And there we have it – it has been declared that Joe Biden has been declared the winner of the presidential election in the United States, and with that declaration, Canadian leaders of all stripes sent their congratulations over the weekend. While our foreign affairs minister hopes for some more stability and predictability in the new administration, the energy sector in this country is nervous that Biden had pledged to rescind the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline (thought it has been held up in American courts).
But as much as everyone is celebrating and sending out clips from the end of Return of the Jedi over social media (an odd choice considering that the Empire didn’t fall after that battle, but kept on kicking for another year, and its remnants metastasised into the First Order that decimated the New Republic), I feel the urge to be a bit of a wet blanket to point out that some 70 million Americans still voted for Trump and everything that he stands for, including racism and the march toward a fascist state, and he’s still in office for nearly three more months. The American impulse tends to be that politics is to be treated as a spectator sport, where they cast their ballots once every four years and then watch the show in between, rather than actually grappling with the real issues that face their country – particularly given that their Congress is largely unable to as the real likelihood that the Republicans have maintained their hold on the Senate will mean that virtually nothing will get done for the next couple of years. Not to say that civic engagement in Canada is a whole lot better, but at least our Parliament is actually built to move things through rather than for gridlock, as evidenced most recently by the fact that we could get pandemic supports for people and businesses out the door, whereas they are stalled in the US Senate. The lure of Trump and his ethos is not far gone, just because Biden won the White House, and that should remain the cautionary tale rather than people thinking the problem is solved and returning to complacency.
To that end, Susan Delacourt warns about Trumpism and the lure of “ordered populism” in Canada, as it is not a phenomenon contained solely to the United States. Likewise, Aaron Wherry notes that it was not a landslide for Biden, that Trumpism is still around, and that America needs to reckon with itself on this fact. I will note that Chris Selley did try to grapple with what Trumpism is without Trump, but I think that when Delacourt quoted pollster Frank Graves about “ordered populism,” that it may be the more accurate handle once Trump is out of the picture.
The bright side of a cult of personality congealing around a guy who wouldn't lose a vote for shooting someone dead in the middle of 5th Avenue is that once he fucks off, there's really nothing left.
— Chris Selley (@cselley) November 8, 2020
That's not to say US politics isn't vulnerable to very malign forces and ideologies and ideas. It is, and was. But that wouldn't be "Trumpism."
— Chris Selley (@cselley) November 8, 2020