Trump is antithesis, Harris is synthesis
Soon we will all be trying to interpret the result of the US elections. How did Donald Trump or Kamala Harris win with relative ease when, right to the end, polls showed the race was too close to predict? What caused the current of support for the vice president or former president? If, on the other hand, the result is not clear on the night of November 5 and the process leads to the courts and the arena of news media and social networks, how will America’s institutions fare? How will a society already so divided and suspicious deal with this? We will all judge the result on the basis of what we want and what we fear with regard to the triumph of one or other candidate, our concern for the robustness of American democracy and our interest in the policies that the United States will implement across the world.
I believe that Trump’s candidacy alone (never mind the possibility of his winning), goes far beyond the political parameters of his contest with Harris. It represents a basic division in society: the conflict between those who want things to be as they demand, according to what suits them and what they are used to, and those who understand that complicated problems demand complicated solutions and collective effort. The former don’t care for the collective cost of their behavior (Trump, their symbol and idol, does not think of anyone beyond himself), while the latter don’t care about the reactions of those who believe that they are the ones who foot the bill for social progress.
At the core of the conflict (because this is no longer a mere ideological difference) lies the myth of proud loners who create and must always be prepared to fight off those who wish to deprive them of what is theirs. A glaring example of this is the hostility that Trump and others show towards Obamacare, which extended medical care to millions of citizens. This mentality considers care for those who need it as theft from the rest, not as basis for a more just and, consequently, more peaceful society.
That is why Trump focuses less on political issues and more on exploiting his supporters’ dislike of their rivals (the “woke,” the members of the political and media elite, immigrants, China, the Europeans, and so on), who allegedly all want to deprive them of their property, their work, their lives. For them, Trump can do no wrong. No matter what he says, nor what he does. They want only to crush their enemies. The Democrats, on the other hand, are so focused on utopia that they are continually divided, handing power to those who do not share their concerns in the slightest. For example, those who will not vote for Harris because the Biden administration cannot stop Israel’s destruction of Gaza, strengthen Trump, who has encouraged the Israeli prime minister to do whatever he likes.
Trump expresses antithesis in American politics and society, the dynamic of division and conflict. Harris embodies synthesis. Trump cultivates conflict, to strengthen his standing with his group, while Harris expresses the slow but steady progress of a society which allows the daughter of immigrants to seek the superpower’s presidency. The Trump phenomenon is a rearguard action while Harris’s candidacy expresses the present and is an investment in the future. It is impossible to predict who will win on Tuesday, nor where this will lead.
