WITH the second coming of Donald Trump as United States president, analysts of every stripe and nationality are putting in their 5-sen's worth as to why and how all this came about.
To be honest, I came away from the current political goings-on in the US feeling rather smug as a Malaysian. Time was when many Malaysians (even now) consider the way our own politics is organised as almost "sui generis" and not in a complimentary way.
Others who accept or even defend the way of politics in our fair land may shrug with some discomfort or embarrassment, accepting that politics, as we know it here, maybe something of an outlier or beyond what is considered the global "norm".
How wrong they are, considering what happens now in the US and, indeed, much of the democratic Western world.
As Gary Younge wrote in the book, Who Are We?: "There is a toxic nostalgia to populist identity politics that can be applied in almost any context: "Take Back Control" (Brexit); "Make America Great Again" (Trump); "Let's Take Finland Back" (The Finns Party).
Younge then proceeded to quote Diana Mutz, a political science and communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, by way of explaining Trump-era American politics: "It used to be a pretty good deal to be a white Christian male in America, but things have changed and I think they do feel threatened."
So yes, identity politics and the sense of feeling "threatened" in one way or another go hand in hand.
Any wonder then why immigration has become such an all-consuming political issue and has been played up by Trump to such good effect in his re-election?
Trump and his supporters then get painted with the broad-brush label of being shamelessly "racist" for giving voice to "threatened" whites and more particularly, white males. The classic political cleavage between the progressive left and the conservative right then quickly comes into play, each accusing the other of being "the bad guys".
But then something else happened. If Trump and his acolytes are the racist bad guys, why did black males and Latinos also vote in droves for him in this round? Maybe it is because the conservative-progressive political divide cuts across all races, genders and other "identities"?
Trump supporters next turned the tables to accuse their Democratic Party opponents of playing identity politics with the DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity) mantra which evidently strikes such a chord leading to a rather severe backlash against the Democrats almost across the board.
Does all this sound rather familiar to Malaysian ears, despite some rather more US-specific political jargon? If so, are we not more at the political forefront internationally rather than being the outlier or, worse, the outcast in the way the political discourse is being played out here?
Also, why is there this political convergence of sorts by the US and the West more generally with Malaysia and not the other way round – Malaysia to the supposedly high watermark of where the US and the West used to be?
Did the US and the West really "lose control" of their own countries? How could that be when, unlike Malaysia, their demographics were all along shaped by their own elected governments, not dictated by colonial overlords?
Whatever may be the case, welcome to the brave new world that independent Malaya and then Malaysia muddled along and, in a rather lonely manner, beaten a path that others may now likewise tread.
It was never easy and anything if not messy but, as I will always maintain, we can hold our heads high that it has been a creditably exemplary path that we had taken.
The writer views developments in the nation, region and the wider world from his vantage point in Kuching