The American people have had 4 years to mull it over, and 45 is now 47. This time, Donald Trump brought some powerful friends along with him, and they are hellbent on doubling down on the MAGA agenda.

I must admit It was quite challenging to find a starting point for this column. This is because if Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 felt like a shock to the system, what happened on November 5th of 2024 felt like the logical next episode in the American political saga. There are many legitimate fears about what a second Trump presidency would mean, and while it would be easy to make this essay solely about the twice impeached, convicted felon from New York, a much more serious examination of American politics imposes itself on us. Before prognosticating about the future of America under Trump, I propose that we look back on how the world’s most powerful nation got here in the first place.

Unless you have been living in a total monarchy all your life, you would’ve very often heard the refrain that politicians are corrupt, but perhaps not enough time has been spent on how exactly this supposed corruption happens. In the United States, any analysis of politics that doesn’t start with campaign finance laws would be totally devoid of context. It would be the same as talking about fires without mentioning flames. In that regard, the fire that now appears to consume Washington DC was set ablaze through the legalization of anonymous political lobbying with the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court case in 2010.

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This judicial decision in favor of the billionaire funded group named Citizens United essentially allowed special interests to legally bribe elected officials. It is no surprise it created the ideal circumstances for legislation that increasingly ignored the wishes of the people in favor of the large fortunes donating untold amounts of money to the campaign funds of lawmakers. Example of this are cuts in the funding to social security, public education, infrastructure and healthcare that materialized in fiscal reprieve for the top 1% wealthy Americans. Added to that were deregulations to the professional sector that took away workers’ protection of everyday-Americans. With the normalization of what is considered corruption in most countries in the world, we’ve arrived at a point where people like the tech magnate Elon Musk have decided to do away with all pretenses and directly operate the government they “paid for”. The return on investment is off to a great start as the emerald mine heir added nearly $200 billion to his fortune in just a few months of Trump being in power. 

Indeed, the South African billionaire has made himself a central figure of the Trump administration by creating a department that is supposed to improve government efficiency. Instead, what he’s done is cut funding to Aviation and Air Control security because one of his companies ‘SpaceX’ was under investigation, and he managed to have the President of the United States fire the personnel that was bringing a court case against his main company ‘Tesla’ for illegal labor practices and violations of worker safety. It would also be important to note that Musk has also been raking in government contracts to the tune of billions, making it the largest single source of income for his company. But despite these obvious irregularities, nothing would have prepared us for the jarring scenes of Musk in the Oval Office holding court with domestic and international press while the duly elected President of the United States was sat right there, seemingly powerless or perhaps totally on board with this usurpation of power. 

Musk addressing a media scrum in the presidential office © CNN

A recurrent question I receive from friends who are observing this madness from outside the USA is “WHY DO AMERICANS ACCEPT THIS?” I will concede that I do not have an all-encompassing answer to this question, but there are several factors that can help lead us to a better understanding.

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Even though there are several smaller political organizations like the Green Party and the Libertarian Party, America essentially functions as a two-party system. In fact, the sobering reality is that Americans truly have a choice between a center-right party in the Democratic party and a far-right party in the Republican Party. With this unhealthy imbalance in political representation, the question of participation comes back to the center of the discourse during every election cycle because there is almost no connection between everyday people and those who are supposed to fight for them in congress. As it stands, most lawmakers do not represent the wishes of their constituents, and they have created a system that insulates them from accountability from their own people. As a result, a significant part of America has gradually but completely lost faith in the political process, electing instead to focus on meeting the ever-increasing cost of life in this country. The most cynical amongst us would say that perhaps this was the intended goal of the “political elites”, but it is safe to say that no democracy can thrive for a long time in such circumstances.

Another major factor to this fever dream that the US is going through is the decline and near complete disappearance of the Free Press. Long gone are the days of private or family-based media ownership who upheld the principles of journalism through different generations.  The same is true of local stations and newspapers that would chronicle the happenings in a particular area and still generate enough revenue to keep the lights on.  Nearly all media outlets have now been bought by giant corporations whose shareholders make no bones about their political views and their willingness to use their media arm to support those views, even if it means distorting the truth or outright omitting it. As a friend of mine recently joked “At this point, any acts of real journalism that happen on mainstream American media are just a coincidence”. The most salient example surely remains the Rupert Murdoch owned Fox News channel. In 2020, it was by far the most watched news channel and would regularly have then incumbent Donald Trump on a few of its flagship shows. This would be the same network that circulated to its millions of viewers the lie that the presidential election was rigged in favor of Joe Biden, and that Donald Trump was the rightful winner. This lie would go on to have catastrophic consequences as it triggered multiple violent outbursts including the January 6th insurrection that claimed several lives. 

Despite having been forced to pay to the company they accused of rigging the voting machines nearly $800 million in damages for knowingly spreading lies about the voting process, the network remains the most viewed cable news channel in America, and the one most trusted by conservatives.

Trump supporters’ violently overtaking the US Capitol © Reuters

Since its inception, America has been unable to escape the issue of race. For this past presidential election, the elephant in the room was of course Harris’ identity as a woman and as a person of Black and Asian heritage. For far too long, democrats have been overly reliant on the non-white minority vote as they prided themselves on being the party of diversity and cultural openness, but detractors would say that their campaign rhetoric and promises don’t quite match up to their actual governance. Since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, minority groups in the US have consistently been voting for the Democratic party mostly due to the not-so veiled racism the Republican party allows amongst its ranks. However, it seems that this multi-ethnic coalition is longer enough given the results of the past election. This is especially true since many people of color are becoming more and more disenchanted with a Democratic party that they consider to be too subservient of its corporate patrons. One glaring example of this is the refusal of the Democratic party to allow any Muslim or Arab speaker during their General Convention for fear it would bring too much attention to what has been widely described as a genocide in Gaza and the US’ responsibility in it. On the opposite end, Trump and the Republican party are more than eager to embrace these divisive issues and have been preaching to their base that the people responsible for their economic hardships are the immigrants who are taking jobs and resources that were meant for “real” Americans. This sort of rhetoric is of course not new, but it is very effective at a time when a recession is looming, and the opposition party is too fearful of campaigning against the robber barons like Musk whose meddling is exacerbating the inequalities in America.

This election and the chaos that ensured may have been surprising to many but, as I previously wrote, a quick glance at American history would reveal that it was totally on par with how the country has reacted to societal changes in the. Very often, frustrations about American elections have been framed as choosing “the lesser of two evils”, and this time around, it seems voters have decided we could all go to hell. 

By Dema SANE (Bayonne, NJ ) 

March 15, 2025