in homage to Jonathan Swift, author of a “Modest Proposal …” (1729)
Here is the world, once again, waiting for the outcome of an American presidential election. Every four years, the American electorate goes to the polls and the rest of the world waits for the results with anxiety, trepidation, dread, sometimes excitement. It was commonly the case that, in most American elections which included a run for the White House, around half of the population voted; in other elections, the percentage of voters was even lower. In the last presidential elections, held in 2020, nearly 2/3rds of eligible voters cast their ballots, a much higher number than in any other election, though a 2022 study by the Pew Research Center showed that the United States ranks 31st globally when comparing the turnout for the voting-age population. A significant number of Americans, then, have sat out every election—but, oddly enough, the rest of the world awaits the results with bated breath. In some countries, they are most excited about the US election than they are about their own elections. One can imagine why that might be the case, for instance, in north Korea, but why should that be the case anywhere else in the world?
The answer should be obvious: the United States, notwithstanding the frequently encountered arguments about how we live in an increasingly multi-polar world, remains the world’s premier power. China and Russia may lodge a vote here and there in the Security Council to unsettle the US, but they are utterly incapable of doing anything to even mitigate the US-aided genocide that has been unfolding in Gaza over the last thirteen months. Fifteen to twenty years ago the predictions of the demise of the dollar were a dime a dozen, and some were already speaking of it as something of a spent currency, but if anything the dollar is stronger today than it has been in the past. True, China has immense foreign exchange reserves, but these are in dollars; India’s booming foreign exchange reserves are not in euros, the yen, or the yuan, but again in dollars. Here’s the cliché: the dollar is still king.
The United States is, in fact, the only superpower: let not the world be deluded into thinking otherwise. Let me put it in rather unchaste language: when the US shits, the world shits; when the US burps, the world burps; when the US cries, the world cries. Remember how, after the September 11th bombings, the storied French newspaper, Le Monde, rushed to proclaim, “Nous sommes tous Américans”, “we are all Americans”. One might have thought that the French had some pride, or at least they claim to have “reserves” of it, but they swallowed all their pride when they capitulated, with barely a fight, to German fascism. (We should always be particular, when speaking of National Socialism and the phenomenon of Nazism, to speak of the Germans: one of the many ways in which the Germans have sought to hoodwink the world about what transpired in their country from 1933 to 1945 is to suggest that the “Nazis” engaged in “errant” behavior—as though the Nazis were not Germans. But this is another story.) The story of French enslavement to the US is, of course, the narrative of everyone’s enslavement to the story of America. Such is the “dream-work”, as I have described it elsewhere, that America performs. Let me make bold as to extend the insights of Malcolm X: when it comes to the United States, and particularly to the American elections, the entire world behaves like “field Negroes”. When the master gets sick, the world prays that the master will get well soon.
To return, however, to the US elections: in early 2008, as Obama was about to emerge as the front-runner in the Democratic primaries, the Hindustan Times published an opinion piece by me called “Our Fingers in the American Pie” (February 7, p. 14). I have, just as the polling stations in the US have opened up in most of the country for this round of elections, taken the liberty of reproducing it below. There I offered the “modest proposal” that, in an American presidential election, every adult in the world should be permitted to vote. After all, shouldn’t the Afghans, Palestinians, Lebanese, Iraqis, and many others be able to decide whether they want the genocide inflicted upon them by a Democratic candidate or the Republican counterpart? Surely this much freedom of choice should be accorded to the afflicted?
At this juncture, I want to refine that “modest proposal”—at the risk of appearing exceedingly immodest. So, in addition to having a world electorate for the US elections, I suggest that the vote be denied to all Americans except for those in the swing states. No, folks, I’m serious. Why bother having elections in the rest of the country and expending hundreds of millions of dollars preparing ballots, preparing an election machinery, running television ads, and having the rest of the paraphernalia that makes up the circus—complete with clowns, for how else would one describe most American politicians of the likes of the Orangeman, Lyin’ Ted, Ron DeSancitmonious, Birdbrain (remember “Nikki”), and the rest of the troglodytes—called “American elections”. (The Japanese, as I know from my own experience in the country, have a difficult time with “l”: elections turned into erections describes, perhaps somewhat fittingly, the American penetration of the public stratosphere.) If the “swing states” decide everything, shouldn’t we, for the sake of prudence and fiscal discipline, just hold the vote in those states? Alright, we can throw Iowa into the mix: make that eight rather than seven states. But there seems to be no compelling reason why solidly “blue” states such as California or New York or solidly “red” states such as Texas and Florida should conduct elections and waste “taxpayer’s money”. Come to think of it, if everything should revolve around Pennsylvania, perhaps in the next election we might consider restricting the vote to residents of Pennsylvania? That would restore Pennsylvania to its rightful place in American history—the site of battles such as Brandywine and Germantown, host to the first and second Continental Congress, and so on.
