The United States election has been called. Joe Biden is going to be the next president of the United States of America. In January President Donald Trump will be gone from the White House, if not from the scene. The heightened excitement of the campaign will slowly come down and the raised tension of the last few months lowered, and life returns to normal, not only in the United States but around the world as well. At least that is the hope. In a strange way, Trump will be missed. He may not have been universally popular, perhaps even not likable. But he has been a huge presence impossible to ignore. Return to normalcy, even if only gradual, also brings with it a sense of loss. His absence from the world stage will make the world a little duller. You see, he brought unusual drama to the office. You might argue even a sort of novelty and freshness. It has not necessarily been good theatre, but still entertaining in its brazen daring and unusualness, and total disregard of the familiar and customary. Not many can make the shocking so usual it becomes acceptable. He caused controversy and revelled in the resulting anxiety and confusion. Few other world leaders have created so much tension and uncertainty at home and abroad, threatened the annihilation of some, but in the end backed from it and was not blamed or thanked for it. He broke all rules and norms, trashed tradition and custom, and was disdainful of protocol. Nothing was sacred. Yet interestingly, he attracted non-conformists as well as the ultra-conventional, heretics and the ardent believer. The man has such enormous self-belief. He brags about his singular abilities (mostly imagined) and rubbishes those (real) of others. You cannot accuse him of modesty. Hyperbole and the superlative drip from every utterance. Bombast and bluster are necessary props. Still he has as many admirers as those he offends. This, of course, is not to say that others do not have similar tendencies and attitudes. Many do but are not honest enough to express them. In that sense lack of modesty is a sort of truthfulness. In the conduct of personal and public affairs there is an accepted code of behaviour. You don’t call colleagues or even opponents names even if you find them obnoxious or don’t like them, certainly not in public. That code did not apply to Trump. Remember the names he gave to his opponents? Sleepy Joe (Biden), Crooked Hillary (Clinton), Lyin’ Ted (Cruz)? Most people would not do that. Even if they did, they wouldn’t get away with it. But he did, and some people rather enjoyed it. Name-calling was not restricted to the domestic scene. Remember the Little Rocket Man (Kim Jong-un) who was threatened with fire and fury like the world had never seen? Or s...hole African countries? This one caused a lot of anger but little else. Indeed, some, while finding it extremely insulting, agreed broadly with what he meant. Few others can make insults appear normal, even deserved, while no less offensive. The world occasionally needs plain-speaking leaders who call things by their name. Sometimes it helps to have people telling you how you look like, warts and all. In this sense Africa will miss Trump. He didn’t flatter. He simply ignored us and left us to ourselves. That was not a bad thing. We could do things as we saw fit and blame nobody for any failure. He was no uncle for those who have made it a habit to cry to foreigners for political help instead of seeking it from the people they want to lead. He had no time for missionaries of democracy and evangelists of every cause. They, too, have largely been absent and the world has not descended into hell for it. In another sense, Trump has perhaps been necessary. He has offered a reminder of what the world could look like without the usual social and moral restraints. Our baser nature could come to the fore and all manner of destruction follow. William Golding warned against this in his novel, Lord of the Flies more than sixty years ago Trump may not have invented them, but he sure did popularise and made mainstream such concepts as fake news, alternative reality, alternative universe, and so on. Such as they are needed to remind us of the perils of the alternative to order and convention, and to galvanise action to retain a sense of the normal. Sometimes the world needs someone to shock and cause outrage in order for people to see clearly. Trump has played his part in this regard, maybe inadvertently and he might fly into a rage at the suggestion, but that has been his role.
