The morning after the shock

"I don't worry about our losing republican government in the United States because I'm afraid of a foreign invasion.... What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is responsible. And when the problems get bad enough…some one person will come forward and say, 'Give me total power and I will solve this problem.'

"That is how the Roman republic fell. Augustus became emperor, not because he arrested the Roman Senate. He became emperor because he promised that he would solve problems that were not being solved.

"That is the way democracy dies. And if something is not done to improve the level of civic knowledge, that is what you should worry about at night."

— Former Supreme Court Associate Justice David Souter, in a prescient 2012 interview in New Hampshire.

I stuck my neck out, and Donald Trump chewed it off. I predicted his opponent Hillary Clinton's victory. Here's my mea culpa. I was dead wrong, so apologies to you, dear readers, and The Daily Star. (Note, however, that Hillary most probably will win the popular vote when the final tally is in.)

History moves in strange ways. "The path that this country has taken has never been a straight line," U.S. President Barack Obama said after Trump's victory. "We zig and zag…" 

Eight years after the glorious moment when the United States elected the nation's first African American president, it has elected a president approved by the Ku Klux Klan, America's notorious racist vigilante group with a history of lynching blacks.

A livid David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, called Trump's election a triumph "of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism."

"Trump's … ascension to the Presidency is a sickening event in the history of the United States," Remnick wrote. "On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety."

The harsh reality is that we failed to realise how deeply Trump's message resonated with the disaffected. Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman spoke for me and many millions when he lamented: "People like me . . . truly didn't understand the country we live in. We thought that our fellow citizens would not, in the end, vote for a candidate so manifestly unqualified for high office, so temperamentally unsound, so scary yet ludicrous...

"…We were wrong… A huge number of people – white people, living mainly in rural areas – … don't share at all our idea of what America is about. For them, it is about blood and soil, about traditional patriarchy and racial hierarchy...

"…Is America a failed state and society? It looks truly possible. … This has been a night of terrible revelations, and I don't think it's self-indulgent to feel quite a lot of despair."

Give the devil its due. The Donald kept telling us he could feel the pulse of the American people but pollsters, analysts and pundits dismissed him. His fight to win the Republican nomination was considered a joke until he toppled all the big guys. Hillary Clinton had huge amounts of money and a massive organisation. Trump triumphed with rallies and free media. Analysts scoffed at his claim that he would bring in disaffected working class voters to the polls. He had the last laugh.

However, there is the disquieting sense that his message alone, such as it was, was not what ensured his victory. Was a section of Americans tired of the growing influence of people not like them (read black and brown people, women, LGBTQ)? Was the ugly animus against Hillary propelled only by legitimate issues of a lack of transparency? Or did unspoken abhorrence for a powerful woman play an unstated role?

This is a truly difficult time. I take heart from Markos Moulitsas, whose online activist website DailyKos.com has revolutionised left-liberal political activism in the U.S. Moulitsas believes the future still belongs to Democrats.

"Our core voters aren't dying off; they are growing. Arizona, Georgia, Texas are the future. The Rust Belt is … waning," he wrote in post-election post.

"But Trump tapped into something visceral, and whites responded. 'America is changing because of those people, and I don't like it!'

"There's no way to sugarcoat this…It's going to be awful. 

"…For now, let's take a moment to grieve, because America isn't what we thought it was. 

"And then, we start fighting. And we'll need a general. So ...Bernie Sanders for DNC chair. 

"Who is aboard?"

Sanders is the squeaky-clean, principled 75-year-old Vermont senator who spoke truth to power and won the hearts of millions of America's young people.

Count me in. I'm already feeling the Bern.

The writer is a contributing editor for Siliconeer, a monthly periodical for South Asians in the United States. He has been writing for U.S.-based South Asian media for over 25 years.