THE election of Donald Trump as the United States president has caused not just some Americans to adjust long-held political beliefs and convictions, but others from around the globe, too.
This writer has personally encountered some of these people in Malaysia.
One, with a known and acknowledged sharp intellect, recently admitted that he has turned from being a political liberal to a conservative and follows the right-wing American television channel Fox News through social media. He now seems to agree that much of the anti-Trump angst has been whipped up by a vast liberally-inclined political conspiracy.
That is quite a turnaround from the days when then president Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary would imagine a similar but conservative-engineered conspiracy against them!
To be sure, Trump officials are milking to the hilt such beliefs in liberal political conspiracies for what they are worth. It is certainly sad, tragic even, to witness supposedly the world’s greatest democracy sinking so low so fast.
But as in any democracy, the greatest political currency is your votes, so who is complaining, right?
The greater tragedy has to do with the fact that American exceptionalism — that sunny belief that American democracy is the wellspring out of which all things good and great in the US and beyond are possible — is so unceremoniously chucked out the window as its democracy looks to be just as grubby and imperfect as everyone else’s.
The irony of this seems lost on those same Malaysian fans of Trump. These are the same Malaysians who, not so long ago, would be counted to go out on the streets to protest perceived political assaults on the Malaysian judiciary and who would vocally express disgust and moral indignation over the sodomy trials of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, reserving particular venom at the sight of policemen trudging a full mattress as evidence to court.
These Malaysians also routinely decry what they perceive to be positive discrimination in favour of majority Bumiputeras.
Not a murmur then when the country that is perhaps the ultimate exponent and self-appointed global arbiter on matters to do with political checks and balances and separation of powers among co-equal branches of government now bears witness to its president dismissively calling an individual member of the judicial branch a “so-called judge” for judgment calls not to the president’s liking?
Or, equally to pooh-pooh the many accusations of sexual harassment thrown Trump’s way and to dismiss their being highlighted in the media as the almost evil machinations of those same liberal conspirators?
Or to overlook that Trump panders to majority white Americans grown sick and tired of almost every American community except them getting discriminatory favours from the US government?
The ironies, I would like to think, are not lost on most of us right-thinking individuals.
It is possibly just that most of us do not, as part of our daily discourse, thoroughly and exhaustively process and think through things political although — given how much politics and all matters political affect our very wellbeing — we really should and, indeed, must.
That, to me, is the Achilles heel of the democracy we all hold dear and almost universally aspire towards.
When we or those dear to us come down with a serious or life-threatening ailment, we search thoroughly every available source and consult the best experts to better arrive at conclusions and decisions as to how best to treat the ailment.
Yet, how many of us honestly and diligently research political questions confronting us before exercising our crucial and all-important vote? Are those who are wont to vote on a whim or fancy denied the right to vote when there is every likelihood of them acting cavalierly?
Too much of democratic practice everywhere works on the assumption that individual voters — acting in supposedly their own selfish best interests — will somehow ultimately deliver us the most optimal collective good.
But that perhaps presupposes that good and ever better times will keep rolling so voters are fully incentivised to vote to keep the gravy train going, as it were.
What happens when the train stops or at least seriously stalls, as it appears to be in the US and much of the developed West?
Perhaps the greatest of all ironies is that the US, which has probably gone over the hill, and its former Asian colony, the Philippines, which is not anywhere near the top of the hill, both elected populist presidents of their own not quite six months apart of each other.
The writer views developments in the nation, the region and the wider world from his vantage point in Kuching, Sarawak