We are all localists now

Why Donald Trump’s second victory is the most striking and powerful answer to the question, where is the story of the non-globalists?

- HINDOL SENGUPTA

Years ago, when I and in the anxieties in the streets of Tokyo and Seoul, in election results in India.The economic and social framework that taught us that "countries that have McDonalds do not go to war against each other" has collapsed, and along it has collapsed a "global media" that controlled the "truth". It is a system that allowed the Economist, a tiny magazine from a tiny island, to proclaim I was a college stu- tiny magazine from a tiny Y dent, the travel writer Pico Iyer was famous for detailing the lives of those who were always on the move, those who were familiar with airports like they were home. Then, the American columnist Tom Friedman wrote "The World Is Flat". When I read that book, I remember thinking to myself this is the story of those who left home-what about all those who never did? Where is their story? Donald Trump's second victory, making him only the second person to ever win the US presidency non-sequentially, meaning there was an election loss between two terms, is the most striking and powerful answer to the question-where is the story of the non-globalists? This story was told during Brexit, but is perhaps yet to be fully understood in England. This story is being told in riots in Paris, and protests in Germany, in consensus overhaul in Italy, and the scorn for Justin Trudeau in Canada. It is being relayed in protests on the streets of Tehran, voters in various countries ought to be voting even though it had never had the ability to influence an election in its own rainy turf. That confidence came from, ostensibly, the source of power, a "borderless" global elite that controlled finance, trade, commerce, and the ability to raise to power, and bring down, governments at will. Long before the term “influencer" became popular, these were the OG popular, these were the OG influencers, if you will, the power behind every seat of government, who were everywhere, all at once.