“How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?”
- Leonard Cohen (Writer’s note: May he find peace wherever he rests)
A former American marine once told me in a frigid Midwestern winter night in a bar with a sinister name, that the only people who are ever shocked or surprised are those with their heads in the clouds and not with their ears on the ground.
The election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States is not some sort of restatement of Jacksonian republican ideology but rather the natural progression of Western Judeo Christian societies moving to the Right. This lurch is the consequence of the actions of their political elites who sold them a lie in the guise of progress and the perceived threat to their nationhood brought upon by migration and the effects of globalism.
When Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak congratulated president-elect Trump, it was met with howls of derision. Oppositional types made the argument that it was the Umno establishment that was in the line of fire.
As an opposition supporter, I find this sentiment extremely troubling and the kind of thinking that led Hillary Clinton to her Waterloo. The reality is that Najib is right in what he said about the Trump victory and if the opposition is not careful, we may never get that tsunami vote that replaces the current regime with something hopefully better.
The Trump vote was a vote against the establishment. However, pundits forget that Trump destroyed the Republican establishment in the GOP (Grand Old Party) primaries before taking his message to the national stage. He did this by slaying sacred cows and projecting himself as the only one who could save America from the Washington elites who cared little for the white working class that was neglected in the national discourse.
It would be a mistake to dismiss Trump’s demagoguery as appealing to only a subsection of the voting public. While a white working class was in fact his base, his anti-establishment message struck a chord with a diverse group of people who were sick of how things were done in Washington. The reality is that Trump cemented his anti-establishment credentials in the GOP primary that translated to national appeal.
For Malaysian opposition types to see this as some sort of bell weather on the Umno establishment is to miss the point. Trump destroyed the GOP establishment and then went on to destroy the DNC (Democratic National Committee) establishment. In other words, a majority of Americans were sick and tired of the GOP and DNC establishment and voted for an outsider who would change the system.
The problem here is that the opposition and Umno are the establishment. There is nothing that separates the two besides the numerous corruption scandals that plague Umno. In addition, as recent by-elections have proven even this does not seem to bother people who still vote in Umno...