Americans are a funny lot.  For them, it seems, celebrity trumps all.  They have elected as President someone whose personal qualities and attitudes would disqualify him, in most democracies, from membership of a school board.

But that is too simple a message.  The Trump victory conveys a wider and deeper message – because Donald Trump got at least one thing right.

When we peel back all the posturing and blustering, designed to shock and claim attention, Trump’s basic message was addressed to those who felt that they had been left behind and ignored by the political establishment.  He pitched himself quite specifically as the anti-establishment candidate.  He attacked in terms – ironically enough, given his own circumstances – the fat cats, big business, and their friends in Washington.

He claimed that he would represent all those who did not have university degrees and high-paid jobs, shares and bonuses, and who did not own their own nice homes.  He said that the globalised economy had looked after the people with those advantages, but had neglected those who were struggling to make ends meet, small businessmen and farmers, those whose jobs had been lost or were under threat, who were poorly paid and housed and paying high rents.

He would address their grievances, he said, by challenging the principles on which the global economy operated, and by ensuring that the interests of working people were placed centre stage. These sentiments might sound odd to us, coming from the mouth of someone who revelled in his status as a multi-billionaire – and even odder from someone who boasted about not paying tax and who proposed massive tax cuts for the super-wealthy.

But they struck a chord for those lives were microcosms of what the statistics tell us about how the goodies produced by the global economy have been shared out.  That part of his message might have been more naturally expected to come from someone on the left of politics.

But Trump fleshed out his message by playing on the fears and resentments of those who found it easy to identify scapegoats to blame for their woes.  He thereby diverted attention from the real causes and was able to exploit that anger by peddling disreputable views on race, gender and sexuality – views that are anathema to most of us and to those on the left in particular.

There are those who have been quick – particularly in Britain – to draw parallels between the Brexit vote and Trump’s triumph.  Those parallels are certainly there – and Trump was keen to identify them in advance – but it is adding insult to injury for those in the media and elsewhere who have refused to listen to the growing dissatisfactions of working people about the way their economy and society are developing to claim now that Brexit and Trump voters have been motivated by racism and other hatreds born of ignorance.

The pro-EU press in Britain, for example, continue to insist that there was no rational basis for the Brexit vote and are able to maintain this stance only because of their own refusal to acknowledge that most Brexit voters were motivated, not by racism, but by perfectly legitimate concerns about the loss of self-government, about a trade deficit that has decimated much of British manufacturing industry, and about a tidal wave of cheap labour from Eastern Europe which has destroyed jobs and wage levels and put great pressure on housing and health services.

It is a similar lofty dismissal of understandable concerns, and uncritical assurance that the current operations of the global economy can be relied on to deliver the best of all possible worlds, that have left the way open for a Donald Trump to manipulate and misdirect – to posture as the saviour of working people while promoting policies that serve the interests of the super-rich, and to use a message of hatred, disrespect and division as his ticket to the White House.

The Trump election is an alarm signal for western democracies across the globe.  If we will not listen, those who are ignored will be equally deaf to claims that democracy is the best guarantor of their interests.

There is a special opportunity and responsibility for parties of the left.  They are the political voices, after all, that claim to have an analysis and a prescription to remedy our current ills.  If they do not have the courage of their convictions, to tell it like it is, to identify the real reasons for the malfunctioning of, and divisions in, our society, and to propose an effective programme of reform, then many voters will feel disenfranchised and will turn to other options.  We would then have to expect a growing dissatisfaction with the democratic system, and a growing number of Trumps taking office.

Bryan Gould

10 November 2016

An Open Letter to American Voters

When Barack Obama was elected to the US Presidency in 2008, millions of Americans celebrated, and there were millions of others – mainly in the countries comprising what used to be called in Cold War times the ‘free world’ – who cheered as well.

Americans – or most of them – were thrilled at what promised to be the threshold of a new era of inter-racial harmony.  But those millions in other lands – in a dimension to American politics that may not always be understood in the US itself – were delighted that the leadership of “their” world had passed to someone who would fill the role with distinction.

And so it has proved.  The inter-racial harmony within the US itself may still be a work in progress but President Obama has proved himself a worthy champion of the democratic ideal.  At home, he has worked hard to ensure that the glories of the American dream have been more fairly shared, that an effective response to the Global Financial Crisis has meant that those able to work have jobs to go to, and that families struck down by ill-health are not left by the wayside.

The international dimension has been more challenging.  He has shown himself to be a staunch ally and strong upholder of democratic values, and has provided effective leadership on critical issues such as climate change.  But issues such as the Syrian conflict have proved very difficult to resolve and his judgment has on occasion been called into question.

But it is on the wider issues that he has shown his true worth.  If we look at the world as a whole, and the choice that faces all of us as being between a democratic form of government on the one hand and tyrannies of one sort or another on the other, then we can be in no doubt where President Obama stands.  He is not only an advocate for democracy but an embodiment of it.

The world is not short of critics of democracy, or of leaders who represent its antithesis.  Nothing would suit anti-democrats better than to point to the world’s most important democracy and to sneer at what the democratic process had thrown up.

