top of what too late she realized she had to turn round and condemn.

In simpler words after almost four years holding on to Biden's coat tails, she could not present herself to the American electorate and disown him.

As for the migrants, that is a problem we here share but which our two mighty parties continue to sweep under the carpet as we impotently see the numbers of those who will be paying for our pension, as we were promised, rise and rise.

There were other issues, most notably abortion - Trump sides with those who would want to curtail it whereas Kamala encouraged women to register and vote so as to keep abortion available.

So we might summarize the outcome as a loss for the migrants and a victory for the unborn.

Trump (again) promised to make America great again but it would seem at least from this neck of the woods this was more based on xenophobic protectionist stances than on technological advance.

At the same time the ideological battle rages on. The Left is self-destructing, gloated Australian journalist Amelia Adams. "This is the expected outcome of the intellectual epidemic plaguing the New Left, where narratives have replaced truth and reality has become irrelevant."

But what will the Trump victory mean for the peoples outside America - for the Palestinians first of all, paying for the years of abuse by Hamas and Hezbollah, for the peoples of Darfur, for the Ukrainians afraid Trump will be selling them down the river to Russia?

Nothing is forever, not even a comeback like Trump's. Those who would take his place must listen better to the signs of the times. And the United States, the 'land of the free' as it likes to boast, must not shy away from its global responsibility. At least this time we have been spared the risks which almost pulled down the world's leading democracy four years ago.

Globally, Trump's victory will bolster the far Right - Orban, Meloni, above all Netanyahu. And no doubt there will be those in Malta who would want to imitate him and turn a defeat into a comeback.

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