Trump's triumph is not the end of the world, nor the dawn of a new age

Donald Trump may not be as bad as many fear and not as good as many hope

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

Silhoutted by a sun rise, a helicopter flies over The White House

Marine One Flying over The White House, Inauguration Day, 2017.

Anthony Quintano, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Reading reactions to Donald Trump's election win across different news outlets over the last couple of days has been an education in the contemporary political landscape.

For left-leaning media the future is dark. An Atlantic opinion piece laments that “we must learn to live in an America where an overwhelming number of our fellow citizens have chosen a president who holds the most fundamental values and traditions of our democracy, our Constitution, even our military in contempt.” The Guardian called it “an extraordinary, devastating moment in the history of the United States.” It is a secular version of the sermon: “The End Is Nigh”.

Yet turn to the Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, or anything on the right, and you find a mixture of gloating (“Trump’s triumph is a disaster for Starmer and the self-regarding, virtue-signalling elites!”) and optimism that a new day is dawning. Trump himself hailed the advent of a ‘golden age’ for the American people. Having been mired in misery since the Conservatives’ routing in the UK general election here is a welcome bit of good news for those on the right.

On either side the apocalyptic note is hard to miss. A Telegraph writer says: “2024 is the real deal, a revolutionary moment, a reconstitution and realignment of American and Western politics around fresh principles.” A Guardian writer says that “there is nothing but bad news for Europe in Donald Trump’s US election victory. The only question is just how bad it will get.”

Immediately after elections there’s always a bit of this apocalyptic tone. When Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party dismantled the ‘red wall’, winning traditionally secure Labour seats in 2019, the rhetoric was that this was a generational change, a fundamental re-alignment in UK politics to the right. Labour, surely, was finished. Five years later, after Keir Starmer’s landslide and the routing of the Tories, it all looks very different – at least here in the UK.

Politicians always, in the long run, fail... The question is how badly they fail and whether they are able to do some good along the way until they do so.

Tony Blair fell from grace due to misleading us all over the Iraq war. David Cameron fell because he lost a referendum over Brexit. Boris Johnson was ousted because he allowed parties in Downing Street while the rest of the country was locked down. George W. Bush pursued a disastrous campaign for regime change in the middle east. Barack Obama started with great hope, won a second term, but didn’t change gun laws and was widely thought to have weakened the US through a failed foreign policy. Joe Biden is thought to have failed because he let inflation grow rampant and allowed American borders become too porous.

Donald Trump will fail too. He may, as he promised, deliver an improved economy. He may stem illegal immigration. That, after all, is why many voted for him. But eventually he will disappoint. So would Kamala Harris if she had won. So will Keir Starmer. And that is not to criticise these particular leaders. Like football managers, they all get sacked in the end, and there are very few who like Sir Alex Ferguson, or Jed Bartlett, get to wave farewell to the crowds at the time of their own choosing. Even then, Fergie’s legacy was tainted by his inability to create a legacy, and Bartlett was, despite our misty-eyed nostalgia, a fictional President.

It’s always tempting to reach for apocalyptic language at times like this. Yet the real meaning of ‘apocalypse’ is ‘revelation’, or ‘unveiling’. Taking the longer view, perhaps the real apocalyptic moment at times like these is the unveiling of the true place of politics – as important, but not ultimately important. These moments reveal the inadequacy of all human kingdoms, and our longing for a different kingdom, a kingdom of ‘righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit’ as the Bible has it, things that no government or election result can ever deliver.

Politics matters because the way we live together matters. Yet what politics at its best can provide – a well-functioning economy, law and order, managing good international relations - only go so far in enabling a flourishing life. Like returning to a familiar drug that we think we can once and for all make us happy, despite the numerous times it has failed before, we still somehow believe that politics can solve all our problems. “Trump will fix it” said the banners – though in fact that is what every politician promises. Jesus warned: “Many will come in my name and say ‘I am he’, and lead many astray.”

Most probably, Donald Trump will not be as bad as many fear, and not as good as many hope. Because politics is never the final word. As American theologian, Matthew Burdette put it recently: “The solution to our politics is not a political solution. Voting for the right or the wrong candidate will not change the situation: the devil is happily bipartisan, so long as politics is our idol. No, what is needed is fundamentally and thoroughly spiritual. Only when we can say with the prophet Isaiah that “the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as dust on the scales,” that is, only when we can see against the horizon of the ultimate how small are our worries, will these relative, penultimate things like politics be set right and take on their true meaning in our lives.”

