Europeans’ puzzlement about Trump

The election of Donald Trump was as shocking and disheartening to most Europeans as it was to polite circles in the United States. In some ways it was even more so, because they know less about the America and have more trouble understanding how it could have happened.

The reactions in Denmark, which were probably representative of Europe, were perfectly predictable along party lines. Most politicians were generally understated in observing that the US remains an important partner in world affairs. Right-wing Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen was more cordial, expressing a desire to continue the two countries’ good relations. The Left was aghast and feared for the survival of human rights and, from a slightly longer perspective, the planet. They think Denmark should reconsider the close military alliance it has had with the US since Anders Fogh Rasmussen drank the WMD Kool-Aid in 2003.

Global policewoman 

But it was obvious across the entire spectrum that they had strongly preferred Clinton, as did around 95% of Danes, and found the alternative unthinkable. Danes and most other educated Europeans know Clinton mostly from her role as secretary of state in photo ops with the world’s so-called dignitaries. She was an internationalist; she was well-spoken and well-informed; and she was “tough-minded.” She was also associated with her husband’s tenure during the economic prosperity and international stability in the days before 9/11.

For Danes, Clinton’s most important attribute, given the aspersions Trump cast on NATO, was her credentials as a Cold Warrior and Putin demonizer. Danes often think I’m naïve about Putin when I say that it was the US that fomented a coup against an elected government in Ukraine, much of which had been part of Russia for more than 200 years, and that Russia could hardly be said to have “intervened” in Syria when it was the only major military force that the country had invited.

They say the only reason I don’t worry about Putin is that I didn’t live in a divided Europe during Soviet hegemony. Trump not only is threatening to pull out of NATO, which would give Putin carte blanche to invade the Baltics and push westward; he’s even spoken favorably of that megalomaniac dictator. So Europeans, especially in small, exposed countries, had their own understandable pragmatic interest in the United States’ continuing to defend them against whatever is left of the Russian menace under the vigilant leadership of Hillary, her neocon posse and the US defense industry lobby.

Deplorables may have grievances too 

On the other side of the coin, Europeans were incredulous about Trump’s support partly because they don’t know the real state of what used to be the American middle class. From the same mainstream media that trashed both Sanders and Trump, they heard that US unemployment is below 5%, inflation is below 2%, and economic growth is always starting to gain traction. They don’t know that almost 100 million working-age Americans are out of the labor force; real median wages have fallen for decades; inflation for actual consumers of food, health care services and college tuition is far above the official rate; middle-aged white people in the heartland are addicted to opioids and committing suicide in record numbers; infant mortality … etc. etc.

Europeans had confidence in Clinton because she represented the status quo. Sixty million American voters distrusted her because she represented the status quo. That’s a simplification of course. There were also the classified e-mails on her private server and the apparent abuse of her office for private gains. Her strange, complicated relation to Islam: refusing to identify it with terrorism, opening the immigration floodgates to Muslim refugees, accepting contributions from countries under sharia law, helping to precipitate another Islamic civil war in Libya. And then she alienated a big bloc of the electorate with that elitist deplorables remark.

Caveat, disclaimer and disavowal of liability
I should hasten to add that none of this is meant as an apology for any of Trump’s outlandish pronouncements and behavior. As is well known, most Europeans reject absolutely some of the positions of the American right that Trump has advocated such as relaxed gun control, capital punishment and restrictions on abortion. They also stand to lose from protectionist trade policies. In this brief summary, I have chosen to focus on the aspects of their views I think are most in need of clarification.