Community post

The Trump Effect

He got electeted, now the way that trump got elected is at least controversial, with a voting system dating back to the French Revolution. But the same voting system that Obama got elected with, so I think that it is very hypocryte from the Democrats to critisize their voting system.

We all agree it needs to be changed, modernised, but we have to think that democracy is not standard everywhere. Remember that democracy was once something that only bearded men that were citizens of Athens could practice. It has evolved into the decocracies that we have today, different flavours of democracy. India is in fact the worlds largest democracy.

That the demoracy of the USA and the one in India do not match together, well that's mainly because it is practiced diffrently, understood diferently and imposed differently.

All the worlds democracies can produce a Trump, or even worse, the Nazis in Germany won the parlament by public vote.

Now that we know that either US nor Indian democracy are the same, we should look at what happend in the US elections, the worlds de facto, most powerfull democracy.

Trump got elected due to a chain of events and circumstances. The arrogance of the democratic candidate party that insisted to run with Hillary, when Sanders had the votes of the expats, hispanics, enviro liberals, millenials and medium middle class.

This squabble was exploteited by Trump and his campaing leader. He visited the 'forgotten' states, where the democrats long thought that they would be supreme leaders.

He emarged as the leader of the forgotten. Those that worked once in the closed steel mills, and the closed car factories, in the closed aluminium factories. All of witch have been moved abroad, for cheaper labour costs. These people felt that they were heard by Trump, and not by the Republicans or Democrats.

So the masivelly voted for Republicans in the so called key states.

Trump did not win the popular vote, he won on a technicality, that was put forward by the unemloyed,
un-priviledged americans.
Trump id not have to explain why these people lost their jobs, lost their houses, lost their livelihood, it all happends during the Democrats.

This is a fenomenon that also plays in Europe but in a lesser degree, because most countries in Europe still have a social wealfare system in place.

Trump went on to rant about the Mexicans, he knew that he did not have their votes anyway. That made the radicals in the USA to start listen to Trump and consider to actually go vote.

By the slogan Make America Great Again, he played on the nostalgy of the haydays of American Industry, when Ford and GM were top employers, when Hewlett-Packard ment something, IBM was the spearhead of the world computer revolution, when American steel was the pride of the nation, when you could afford a living from a factory salary, that was the Greatness of America, this nostalgy made Trump the winner.

All this was neglected by the Democrats, trying to convince a steelworker that after 35 years of work he will loose his jo, because that is better for the economy.
Democrats tried to explain that we need to bail out the crooks that caused the finnacial crisis. People lost their houses, their life savings, everything, how can you explain that?

Thats the Trump effect, he played on his bussiness man instinct, a schrewd one, but never the less, people believed him that by not being a politician and being a bussiness man he would actually be able to fix the economy.

Now he starts to deliver on his promised, he introduce import tarrifs for steel and aluminum, from cuntries other then Mexico and Canada.

This actually could push Mexico or Canada forward to actually build up a steel industry. People see only that it will generate a trade war, of course with China, India, Brazil, and maybe with the EU.

So stop whining, and think constructive, US is the largest and most powerfull economy on this planet. We, have to learn to cope with that. They have the right to impose taxes on the rest of the world.

Is not their fault, is their priviledge, and their right to do so. A pure North American economic enclave, can outperform the rest of the world, we need them, and now they have decidede that they dont need us.

The Trump effect has happend on a global scale and will have reverberations for decades to come.

Deal with that!

Replies (10)

Well you do have a point it is not purely derived from the French, is even older then that:

https://uselectionatlas.org/INFORMATION/INFORMATION/electcollege_history.php

Citation from that site:

"The structure of the Electoral College can be traced to the Centurial Assembly system of the Roman Republic. Under that system, the adult male citizens of Rome were divided, according to their wealth, into groups of 100 (called Centuries). Each group of 100 was entitled to cast only one vote either in favor or against proposals submitted to them by the Roman Senate. In the Electoral College system, the States serve as the Centurial groups (though they are not, of course, based on wealth), and the number of votes per State is determined by the size of each State's Congressional delegation. Still, the two systems are similar in design and share many of the same advantages and disadvantages.

The similarities between the Electoral College and classical institutions are not accidental. Many of the Founding Fathers were well schooled in ancient history and its lessons."

End of citation

That then it developed into the Electoral College that is today, thats no wonder, same did Democracy, and The Republic, instead of Emperor, now a President is elected.

You have to remember that even today in law-school Roman Law is tought.

The notion of the Republic can be found in Plato's writings, few hondered years before the Roman empire.

As I am brought up with a different undertanding of Democracy (Both US and most Europe are democratic) I tend to see the electoral college as a fixup of the old Roman Republic, exactly as you say, to protect the people from the Tyrany of the Majority.

USA was the first country in the modern world to introduce a senate, and then a house of representatives was establish to futher strengthen the democracy of the new found Republic.

Thats why I say that according to my understanding and view of Democracy, such an electoral College is obsolete.

I have wrote that democracy is different in US and Europe and India. We need to accept that, but that does not mean we cannot have critisism on the understanding of democracy.

The Democracy that we have today is far from the Democracy that was thought up in Ancient Greece in the times when Plato.

He wrote, one of what could be seen as, the first Sci-Fi books, 'The Republic'.

Democracy as we know today is not perfect, is not absolute, neither can it be said that it is fair for all, but compared to what we had until now in some countries....It's the best we have.

That being said, I personally think that ther should be room for improvement in all understamdng and practitioning of Democracy.