Distance magnifies a crisis. Because you begin to imagine your worst fears as real. Since you are distant, physically not in that space, you have no way of knowing that your fears could be exaggerated or ephemeral; instead, your dread of the unknown becomes cold and hard.
A similar thing happened to me when I boarded the flight to New York exactly ten days after Donald Trump’s scary victory on the Fifth of November, Two Thousand and Twenty Four. I began to imagine an America that had transmogrified into Trump’s spitting image.
Would the cabin crew be hostile to brown-skinned, possibly sneaky, immigrants? Would they stop us from using common toilets? When we got off at Kennedy, would there be a separate line for us? To meet a cruel officer who would look at us with unconcealed suspicion? Perhaps even angrily refuse entry and put us on the return flight? Worse, could we get detained on some technicality, like a fading visa stamp?
But all my fears were unreal.
The cabin crew was as businesslike as always. White passengers happily allowed a rite of passage to the toilet. As I deplaned, the horde walking towards the immigration counters was as diverse as ever - Whites, Blacks, Latinos, south Asians, Orientals, all clutching passports and wallets, virtually sprinting to beat the queues, consumed by their own quest, without a shred of care or menace towards people around them.
I tried hard to spot lurking Klansmen, hooded and bloodthirsty, but there were none. I even got lucky with an immigration officer who smiled and welcomed me to the US, stamping my passport in record quick time. At least Kennedy Airport had not gotten Trumped.
My cab driver out of Kennedy was a Pakistani-American immigrant. He had unquestioningly voted for Trump, hoping for an economic miracle. When I said “Congratulations, your man has won”, he smiled, and said, “Yes, good, but now let’s see”. His excitement, while obvious, was a tad subdued. I was somewhat mystified.
Later that evening, I met a school buddy who was in town from San Francisco. Now this guy is a quintessential “desi” tech millionaire. He has built and sold a couple of quant companies, with a third start-up in, what else, but artificial intelligence. I thought he would be disappointed at Kamala Harris’s rout, especially since he is a fellow Tamilian, a West Coast liberal immigrant, and a lifelong Democrat. But he astounded me with his response.
“I voted for Trump”.
“Why?”, I almost yelped in pain.
“Because these Democrats had gotten too woke. Imagine their focus was on building transgender toilets when a million other important policies are going abegging”.
“No, how could you? These guys peddle hate, they want to throw out immigrants, heck they even deny global warming, which is catastrophic. How could you!”.
He shrugged, very similar to my Pakistani-American cabbie, saying “I don’t know, let’s see”.
Over the next few days, as I saw and met people in cabs, stores, and walkways, I faintly detected shades in how different communities seemed to be dealing with an all-conquering Donald Trump. The Blacks were the most taciturn, almost apprehensive, but not petrified. The Latinos too were taciturn, but did not feel the need to curb their natural ebullience. The South Asians, while naturally taciturn, seemed secure, almost nonchalant.
And White Americans?
They too were taciturn - I hardly overheard any mention of Donald Trump or heated political talk - there was no trace of triumphalism. If anything, they exhibited a calm sense of redemption, as if a quiet, almost unspeakable task had been accomplished. As if the task was double-edged, one that had to be done to reassert a certain kind of nationalism, but equally one that was dangerous as it could spin out of control and inflict inscrutable damage, so it was best to be circumspect and cautious, not celebratory.
As I replayed my observations in my head, I was struck by an adjective that was common to all communities - taciturn! While dealing with trauma or triumph, everybody seemed to be doing it quietly, taciturnly. Why?
I think it’s because people have a lurking sense of the upheaval that Trump The Maverick could cause. He is tempestuous. He can take hugely disruptive calls without thinking through the consequences.
If he actually slaps a 60 percent tariff on China, will that push the price of an iPhone to ten thousand dollars? Increase interest and mortgage rates by 300 basis points?
Will he disenfranchise naturalised American citizens? Will you have to go back to your native country after having lived in America for three decades? What about your children? Will he snatch their citizenship too, even if they are born in the USA?
Will he actually open the floodgates of climate-destroying technologies and processes? What will that do to hurricanes and sea levels? Will your coastal cottage become un-insurable, or get submerged?
Will Russian spies roam freely in America?
It’s the prospect of such wild fears coming true under a highly mercurial and unpredictable - but supremely, unchecked-ly powerful - Donald Trump that’s keeping people taciturn. It’s the muting effect of the great unknown.
But then why are they simultaneously also calm? How can they be so stoic in the face of such danger? I think it’s because of what I would call the “Matt Gaetz effect”. People still trust that Trump will be circumscribed by America’s institutional boundaries. There’s a “Lakshman Rekha” that he will be prohibited from crossing. If he attempts a truly egregious action - like the selection of Matt Gaetz to be the Attorney General - America will push back.
Yes, it will cut Trump a lot of slack, but not allow him to kill America’s democratic soul. It’s this faith that’s keeping Americans calm and stoic.
And, of course, the final check on Donald Trump’s power to disrupt: he’s only going to be around for four years. How much damage can he actually do, given the severe paucity of time and follow-through action? That’s the final faith that’s keeping Americans calm and stoic - their wonderful restraint of a two-term limit on any American president, even the all-conquering Donald Trump.
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