Here, then, is my piece form 2008, “Our Fingers in the American Pie”, and I don’t think I would change a word of it:
Every four years, the world is taken on a roller-coaster ride as Americans cast their vote for the President of the United States. Though votes are also cast to fill vacancies in the Congress, state Governorships, and other state and local offices, the story of the quest for the Presidency is an all-consuming affair. This year’s race for the White House, whose occupant is generally known as the world’s most powerful man, has everywhere generated more than the usual excitement, and understandably so: for the first time in American history, the Anglo-Saxon white male’s iron-clad grip over this office, indeed his prerogative to claim the office as his birthright, seems to have been put into question. Had Hillary Clinton been the sole Democratic front-runner, she would already have, in our cliché-worn times, ‘made history’; all but poised to claim victory as the nominee of the Democratic Party, she suddenly found more than a worthy contender in Barack Obama, who is not only young but, from his father’s side, of African descent. In a country where nearly one out of every three African American males will, in his lifetime, have had some experience with the criminal justice system, the political ascendancy of Obama is a wholly unexpected political phenomenon.
Much to everyone’s surprise, Obama won in Ohio; but if that was supposed to pave the way for his easy nomination as the Democratic Party’s candidate for the Presidency, the voters in New Hampshire robbed him of his advantage. Clinton outwitted him and the scales are now evenly tilted. Though the Republican candidates are less colorful by comparison, certainly to interested spectators overseas, the race in the Grand Old Party was similarly wide open before John McCain suddenly appeared to all but seal his nomination. All of this is often described as a resounding testimony to the vitality of American democracy, and merely serves to confirm Americans in their cherished belief that it is for them to set the benchmark for what constitutes democracy.
Many travesties have, of course, been committed in the name of democracy, and it is a chilling thought that the same country which could not conduct fair elections in either 2000 or 2004, even requiring the Supreme Court to crown the President, partly justified its assault upon Iraq with the argument that the United States was determined to bring democracy to the volatile Middle East. Dynastic politics, it was long argued by American and European political scientists, seemed ingrained among Asians and Africans, lesser people not infused by the sentiment of democracy, though if Hillary Clinton gets elected to office the White House will have been occupied at the end of her first term by a Clinton or a Bush for twenty-four years.
American democracy, then, is much less a dynamic thing than what one might imagine, and it is certainly safe to aver that it is, for people in some parts of the globe, a positively dangerous thing. It is dangerous not because it will emancipate people who are in shackles, much less because American democracy has generated ideas feared by despots and authoritarian rulers, but rather for the all-too-obvious and therefore overlooked reason that an American election invariably has global repercussions. When the people of Mauritius or New Zealand go to the polls, the consequences of their votes do not generally extend beyond the boundaries of their respective countries. Even the electoral exercise and outcome in India, for all the country’s aspirations to be recognized as a great power, has comparatively little weight outside South Asia. An American election, however, is never merely an American affair – indeed, one suspects that it is more closely watched in some countries than it is in parts of the United States itself. In presidential elections, generally half of the electorate votes; in other election years, the voter turnout is poorer. One of the many luxuries of being an American is that one can, evidently, be supremely indifferent about the outcome of a presidential election. But luxuries, as is commonly known, are obtained at someone else’s expense; many must labor to make available luxuries to the few.
This brings me, then, to my modest proposal. When America votes, the world watches and listens – and even, here and there, rumbles. Larger countries, such as China and India, or highly affluent and friendly nations such as Switzerland and Australia, can shield themselves to a substantial degree from the consequences of an American election. But smaller countries, as well as those which have earned the enmity or wrath of the United States, are not so fortunately placed. Though political scientists, policy makers, journalists, and other commentators have written profusely on the meaning of democracy, and there has been much speculation about how democracy might be stretched to make it something more than an exercise in casting votes, the idea of electoral democracy remains paramount. The United States, in particular, has demanded allegiance to the idea of ‘one person, one vote’. The uniquely global phenomenon that the American election is, the world should insist that every adult around the globe should have the opportunity of voting in an American election and so be able to have a hand in shaping his or her own future. One must ensure, especially, that the citizens of those countries that have faced the brunt of American oppression, such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Nicaragua, Cuba, Iraq, and Sudan, have the power of the vote to influence the course of events in the United States. To be sure, this might amount to nothing more than having the inalienable right of deciding whether they wished to bombed into oblivion by a Democrat or a Republican, by a Reagan, Bush, or a Clinton.
If anyone deems this an immodest proposal, it remains only to end with a singular observation. In outsourcing their elections to people who must be ever so vigilant about the course of affairs in the United States, Americans may finally succeed in bringing the idea of American democracy to wondrous fruition. And the numerous theorists who have been writing the obituary of the nation-state should similarly feel quite fulfilled.
Lal Salaam: A Blog by Vinay Lal 