In the 2020 US election, Trump's performance once again shocked the world.
Trump's failure was expected, and it is not surprising that he lied after his defeat. However, he became the second most voted person in American history. The number one is Biden who beat him.
The Democratic Party is still immersed in the carnival. Biden's passionate speech after the election may have made most voters see this "uncle sleeping" clearly for the first time, whose charisma is comparable to Obama. This person's life is full of tragedy, tragedy, all of a sudden burst out, human nature sublimated. Tonight, he reawakened people's hope in America.
▲ Biden, Harris and their families celebrate their successful election campaign (Photo/CFP)
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However, the shock that Trump brought to American society in 2020 will not pass. This is not because he has initiated a series of judicial challenges to the legitimacy of the election, but because he enjoys strong support among voters.
Andrea Mitchell (also Greenspan’s wife), a famous journalist with decades of political observation experience, asked a Democratic strategist on TV: "Why? After he did what he could, he Actually got more votes than four years ago!" Thomas Friedman, a famous columnist for the New York Times and author of "The World Is Flat", announced in a column on the second day of election day: "Although now We don’t know who will win, but the loser is already clear. That’s the United States.” Z3z
▲ The US media announced that Biden won the presidential election (Photo/Fox News)
The anger and disappointment are not just from Trump supporters We are also from the left wing of the Democratic Party. Voters seem to have sent out several messages at the same time:
first, they reject Trumpism.
Second, they did not reject the Republican Party. In fact, the Republican Party has won several key election battles in the House of Representatives. It is estimated that it will hold the majority in the Senate.
Third, they rejected the ideology of progressivism, that is, the left wing of the Democratic Party.
Now the Democratic Party should feel fortunate: Thanks to Biden, the most moderate and intermediate candidate. Changing to a left-wing general like Sanders would have disastrous consequences.
But the core issue is Trump: such a well-matched election gives people every reason to believe that if the epidemic had not exposed his incompetence in broad daylight, he would be re-elected easily. He openly embraced white supremacy, aggressively attracted foreign governments to intervene in U.S. politics, used public for personal gain, combined government and business, tax evasion, and committed crimes and imprisonment, refused to accept constitutional constraints, refused to promise the peaceful transfer of power, not to mention embezzlement. Public funds and so on.
▲ Trump’s previous public speech (photo/Xinhua News Agency)
If he were the president of South Korea, he might have already served his sentence in prison. In the United States, he was able to single-handedly complete the hostile takeover of the Republican Party, almost turning the United States into his private dynasty. Why would nearly 48% of American voters accept such a criminal figure? Why does nearly 40% of voters become his best buddies, and even worship him as a god?
In the minds of many Chinese people, the United States is rapidly losing its "lighthouse" light. But they still don't understand: this is the most senior democratic country in the world after all! How could such a person be elected?
In this regard, the right wing of the United States is still in a state of incomprehension.
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here, only trying to provide a historical perspective.
After the end of the Cold War and the "end of history" in the 1990s, people often compared the United States to the Roman Empire. This crooked hit is on the ground to provide us with a frame of reference.
The decline of the Roman Empire took at least 300 years until the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire lingered for another thousand years. America’s status in the world is not inferior to that of the Roman Empire. Moreover, it is protected by the two oceans and its geographical position is much superior. The decline of the United States, if it begins at the beginning of this century, will probably take hundreds of years.
In our lifetime, we will continue to see a powerful America, or many resurgences and revivals. So, what happened hundreds of years later has anything to do with our short lifesystem?
▲ Biden has reawakened people's hope for the United States (Photo/TIME)
Although the empire was still a lean camel bigger than a horse during most of its decline, human tragedies continued to appear on the way down. This is not only a waste of the bottom-level creatures, but also a bloodbath of the elite group. For example, there was a period in the Roman Empire where the emperor won't survive for a year or two when he became the king, and there were legendary lunatics like Nero. His time is almost 400 years before Rome was finally conquered by the Goths. Compared with Trump, there are far more unreliable things in the decline and fall of Rome, and far more evil things. Such unreliable things in the United States may not necessarily end in Trump.
I remind everyone that when Bush was re-elected, the European media sighed: The democracy of 300 million people actually chose such a fool! Today, Bush learned of Obama’s speech after his election and became popular. Many netizens sighed: "I hated him so badly at the beginning, but compared to today's president, he is an angel!" How can you rule out that Americans more than ten years later may miss Tron like this. general?
