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That may be viewed as stubbornly patriotic, but it is more fundamentally due to a deep-seated ignorance founded on a myth of national exceptionalism, a myopia that is quintessentially American. American myopiaĪmericans pay little heed to external perspectives on their country and by and large do not respond well to critical views of it or of their leaders. He supported these forces in the US and encouraged them elsewhere, transforming the landscapes of American political culture and foreign affairs in ways we are still trying to understand. Trump unleashed the libidinal forces of “illiberal democracy”, undermining America’s commitment to constitutionalism, the rule of law and individual rights. Enter Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.īut Trump (and Trumpism) was and is something more than a temporary eruption in the order of things or mere symptom of a malaise in American public life. In this view, Trump was “the cat in the hat” – an unwelcome visitor and unruly avatar of instincts for disorder, evicted once the parents return. This is an attractive and tempting palliative for those who resisted Trump’s spell and disavow the significance of his political rise and appeal to millions of Americans. EPA-EFE/Jagadeesh NVĪccompanying the desire for normalcy and sense of relief is the implication that the “Trump era” was an aberration, a temporary deviation in the natural political order of things. Pride and relief: a shopkeeper in Kamala Harris’ ancestral village in India catches up with the news. The image was not of national healing but of a national emergency. David Sanger, in the New York Times, noted that: “Mr Biden’s inauguration was notable for its normalcy, the sense of relief that permeated the capital over an era of constant turmoil and falsehood ending.”īut there was little that was normal in the scene of a scaled-down inauguration taking place with only a handful of socially distant, masked participants and surrounded by the militarised landscape of a post-riot Capitol. It was clearly articulated by the new president at his inauguration, in his pleas for national unity and his promise to end the “uncivil war” in the US. With Trump’s ousting, the liberal desire for a return to normality has been amped up via the figure of Joe Biden. Trump not only exploited that gap, he spoke to latent desires and emboldened expressions of identity in both politics and people that had long been marginalised or silenced. The contradictions and tensions in American liberal democracy have been forcefully revealed with his presidency, which took advantage of the gap between declared liberal values and political reality. In the US, the desire for normalcy surrounding the election of Biden reflects an existential anxiety – that Trump ignited a devastating attack on liberal democracy that may prove epochal. What is at issue in these desires to go back to a pre-Trump America?
In this it echoes the “return to normalcy” theme in Biden’s election campaign in the US, a nostalgic nostrum that vaguely promises a reset of American principles and policies.
The symbolism is strong, but it is less clear what is being restored. The theme of an American restoration was repeated in news and social media across the world. The image is accompanied with the ironic text “Make America Great Again.” In France, the newspaper Le Monde ran with the headline: “American Elections 2020: Joe Biden’s victory sparks huge relief in Europe.” On Twitter, Paris’ mayor, Anne Hidalgo, tweeted out: “Welcome Back, America.” In Germany, the cover of the news magazine Der Spiegel depicted Biden putting the severed head of the Statue of Liberty back on the torso (referencing an infamous cover from 2017 that depicted Trump severing the head). A common theme in news headlines and Twitter feeds was that normal service was being resumed in the US and in international affairs. The election of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States was received across much of the world with a mixture of relief and exuberance, though often laced with apprehension.