Why Trump's election was a big middle finger to the "rigged" American system

How did we miss this political tsunami? Some people had seen it coming from miles. My prophetic editor at Crazy Monday, Tony Malesi, had been calling it for months and we told him off. Instead of listening to him, I put him in the same radicalised cell with Malik Obama.

Then reality happened. Donald Trump, the supposed part-time clown and bully had outfoxed the establishment. That was not what the pundits at CNN had repeatedly promised. Trump owned the media by provoking them and they promptly turned him into the villain who stole the show.

The urgency to stop Trump’s momentum blinded Democratic-aligned commentators who swore by opinion polls. They failed to acknowledge the angst of the Republican base, who used this election to make themselves heard.

Trump is the first US president to have effectively manipulated media notoriety for a successful political outcome in a way that makes the Kardarshians look like a bunch of amateurs. No US president has ever come lugging a shipping container worth of baggage into the race.

A sex scandal used to be the surest way to end a candidate’s career in US elections. Trump’s successful presidential campaign did not just lower the bar, he effectively buried it six feet deep.

Not even the combined gravitas of two first families- Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michelle and Barrack Obama- could stop the Trump Express.

American democracy works in a strange manner. Trump, the flamboyant billionaire, had morphed into the Great White Hope, complete with branded merchandise. He promised to restore the country to its natural order of racial hierarchy and fired up his largely white base. Trump campaigned on a platform of equal opportunity hate.

No one was spared, not even those with physically disability. His rhetoric was calculated to stir deep racial and sexist prejudices that were only whispered in private and he gave his supporters the permission to hate. Donald Trump, the establishment outsider, broke all the rules of election decorum and still won.

It is the stuff of movies. There is a movie with the same title starring James Earl Jones. The Great White Hope was based on the incredible life story of Jack Johnson and the search for a white boxer to stop his un-checked dominance. Jack Johnson was the first African American boxing champion. He was the undisputed heavy weight champion from 1908 to 1915 when racism and segregation was a way of life in America.

Johnson taunted and defeated every white challenger and married white women. Jack Johnson refused to sit at the back of the bus and that made him many enemies. Johnson’s openly defiant expression of blackness and celebrity challenged the order of the racially divided landscape. Therefore, a man had to be found to put ‘the boy’ back in his place.

James J. Jefferies was the former undefeated heavyweight champion and a legend in his time. He was called out of retirement with the offer of a prize purse he could not turn down. Two of the greatest heavyweight champions of the world finally got to meet in a clash dubbed, “The Fight of the Century”. On July 4, 1910, 20,000 people gathered in Reno, Nevada to watch the Great White Hope demolish the uppity black boxer.

It did not end well. Johnson won the fight convincingly and silenced his detractors. He was the undisputed champion of the world. The celebration of a black champion caused fury among white boxing fans. The victory triggered race riots across the country.

Barack Obama was a Jack Johnson in the eyes of the white nationalist movement that underwent resurgence during his presidency. They made no attempt to hide their hate and they found a figure who embodied their prejudice in Donald Trump.

In a way, Trump became the epitome of the “Great White Hope”, the Jim Jefferies of the 21st century who triumphed in challenging the audacity of blackness and promising to erase it from the legacy of American leadership.

Somewhere in the great liberal media bubble, it was forgotten that Trump was voicing the frustrations of a large constituency of white men who did not feel powerful and privileged under Obama’s presidency. To follow that up with an articulate white feminist woman would have been too much for the defenders of white male supremacy.

The dark underbelly of America was comprised of real people who were tired of getting dismissed as rural, uneducated and deplorable. The system had forgotten them and Trump showed them a way to get even. Grumpy, documentary maker Michael Moore summed it up best. “Trump’s election was a big middle finger to the American system”.

Hillary Clinton had her flaws too. She was a woman. She carried Bill Clinton’s cross of misdeeds and was tainted with elitism. The voters decided that an overachieving career woman who used her personal email server for official communications could not be trusted.

Hillary became a casualty of entitlement. The world believed it was time for a woman to occupy the highest office in America. She was the better candidate on paper who deserved to win. But in politics they are no assured slots and Americans had their own designs. Only in America can a President Donald J Trump happen. Goddamn!