In the run up to the American Presidency, most polls were in favour of Hillary Clinton. People were blinded by biased mainstream media coverage that they didn’t see a Trump Presidency coming. In the end, Clinton was right, when she said in her teary concession speech that she wasn’t the only one that had lost the election to Donald Trump; most Africans, so sure of a Clinton victory, also lost and that angry front page headline on Kenya’s Nation newspaper summed it all up. But perhaps the biggest loser was the world’s mainstream media and unlike other categories of losers, mainstream media may never fully recover from the loss of credibility, which, like virginity, is lost once and no form of recovery could ever restore the chastity. On January 20, the real estate mogul, considered by many across the world as being unconventional and controversial, will be inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States of America, and, in essence, dawning a new world order that operates in defiance of the establishment. It will be an era where many things that we have hitherto known to be abnormal will become the new normal just as we will have to grudgingly accept Trump’s ‘abnormal’ victory as normal. The mainstream media will no longer enjoy the global monopoly over news authenticity and credibility. Trump’s victory exposed them to the reality that social media is the new media. After misleading the world to believe in twisted opinion polls, the anger of the world’s news consumers will push them to, more than ever, look elsewhere, to seek for reliability and relative truth; this will effectively make hitherto ‘alternative media’ the new mainstream. Expect a rough relationship between President Trump and America’s corporate mainstream media. With his newfound influence, Trump will try to invest in new media, to kill the pro-establishment corporate media that was on Clinton’s side. University professors will write new theories, all based on Trump’s stunningly unorthodox rise to power. These will be interesting books for our kids to read. Democracy, as we have always known it and aspired to practice it, will be no more; it will give way to a new form of politics, shaped by defiance against political intellectualism and anti-traditional establishment. Trump has effectively abrogated the reign of political elitism. Across the globe, ‘Trump-mania’ will spread like a plague. ‘Trump-maniacs’ will rock elections in emerging democracies and give rise to a new crop of leaders with no history of public service but rather successful business record that appeals to a global generation of young people. And in the African culture where society celebrates the wealthy, Trump-mania is expected to thrive. Like all new things, we should all be skeptical about this impending new world order. While it may thrive in countries with mature institutions, it may give rise to anarchism in countries where institutional independence is still work in progress. If a Trump presidency was a mistake, the world can expect American institutions and constitutionalism to prevail and correct the anomaly to restore the upset conventional order. But the same can’t be said of Africa where Trump-like ‘mistakes’ could be costly, for, in our nascent institutions, once a man is voted in, it becomes almost impossible to pluck them out. So it is okay for matured democracies such as the US to experiment power with political novices and rich braggadocios such as Donald Trump because they could always bank on constitutionalism to restore order. Poor Hillary Clinton, this will always be a nightmare in her life; that she won the popular vote yet lost the minority vote of the Electoral Colleges that actually make American presidents. Even for a seasoned boxer, it is always dangerous to face an underdog with no known style of fighting in the ring; Hillary Clinton, in spite of her decades in American politics, found herself lost for tactics on how to fight a man like Donald Trump, a complete Washington outsider. A man who could get away with saying or doing things ‘naturally unacceptable’ by society; he called it being ‘honest’ and labeled Clinton a ‘crook.’ That was politics. Only that it was a new form of politics being practiced for the first time in US democracy. To know that Trump was playing politics during the campaigns, you only have to review his actions after victory; all of a sudden, a calm and reconciliatory gentleman who praised Clinton and honoured Obama’s invitation to White House. For Obama, he will retire a sad and haunted man while Hillary Clinton will equally never recover from memories of a near victory. As for Trump, he’s out to preside over a completely new world order which we all, like it or not, must now accept and embrace. We should brace for many more Trumps. editorial@newtimes.co.rw
