It is election season in the United States of America and the world watches with a lot of interest – with good reason.

The United States is the world’s only super power (maybe not for very long) and what happens there impacts the rest of the world. Even we in the heart of Africa are watching with keen interest.

Elections there are also richly entertaining. They have all the drama, usually of a comic nature, but occasionally descend into the stupid and farcical. Americans appear to value things others would frown upon.

Ignorance about the rest of the world seems to be a virtue. Arrogance is a necessary leadership quality. Civility is a sign of weakness. Raking up all the muck and splashing it at your opponents is in the elections manual.

It wouldn’t be American if any of these things were missing.

But for all the entertainment, and the occasional surprise, American elections are generally predictableThis year’s primaries for nomination to contest November’s presidential election have all the ingredients for a great American political drama. New elements: consternation, unease and panic have been added.

The cause of the additional elements is one Donald Trump. He has become so important that there is something called the Trump phenomenon. So far he has confounded everyone and made pundits look stupid and their predictions rubbish.

He should not really be causing any anxiety. For one, he is an American phenomenon. For another, this Trump thing has been coming for some time, not only in the US but in other parts of the world as well.

The phenomenon – you could add the Democratic Party’s Bernie Sanders and UK Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn - is part of a political insurgency that appears from time to time.

First, it is a reaction to existing political power relations. The political and business elite have monopolised politics. They have grown distant from the people who give them that power.

 Increasingly, the elite speak a language far removed from that of ordinary people. Quarrels among them have also led to dysfunctional government that hurts ordinary citizens.   

The so-called Trump phenomenon, therefore, feeds on a growing popular discontent. He voices what they feel. Even his intemperate language mirrors their anger.

Second, Trump and others like him do not conform to the unwritten convention among politicians to call things by less unpleasant but also less accurate names in public and in daylight. In any case political correctness is hypocrisy made respectable.

But no one should be fooled. Trump is not alone in saying the things he does. The difference is that he says in public what others think and say in private, including those horrified by his utterances.

Third, periods of economic hardship produce the likes of Trump. The West may be recovering from the recent economic recession and financial meltdown, but the middle and working classes have not yet felt the benefits of the recovery.

This is compounded by the international refugee crisis and concerns about immigration. All these create a feeling of insecurity. All that Trump and Sanders are doing is articulate these fears and use them to gain electoral advantage.

There is a difference between the Trump and Sanders insurgency, though. That of Trump is built on fear, like the fear of hell. It whips up anger against the establishment. Sanders’ insurgency is based on the idea of fairness, on hope. It allows people to dream beautiful dreams.

Finally,  there is the role of the media in all this. The traditional media, itself elitist, has been a partner in creating the sort of politics in which politicians are cut off from the realities of citizens’ lives.

Pundits, commentators and intellectuals in general are particularly guilty of this. In the process they have arrogated to themselves so much power that they make and destroy politicians.

Ironically, the same media is also responsible for creating the Trumps of this world. In the current electioneering in the US , Trump has got more coverage than any other politicians. He hasn’t even had to pay for it. Media support can very easily become a poisoned chalice. It can as easily turn against him and bring him down.

Already the Republican Party establishment and their partners in big business are frantically marshalling forces to stop him winning the nomination and perhaps the presidency. The media will certainly help them do that.

Whether he wins or not is beside the point. Yes, he may say the most horrible things and is probably not suited to be president of the United States, but he is also a product of its politics and history.

The legacy of slavery and the Wild West still lingers, and we should not be surprised by the political goings on in the United States.

jorwagatare@yahoo.co.uk