The Unfounder

(Image Courtsey: The Economist)


As we wait for the Trump Presidency, the transformation of the American Corporatist State into a Corporation, with a billionaire-filled Cabinet. It is one of those fairy-tale moments of capitalism, of singularity of corporate interests with the most powerful institution in the world, the United States of America. 

This is a BIG moment! But the hopes and fears that surround it, the language we are speaking, are widely off the mark. Here are some examples:

1. This is the moment of Fascism, liberal politicians and newspapers are saying. Perhaps not. Fascists were pretenders - but Donald Trump and his administration pretends nothing. Their intentions are quite plain, their methods are predictable. This is more of a Corporate Takeover than a Fascist regime, and what we get should make Fascists look benign.

2. This is madness, brought upon us by a crazy 2016! That Hillary Clinton failed to beat Donald Trump is not an aberration: We should have known the nineties are well and truly over! The Liberal pretenders who took over the democratic left and unleashed globalisation on unsuspecting world, they have been decisively shown the door. The Democrats should have learnt from the pathetic struggles of Tony Blair in Britain to claim some influence somewhere, when his sight has become unbearable for most of the new voters. Clinton political machine, and its money, was perhaps too much to resist, but that did not stand a chance in this election.

3. This would pass. Trump is likely to be a transformative president, the way Reagan was, which, from where I stand politically, is not a good thing. This is that moment when the veneer of Liberalism would be dropped, and an unpretending buccaneering United States would appear in the world stage, unresisted and unchallengeable. At the end, whenever, that is - Trump would leave a different world system than the one he inherited.

4. That people can stop it. Of course, they can not. This is the most powerful combine in the world - money and muscle - arrayed to destroy the Liberal Democratic state. Those who benefitted from the earlier version is calling some proverbial men on the street to go and die for their sake, but if politics of recent years is any indication, that is not going to happen. We are going to go straight from Trump to a new era of millinnial politics, which will be very different from people dancing to Blair-Clinton charm offensive.

And, finally, this is not the end of the world, but an end to something. This is why I loved the image the Economist made - Trump in Founders' garbs! Because, for me, Trump is the ultimate Unfounder - the undoer of institutions and ideas that we have come to live with! And this is not just the institution of the state, but also to the institution of business - as, I hope soon, it would now be revealed how dumb some of these billionnaires can be. It is not just a new world for us, a new world for them too.



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