They have not been able to do that with President Obama at the helm.  Here is a man of obvious ability, judgment, and good sense.  His election in 2008 and re-election in 2012 were the best possible evidence of the great and irreplaceable strengths of democracy, not just as political process but as a form of government – and self-government at that.  It delivers to us leadership that can truly claim to take account of the interests of all the people.

The whole democratic world, in other words, has a vested interest in the good health of American democracy.  In New Zealand – as in every other part of the free world – we are safer and stronger if American democracy can provide the US with leadership of a quality that the rest of the world might aspire to.

If, for any reason, President Obama is succeeded by someone who does not meet that high standard, and who does not embody in his or her own person the qualities that are required for leadership in a democratic country, we are all weakened.  There are regimes in Beijing and Moscow and in many lesser capitals who would be quick to advise their own people and anyone else who would listen that democracy cannot be relied on to deliver effective government, and that claims that democracies are somehow better at serving the interests of their people cannot be sustained.

In that situation, those of us fortunate enough to be living in a democracy would feel less confident, those struggling to achieve democracy would be disheartened, and those at present oppressed would lose hope.

It matters greatly, in other words, that the 2016 presidential election produces a President who, at home, can bring people together and treat every section of society – in racial, gender and economic terms – with respect and consideration and, in the international sphere, can exercise calm and considered judgment, and can be relied on to provide help and friendship to all those across the globe who share democratic values.

And, as President Obama has shown, if the US President is to be treated as the de facto leader of the free world, he or she must embody in his or her own life the values that a great democracy holds dear.  The holder of that office must be seen as worthy of our trust, must act with dignity and respect for others, must represent the interests of all the people and not just the rich, famous and powerful.

We – and by “we” I mean democrats across the globe – need a President we can respect.  When the American voter casts a vote for the Presidency, it is a vote that has consequences far beyond American shores.  It is a decision for the American voter alone but it matters to all of us.  We need to get it right.

Bryan Gould

3 November 2016

Being the son of a famous person, and as a consequence finding oneself in the limelight, cannot be easy – especially if that famous person is the Prime Minister, who will inevitably attract approval and dissent in roughly equal measure and whose family and other relationships will always attract close scrutiny.

What are we to make, then, of the crass and coarse remarks made this week by Max Key?  His father – himself no stranger to controversy when it comes to the treatment of women – (“pony tailgate” is still fresh in the memory) might have been expected to ensure that his son was especially careful when it comes to language and behaviour concerning the fairer sex.

It is not just the remarks themselves that have raised eyebrows but the fact that he was so keen to let us know that he had made them.

He went to considerable lengths, after all, to bring them to our attention.  He not only took the trouble to wind down his window as he drove so as to shout what was no doubt intended as a gratuitous insult at some cyclists he was overtaking; he had also taken care to record what he did and said and then to post it in the social media.

His intention, in choosing his supposed bon mot, was presumably to impugn the masculinity of the cyclists.  He seems to have been unaware that it takes a good deal more grit and effort to push yourself round town on a bicycle than it does to drive round town in a fast car – and it is a good deal more socially and environmentally responsible as well.

And, if he had cared to make those same remarks to the same people while on foot, rather than from the safety of his car, he might have found his own manhood subjected to a rather unwelcome and daunting challenge.

But the real question is, why does a young man of Max Key’s age and upbringing think it appropriate, not only to shout insults at strangers but to refer to women in such demeaning terms?   What is it about our society that spawns such offensive attitudes?  It seems clear that the expensive schools responsible for the education of young Mr Key and his like have some way to go in preparing their pupils for adult membership of a decent and equal society.

Even his father acknowledged that Max Key’s remarks were “inappropriate” – probably the mildest word he could find to express his true feelings.  It is certainly depressing to think that we might be bringing up a whole new generation of Donald Trumps.

As Trump himself demonstrates, those who cross the boundaries of decent behaviour in these respects seem blissfully unaware of how damaging is their lack of respect for that half of humanity that produces their wives, mothers and daughters. And they seem not to know that the “locker-room talk” that they regard as so natural, normal and common to all red-blooded (or, in Max Key’s terms “real”) men is a piece of pathetic macho posturing abjured by most decent men.

We are not short of evidence of the damage that is done by such attitudes.  The high incidence of domestic violence and of sexual assaults, and instances such as the boastful exploits of the so-called roastbusters, are bad enough, but they take no account of the psychological damage that is suffered in our society by so many girls and women who find themselves treated without respect, and as sex objects and pieces of property rather than as people.

We have no chance of achieving a society in which women are treated with proper respect and can take their full and proper place for as long as a Max Key can hurl such a thoughtless and offensive comment at strangers and expect to be applauded for it.

I can, on the basis of long experience, offer a tip that might help Max Key in his search for what it means to be a “real” man.  If you treat your female friends and partners as real people, you will be part of a stronger society, your relationships will improve – and you will have a better understanding of the joys that your “love life” can offer.

Bryan Gould

29 October 2016