First published over a year ago at:
The emotional
breakdown of America after the Trump victory baffled me thousands of miles away
in India. I live in a small hamlet in the outskirt of Guwahati in the
state of Assam. Half of the time, we have no power to watch TV.
Yet, CNN didn’t disappoint us by ceaselessly broadcasting the emotional debacle
of America in the aftermath of the tragedy known as Trump victory.
Until I met Mark
Twain, I wasn’t interested in America. But once he fooled me to join him
in the world of Huckleberry Finn and the mighty Mississippi; no sooner, I was
hooked in watching those western classics that transported me into the world of
the Prairie and the Oregon Trail. Indeed, it was a brave new world back
then. Teaching a course on Puritan settlement of America at a university
in Korea had heightened my desire to actually visit the US. But thanks to
a Nepali pastor friend, I was denied a visa few months before 911 in 2001 and
had not applied since then.
So, my knowledge
of America is purely academic and literary; only supplemented with a median
visit to New England a couple of years ago. It so happened, and to my
delight, I was surprisingly granted a visa to visit the US in 2014.
During my two weeks of travel through New England, my interest was in the
historical narratives of the brave new world and my hosts didn’t disappoint
me. Like Chesterton in “What I Saw in America”, I wanted to feel the
spirit of this great nation by visiting important places in the first colonies.
Standing upon those shores, banks, gorges, plains and the mountain tops, it
wasn’t difficult to enter into the world of the Puritan pilgrims, frontier
settlers and the American independence. Unlike in the pages of the books
and the screens of the movies, I could actually feel the formidable spirit of
America all around me.
Coming to New
York, however, was different. With its colossal concrete jungle touching
the sky, the human spirit seemed to be unable to break free from its weight
pressing it to the ground. Walking downtown Manhattan, there was this
sense of fragility as if everyone was living on the emotional edges.
Slightest miscalculation could send everyone crashing down.
Now, here I was
in Assam, India, watching the emotional breakdown of so many Americans,
including Hillary Clinton, who just could not accept the resounding defeat as
if something unimaginable had happened. In a sensible world, it is
natural for one to win and the other to lose; especially if you have a two
party system, both can’t win. But this time, there was some strange sense
of hopelessness in losing. People appeared to be disoriented which the
critics call the “Trump Derangement”. I think it was more than Trump.
During Obama’s
presidency, the spirit of Atheism reigned supreme. Young people grew into
adulthood by mocking at truth, at morality and God. They felt in total
control of the American spirit; they proudly declared themselves as Social
Justice Warriors! Anyone who disagreed with them would have to be
vanquished once and for all. Obama’s cult surely appeared undefeatable;
one could feel the air of arrogance from Obama’s own mouth when he mocked Trump
from the corridors of power in the White House.
Sadly, this
Obama cult was made of air. Since Atheism believes in nothing, when power
is taken away from its grip, there remains nothing for it to stand upon.
When Trump victory punctured it, the bubble simply caved in. How much
they mocked everything Trump voters represented, they could not be comforted.
A people who
managed to forge the greatest nation on earth suddenly appeared so vulnerable;
critics had to invent the phrase “snowflakes” to describe these SJWs.
Without the moral fiber and the confidence in divine providence to care
for us, defeat is painful. Even more painful when it happens against a
person like Trump who holds no bars; makes morality a thing to be used and
abused depending on its profitability. During the days of slavery, the
blacks could grind through their unimaginable suffering with their undying hope
in God by humming “Someday, we shall be free”. But the people going
through the emotional breakdown after the last American election seem to have
no such place to put their hopes in.
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