The US Presidential elections that brought Donald Trump back to power created anxious soul searching among progressive voters. What the hell happened?

            Fingers of blame pointed in all directions. The campaign for Kamala Harris was flawed, some said. Others said she didn’t have time to fully introduce her to the electorate. Misogyny and racism were to blame. Misinformation about immigrants and the state of the economy were rife.

            No doubt many if not all of these were factors. They are idiosyncratic to the US at this particular moment in its political life.

            But Trump also fits into a global pattern. The lure of strongmen has risen around the world. Russia after the Cold War was briefly democratic, but that cannot be said today about the Russia under Putin. The same transformation has brought Erdogan to power in Turkey, the growing authoritarianism of Modi in India, the persistence of Netanyahu in Israel, and in China a non-electoral policy has given rise to the autocracy of Xi. Authoritarian right-wing political parties have been on the rise throughout Europe.

The statistics in the recent US elections indicate how quickly the political climate can change. At the time that Kamala was knighted to be the Democratic candidate, the polls indicated that she was a shoo-in. She led Trump by some 7 percentage points in some polls.

            But by October that percentage began to shrink. It eventually came down to an even tie. Then the election itself showed how low it would go.

            What happened in October? This is when people only marginally interested in politics begin to wake up. They did not, however, immediately begin analyzing the policy positions of the candidates, or read the rebuttals to the mistruths and lies that were freely circulated.

            It is likely that this decisive segment of the electorate voted with their guts. They either liked what they saw, or didn’t.

            Many of them looked past Trump’s multiple felonies, proven instances of sexual molestation, business failings and political manipulation. They saw a strongman. His public persona was of a loud, tough leader, who told it like it was.

            Putin leads Russia with similarly ardent support from most Russian citizens. It is true that he has controlled the news media and manipulated the electoral process in a way that skews their perceptions. But it’s also true that people are comforted by the illusion of security that strongmen give.

            Netanyahu enjoyed this sense of invincibility, despite his personal legal problems and his attempts to manipulate the judiciary. Then the October 7, 2023 attack damaged that image. He has tried hard to repair it by taking a stridently militant response.

            Somehow strongmen are able to ward off the criticisms of their many failings. People seem to want a strongman in times of rapid social change, and they are invariably men.

            Globalization has created that unease in societies around the world. Rapid demographic shifts, the caprice of markets to a global economy, the baffling accessibility of manipulated information on the internet have all led to social uncertainty. People wonder who is in charge, and what their formerly insular societies have become.

            Strongmen give that illusion of security. But they are seldom able to maintain it. This leads sometimes to rebellion, and sometimes to increasingly authoritarian repression to keep a discomfited population in check.

            During the US presidential election campaign, one of the Democratic ads tried to warn people about Trump. It sounded an alarm about his dictatorial character and the likelihood he bring a reign of retribution and administer a tough authoritarian rule.

Many of the people at the margins of political awareness were not frightened. They thought this was a good thing.

Whether they will continue to think this way, and continue to admire the skills of the strongman they have chosen, remains to be seen. Trump’s economic plan with tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy will likely cause the national debt to balloon. His tariffs on everything could raise consumer prices enormously and spike inflation. The cruelty with which he tries to control illegal immigration, and his revenge against political enemies may shock the populace into an awareness of what strongmen can do to damage the moral fibre of a society.

The historical record is that strongmen do not last forever. Despite their attempts at infinite reins of power, strongmen die and their charisma is not easily succeeded. Even before then their regimes collapse under their own incompetence and through internal opposition. In the meantime, however, life can be hard, and much damage can be done.

It is not a pretty future, both for the US and for global society. But it will not always be this way, and the spirit of people around the world will survive.