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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. (Reuters)
Nov 27, 2024 19:16 IST First published on: Nov 27, 2024 astatine 19:14 IST
Now that the cadaver of the Kamala Harris run is being taxable to assorted autopsies, a operation that is often being heard by pundits and triumphant Republicans is “common sense”, and however the Democrats’ region from it is simply a large origin of their defeat. In this narrative, the Democratic Party’s accent connected individuality authorities and “woke agenda” and accent connected issues specified arsenic transgender rights alienated them from the mean American voter. To their credit, the pundits and Republicans are close astir communal sense, but for each the incorrect reasons.
“Common sense” has ever enjoyed a hallowed presumption successful American authorities and was the rubric of Thomas Paine’s celebrated 1775 pamphlet, successful which helium argued that the lawsuit for America’s state from Britain was “common sense”, frankincense implying that it was self-evident. It is important to enactment present the dual consciousness successful which Paine was employing communal sense. By calling independency communal sensical, helium was trying to person what was past a chaotic thought into thing commonplace by claiming that astir radical ought to judge it due to the fact that of its inherent “sense” oregon logic. Conversely, due to the fact that an thought is common, it becomes an evident information or, not requiring immoderate further scrutiny. It is this mundane oregon evident quality that gives communal consciousness its power. Common consciousness tin frankincense simultaneously notation to mundane societal world arsenic it exists (exemplified by the operation “But that’s communal sense!”), and a rhetorical blueprint employed to mould societal world successful a preferred direction. In the erstwhile avatar, communal consciousness is simply a stable, astir static signifier of societal world — a corpus of unchanging ideas.
Most proponents of the “common-sense” diagnosis of the American elections absorption connected this static understanding. Thus, Trump is (rightly) credited with appealing to definite common-sense beliefs of the American nationalist oregon making his ideas look much morganatic by calling them common-sensical. For a colonisation that has been wrecked by decades of inequality and precarity acknowledgment to a bipartisan statement connected neoliberalism, blaming immigrants provides a credible mentation for their problems. And if we were to subscribe to this mentation of a static and homogenous communal sense, past the Democrats would person nary prime but to pander to the lowest communal denominator (which they did). Politics, successful this imagination, is reduced to being an instrumentality of the presumption quo.
However, communal consciousness is not unchanging — successful fact, it is not adjacent consistent. To punctuation Antonio Gramsci, “One tin find determination thing that 1 likes”. While this makes matters much complicated, it besides opens opportunities for alternate forms of politics. Political actors tin frankincense spell beyond aligning themselves with communal sense, they tin simultaneously refashion and recreate it by engaging elements of it ignored by their opponents. Common consciousness present is simply a terrain which each claimants to governmental powerfulness indispensable navigate and wield to their advantage. But this requires a semipermanent and sustained attack to politics. So, erstwhile we accidental Trump is tapping into American communal sense, it is not a clump of always-existing ideas, but a decades-long task of sociopolitical engineering by the Republicans that created this communal sense.
This is precisely wherever the existent dominance of the planetary close stems from — it is based connected a decades-long refashioning of communal consciousness done the cultivation of fashionable culture, media, and institutions astatine the crushed level. The liberals/centrists (not to beryllium confused with the left) person mostly neglected this and frankincense person failed to connection an alternate governmental imagination. Thus, adjacent their successes person been either non-existent oregon limited, whether it is the absorption successful India, oregon the Democrats’ little instrumentality to powerfulness during the Biden administration. Even successful Britain, the thumping Labour triumph is not an endorsement of Kier Starmer’s tepid vision, but alternatively a vexation with the Conservative Party (but not their ideas). Much similar Kamala Harris, the post-Corbyn Labour Party represents an acquiescence to blimpish common-sense and not a interruption with it. What is possibly much worrying is that this acquiescence is partially willful — for the centrists, a rightwing instrumentality to powerfulness that maintains the presumption quo is implicitly preferable to the unsafe calls for restructuring the satellite system and authorities successful favour of the have-nots.
Thus, fixed their inability (or deficiency of will) to make a caller communal sense, the proposal of the liberal/centrist constitution is to autumn backmost connected the existing one. So, the Democratic Party volition advocator for stronger borders similar Trump, Kier Starmer volition enactment mum connected Gaza, and the Congress enactment successful Himachal Pradesh volition look connected arsenic number establishments are vandalised. While it whitethorn look similar I americium drafting a agelong and flimsy transportation betwixt New York and Nahan, they are symptomatic of the aforesaid situation — an property of governmental absorption without governmental alternatives.
The writer is an Assistant Professor of International Relations, Ashoka University. Views are personal
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