Trump and the granting of reckless wishes

United States President-elect Donald Trump is likely to spend the coming weeks and months smoothing over the insults he levelled during his long, ugly, scare-mongering and ultimately successful campaign. If he ever deigns to read the New York Times he’ll find in its recent archives a two-page spread listing every fumble, fabrication and foul characterisation he made over the past 18 months, a good place to start should he be in the mood for a mea culpa.
Of course Trump’s massive celebrity ego will not allow him to take responsibility for all of his vile pronouncements. Nor does he particularly need to, as long as the pollsters and the news media are in the throes of guilty hand-wringing after being so wrong about his chances against Hillary Clinton. And even as the American pundits couldn’t see this coming, other observers around the world have no excuse to feel smug. We all proved to be shamefully naive about the mood of the US electorate, that the simmering rage against the establishment was strong enough to overcome the alternative candidate’s sexist, racist rants and dangerous policy proposals. 
The fallout will be tumultuous. The election of a demagogue to run the world’s most powerful country paves the way for the rise of other demagogues elsewhere. America’s two-century-old model democracy has been exposed as a trap, enabling ill-tempered, intolerant hypnotists to attain the highest office in the land. All that sets a national election in the US apart from those in developing countries appears to be the sinful amount of money spent on campaigns and the shocking extent of the hypocrisy. 
Trump poured fuel onto the smouldering embers of discontent ample enough to generate a wildfire. In other developed countries such a personality would be condemned, but this is America and it is Americans who will have to deal with the outcome of their own shortsighted, self-serving foolishness. 
Trump being a haughty, brash, boastful maker of deals, the next four years will see immense changes amid worrisome experimentation in foreign policy. He has pledged to pursue the “best deals” for the US and is unlikely to be accommodating, as real-world diplomacy requires. Convinced that America has given too much of itself away, he will be only interested in taking and taking back. We expect US willingness to assist the developing world – a mainstay of its foreign policy since World War II – to recede dramatically.
And therein lies the opportunity for Russia and China to gain vast new influence in world affairs. If Trump, brimming with cockiness and lacking political savvy, repeatedly shoots himself in the foot on the global stage as he has on the campaign trail, all Moscow and Beijing have to do is treat other nations civilly and their standing will rise. Repelled by US protectionism or arrogance, non-aligned governments will eventually turn to the fairer suitors.
What the brotherhood of nations must hope for above all is that Trump, who appears to be circling himself with hawks, does not in his recklessness create further conflict that could trigger war among the major powers. There is some basis for optimism in this regard, in the fact that politicians – in America as elsewhere – will spout any sort of risky nonsense to get elected, only to retreat to more rational ground once in office.
In choosing Trump, the American electorate – Clinton’s plurality in the popular vote notwithstanding – has demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the world. If their new leader could find the wisdom to guide his citizens towards the light, the new era on whose threshold we stand might turn out to be welcome.