By Vamsee Juluri
When Donald Trump announced his candidature to run for president a second time, it seemed improbable for many Americans that he could be re-elected. Since then, much has changed.
What has disappeared most of all is a sense of certainty that the next day would be like the previous one.
Trump, it is said, has upended the world order. Alliances and agreements have been remade. Tariffs and visa-barriers erected. Friends and enemies and ‘frenemies’ from around the world shown their places brashly on live streams, like faces in a hall of mirrors.
In 2016, serious men and women thought the US elections would pass like a circus going through town. They were wrong. In 2021, they thought the act of ‘cancelling’ a former president on live TV and social media would mean he would never return. They were wrong again.
Those watching from the margins of everything, though, can see everything.
The difference in how young Americans reacted to 2016 and 2024 is stark. In November 2016, people in the Bay Area wept. The first woman president did not happen on their watch and on their vote. In November 2024, the reaction was strangely subdued. Was it resignation? Relief? Reluctant acceptance? Whatever the inner reasons for this quiet indifference, it seemed reality was back in charge. Whatever one saw and said in their glass screen fantasies and social media silos, in real life, on street corners, campus lawns, cafes and malls, one had to learn to live once again – with ‘difference’, as they say. Your neighbour, friend, family member could have voted for him. But you could not carry what you had in your mind or your heart across a limit. You had to accept reality.
And for the realities that are still, glaringly, unacceptable, there are words one dreams of — hope, change, justice. For this, there are posters, classes, opportunities, spaces and all that – still. But it cannot be the protest seasons of 2017 or 2020 anymore.
Patience, it seems, is the lesson life has taught everybody, while both chaos and calm seem to exist in the same place and time.
That’s the feeling of living through a time like this, of a world being rapidly remade.
Meanwhile, in places where the decisions that remake the world — and leave us to only sagely endure them — are made, things like patience, protocols, predictability, all seem suddenly scarce.
One day, it is a new security document that erases long-accepted concerns about terrorism, and on another, it is a simple grain of rice that becomes the subject of presidential commentary.
But through it all runs the impulse of a man feeling both mighty and noble, a man determined to end wars and bring peace to the world, and, somehow, prosperity as well.
The elephant in the room
The elephant in the room ignored or demonised for too long is now the bull-elephant remaking everything from presidential palace architecture to international relations. What metaphor can we turn to? What story?
A phrase from two years ago comes to mind. A non-Indian writer friend responds to the shocking images of the sniper’s shot, and to Trump’s determined gesture of defiance that followed. “He has Hanuman energy.” That comparison, of course, confuses Indian sensibilities. Hanuman, the embodiment of vinaya (humility), and… him?
But then, there is another Hanuman others have glimpsed, especially in other cultures and traditions. Brash, brave, ballistic. Destroyer of foes, tormentors, tyrants, challengers, kingdoms, cities, gardens — everything.
Events of today are real, carrying effects turning into future causes very quickly. In America one side says ‘No Kings’ and another says ‘No Foreigners’, and yet, neither really knows what it is we are caught up in.
We have no words for it. At best, we sense that we are specks before it. Ram bhakts will say we are but squirrels in his service. Others will remember pairs of ragged claws scuttling over silent sea beds. Or, Dust in the Wind, a song that plays when we remember we are not in charge — even the proud, resilient, can-do Americans.
We are in a time like no other, at least in our lifetimes.
Meanwhile, a man who gave his name to buildings, businesses, franchises, political careers, common peoples’ hopes, and now to powerful, world-shaping legacies, is the bearer of a mighty name too. All by himself, or by the energies that have put him there.
We wait. We watch. Wish well for all.
Presidents and prime ministers shape worlds and orders, sure. In the name of their people and countries, sure. But then, it just might be that the people sense that no one, and nothing, is really in charge, or at least is perceived to be.
We wait. We watch. Wish well for all.
Disclaimer: The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of Financial Express.
(The author is professor of media studies, University of San Francisco, and author of several books)