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Economics

Sustainability

26 November 2024

4 min read

Black Friday: don’t shop, try stewarding instead

We're so fallible to consumer culture. Here's how to counter it.

Rosie Phillips

Rosie studies theology in Oxford and is currently training to be a vicar.

A phone screen is held up, showing a shopping page, behind a window displays a Black Friday Sale banner.

CardMapr.nl on Unsplash.

Have you noticed how many times in the last 24 hours you’ve been targeted or tempted by a Black Friday marketing campaign?

It’s estimated that we can see anywhere from 50 to 400 adverts per day - on TV, billboards, online, and, more than ever, through social media. I’ve never felt more seen and known by the Instagram algorithm, and many of us have experienced items popping up on our feeds which we were talking about with friends only hours before. Is it possible to resist such incessant and elaborate marketing schemes?

In the lead up to Black Friday this year, I’ve been looking out for a new vacuum cleaner (the rock-and-roll life of a thirty-something year-old). Having done all the research, I’m now poised to cash in on the discounts, regularly refreshing my Argos and Amazon tabs for the latest prices.

But, as I’ve been comparing the relative pros and cons of cordless versus cylinder vacuums (and marvelling at the development of anti-hair wrap technology), it’s been difficult not to have my interest piqued by various other products being put under my nose by these websites, too.

And difficult not to feel like, if I don’t act quickly, I’m going to miss out on an offer that’ll not come around again. It’s almost as if these marketing executives know how my brain is going work - even before I go online. But are we humans really as transparent as that?

Netflix’s new documentary, Buy Now? The Shopping Conspiracy, says that we are. It profiles several ex-insiders from the world’s biggest brands, who expose the manipulative tricks used by these corporations to make us buy more, and the extent to which our desire for endless consumption has been cultivated and capitalised on by design.

It seems that we humans, evolved and intelligent as we like to believe ourselves, are still fallible to serve the things which were designed to serve us. And the consequences are far-reaching. Online shopping may have dehumanised the consumer experience, but we remain connected to people around the world by global supply chains, and it is individuals and communities whose livelihoods are most dependent on the availability and quality of natural resources, and who live closest to the land, who reap the harmful effects of our incessant buying habits.

Hazardous e-waste, for example (including discarded laptops, phones, and TVs), is rising by millions of tonnes annually. The UK is a particularly bad offender for illegally exporting toxic e-waste around the world, dumping it in landfills where it releases toxic substances such as mercury, zinc, and lead into local water and soil supplies.

Back here in the UK, we can feel like such small cogs in such a huge, capitalist machine, that a lot of this seems beyond the realms of our human agency.

There is certainly value in being savvy with our spending power as consumers. In doing the research to get the best Black Friday deals, as we tighten the purse strings and navigate what has become a protracted and painful cost of living crisis for many. It can be hard for Christmas not to feel like an unavoidably expensive time of year.

But, perhaps there is also an opportunity to take small, subversive acts of resistance against this dehumanising consumer culture. Actions which reclaim our humanity and human agency, and which recognise our global interconnectedness.

For example, maybe you could resist the urge to impulse buy something this weekend, by stepping away from the screen to make a cup of tea or go for a walk outside, before clicking ‘Pay Now’.

Perhaps we could get better at comparing companies’ supply chains and ethical brand ratings, using our spending power to support those which align best with our values.

And, when we’re making a purchase, let’s take a moment to be grateful for the things we already have, the items we’re buying, and the people who made them.

The Christian faith invites us to reframe how we see our money and belongings through the lens of stewardship. It’s an underrated principle in today’s context. Stewardship goes beyond just thinking about how we spend our income, to the inherent responsibility we have as humans to look after the world around us, recognising that the earth’s resources are not ones we are entitled to, but are gifts which sustain life.

The principle of stewardship makes it impossible to hide behind a screen and to ignore the impact which our spending decisions have on people and communities around the world, however far removed from our lives they seem. It invites us to use our money and resources to invest in things which will serve us - and others - well, and tells the world that it matters that we challenge systems which perpetuate economic and environmental injustice.

And, if I happen to miss out on that vacuum cleaner while I’m out for a walk this weekend, at least it’s less than a month until the Boxing Day sales hit our screens.