TRUMPISM: A Moment Or Movement?

Photo: White House

By Shakeel Syed

As we sift through the debris of the last decade, America must ask itself if it agrees with President Trump’s claim that he is not a passing moment but an enduring movement.

History has documented moments that became movements.

In 1930, Mohandas Gandhi, challenging the British occupation of India asked his people to extract salt from the sea instead of buying it from their brutal occupiers. That led India to win its independence in 1947.  

In 1947, Joseph McCarthy got elected to the United States Senate and McCarthyism was born soon thereafter and arguably it has now grown more muscular and even more brazen.

In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. That single act of defiance gave moral courage to her people that then forced the United States of America to institute the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Moments die. Movements endure.

If President Trump’s claim that his Trumpism is an enduring movement, I wonder if American people should worry as some experts are.

The National Center for the Treatment of Phobia, Anxiety and Disorder in Washington, D.C. reported that each week during the last two weeks before election, four Americans had walked into their Center, scared and frightened about Trumpism becoming ever so pervasive. Similarly, Dr. Bernard Vittone, the Director of the National Center for the Treatment of Phobia, Anxiety and Disorder says that he has been treating his Trumphobic patients with anti-anxiety medication.

Stephanie Chan, director of data and research at Stop AAPI Hate writes, “South Asians are now in these prominent places of leadership in the business world and in the political world now, and there’s this sense that, ‘Oh, now they’re taking over.”

Sustained phobia and lingering anxiety shrinks thinking, especially critical thinking. For example, a thinking person would remember to carry an umbrella, but an unthinking genius would blame God for messing up His Majesty’s day!

The unpleasant and worrisome possibility of an enduring Trumpism is now real. It is real because Trump has almost single-handedly revealed the deep-rooted bigotry, xenophobia and hate harbored by millions of fellow Americans who were afraid to express their true selves publicly. Trumpism has not only emboldened them but has also engendered in them a militant love for hate, making it “a new normal.” 

It is up to us, the people, to not let Trumpism, resuscitate the darkest evils of our nation, and instead give birth to an enduring movement of love not hate!

(Syed is executive director of South Asian Network, CA)