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So, how did the decline of America happen? This also requires a long-term historical perspective to see clearly.
Beginning in the 16th century, Europe initiated a rapid process of globalization. The great geographical discovery led to the integration of Europe, America, and Africa. The center of gravity of the world economy rapidly shifted from Eurasia to the "Atlantic World". Then came the Industrial Revolution. By the end of the 19th century, the West had firmly ruled the world. The gap between western developed countries and other countries is getting wider and wider, reaching a peak around 1970. The United States was born in this process and emerged as the world's hegemon, enjoying the right time and place.
But since then, the situation began to reverse. A European scholar, Richard Daldwin (Richard Daldwin) called the "Great Confluence" process started. China, South Korea, India, Poland, Indonesia, Thailand and other newly industrialized countries have accelerated their development, quickly shortening the gap with the seven major industrial countries in the West. The process of
accelerated in the 1990s. By 2010, the gap between the two sides had been reduced to the level on the eve of World War I, and it was still proceeding sharply. Of course, the center of the world economy has also rapidly shifted from the Atlantic world to Eurasia. The trans-Eurasia trade volume is already three times the trans-Atlantic trade volume.
If we say that the discovery of the New World by Columbus was the first globalization, then it was the second globalization after the 1990s. The first globalization was "winner takes all" in Western countries. The second globalization is when rising countries show late-comer advantages. A key here is the information revolution represented by the Internet, which not only makes the "nervous system" of the world's industrial system particularly developed, but also reduces costs to nearly zero, making it easy to coordinate the global supply chain. In this way, the manufacturing industry concentrated in traditional industrialized countries will be scattered to all parts of the world along the global "value chain".
In this structure, developed countries are at the top of the value chain, producing the most profitable high-tech products. Developing countries are at the bottom end of the value chain, producing cheap products. The so-called products are more of components in the supply chain. This allows many developing countries to quickly enter this global supply chain system, starting from low-end components, without the technical conditions to complete a complete product. One result is that developed countries can no longer tolerate the low-end sectors of the value chain. The basic survival of the traditional industrial working class is threatened.
▲The documentary "American Factory" (pictures/network)
is even more eye-catching. Starting from the low-end, countries like China have rapidly climbed up the ladder of the value chain, with higher and higher technological content of products. It also launched a comprehensive challenge to the high-end sectors of developed countries.
Today’s problems in the United States need to be understood from this global perspective. The elites at the top of the value chain still take advantage of globalization and become richer. But the working class at the bottom or middle of the value chain is in danger of survival. The anger at the bottom of the United States is hard to contain.
Actually, since the colonial era, the United States has faced the challenge of social polarization and has a set of solutions. But now, this easy-to-follow solution has completely failed. The anger at the bottom broke out with a strong xenophobic racial sentiment.
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To understand this question, we must go back to the Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676.
This rebellion occurred in Jamestown, the earliest colony of Virginia. At that time, the coastal areas, with James Town as the core, were all occupied by the rich. The poor white people have no place to stand and can only migrate inland. But the interior is home to the Indians. The elites of Jamestown signed contracts with the Indians early and kept the peace. The two sides engaged in trade and sold the fur and other goods sent by the Indians to Europe. The profits were not thin.
For this reason, the Governor issued a decree prohibiting white people from crossing the border into Indian territory. But the poor white people were so powerful that they refused to obey orders. They not only looted the Indians, but eventually turned their guns, ransacked Jamestown, and drove the governor away. Fortunately, Bacon died of illness and the rebellion was suppressed. But the ruling group also knew that they could not restrain these poor people, so they had to let them go inland and launched a genocidal war against the Indians and seized their land. The social crisis of polarization is temporarily resolved.
▲U.S. territorial expansion map (photo/network)
The Bacon Rebellion established a model in American history. At the end of the 19th century, Frederick Jackson Turner put forward the concept of "frontier historiography", which can be summed up classically: the characteristics of the United States are shaped by the frontier, that is, it is continuously expanding westward. This frontier character naturally also shaped the national character of the United States. Once the poor cannot get ahead in economic competition and have no place to stand in a prosperous region, they move westward and resolve the polarized social conflict by beheading the Indians and plundering their land.
By the beginning of the 20th century, this character, combined with the "scientific racism" derived from social Darwinism, established the status of whites as the dominant race.
However, since the end of the 19th century, the border of the United States began to reach its limits. Social conflicts can no longer be solved by Western evolution. The anger of the poor is one of the main reasons leading to the Chinese Exclusion Act. What Chinese workers compete for are jobs at the bottom of the value chain. By the beginning of the 20th century, the immigration law was completely revised, resulting in the almost cut-off flow of immigration in this "immigrant country". But this will not solve the threat to the foundation of society from crises such as the Great Depression. The temporary relief was a series of social policies initiated by the two world wars and the New Deal. These have enabled the United States to enjoy the prosperity of the decades after the war.
After the end of the Cold War, the United States led the globalization process, seemingly maintaining the momentum of expansion of frontier countries. However, the second globalization is no longer the era when the West stands alone. The formation of global supply chains and value chains has once again plunged the working class into a position of nowhere. And the relief from this dilemma can no longer be resolved by plundering others.
Over the past 40 years, China's per capita income has doubled dozens of times. Although the gap between the rich and the poor has widened, there are very few people who do not benefit. During the same period, the real income of the American working class basically did not increase, and the income of the middle and low classes even declined.
Two Princeton University scholars, Nobel laureate Angus Deaton and his wife Anne Keys published "Death of Despair" in 2015 (Chinese version of the title "What happened to America: Desperate Death and Capitalism" The Future") shocked the nation: Whites, especially whites without college education, had a sharp increase in mortality, while blacks, Hispanics, and white laborers in other countries had a decline in mortality.
▲ "Death of Despair" (Photo/Internet)
Five years later, they added new discoveries: middle-aged white men who died of suicide, drug use, and alcoholism rose from 30 per 100,000 in 1990 to 2017 92 of the year. This phenomenon is an important reason for the decline in the average life expectancy of the Americans for three consecutive years from 2015 to 2017.
It can be said that the United States is unique in this respect, whether compared with developed or developing countries.
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Trumpism emerged within this historical framework.
When we came to the United States in the 1990s, the "winner culture" prevailed in the United States, especially the conservative side. Everyone admires the "Self-Made Man" (Self-Made Man) and feels that by relying on their own character and talents, they can share the American dream.
Nowadays, the yells heard everywhere are "left behind", forgotten and abandoned by the establishment elites and the government. All ethnic groups in the United States feel that they are victims.Including white people, even the president. Trump almost never stops complaining about how unfairly he has been treated. From political opponents, the media, and the IRS all bullying him.
The entire United States is enveloped by the mentality of a victim. Trump, precisely mobilized this worst gene in American history, that is, through the harm of minorities and "outsiders" to solve the problem of the middle and lower classes of white people, so that they can get some feeling of being the master of the house. . "Making America great again" represents nostalgia for an era when white people can bully people everywhere.
▲U.S. President Trump (Photo/Associated Press)
These middle- and lower-class whites have lost nothing, and only one middle finger is left. When they choose Trump, they are pointing the middle finger to the establishment of the United States. They hate these establishments for protecting foreign interests and protecting minorities, just as Bacon hated the elites of Jamestown to protect Indians and protect foreign trade.
And this kind of establishment includes a whole set of institutional frameworks such as the US constitutional system, press freedom, and market economy. In a sense, Trump is the legitimately elected Bacon. He led a total rebellion in a white society, a rebellion that smashed everything.
Unfortunately, this is not the era of the Bacon Rebellion. The frontiers of the United States are exhausted. The rise of China has further restricted the US's international expansion space. In this reality, Trump's series of trade policies, such as decoupling with China, are trying to protect the interests of the white working class by cutting off the global supply chain and returning to the era of isolationism.
However, today the United States does not have the unique competitiveness of the world, and cannot withstand the economic blow of leaving the global supply chain. Moreover, automation will still replace a lot of labor. The problems of these middle and lower white classes can only intensify. If their problems are not resolved, Trumpism will not be eradicated.
If Trump’s four years as President were the modern and legal version of the Bacon Rebellion, this election seems to have been reluctantly suppressed. However, the social causes of the rebellion are far less easy to eliminate than after the Bacon Rebellion.
Perhaps the only way out is the long-term changes in the social economy and population, which have caused this class to shrink and eventually lose its political power.
(Xue Yong, graduated from the Chinese Department of Peking University, Ph.D. in History from Yale University, currently an associate professor in the Department of History at Suffolk University)
