“How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?”

- Leonard Cohen (Writer’s note: May he find peace wherever he rests)

A former American marine once told me in a frigid Midwestern winter night in a bar with a sinister name, that the only people who are ever shocked or surprised are those with their heads in the clouds and not with their ears on the ground.

The election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States is not some sort of restatement of Jacksonian republican ideology but rather the natural progression of Western Judeo Christian societies moving to the Right. This lurch is the consequence of the actions of their political elites who sold them a lie in the guise of progress and the perceived threat to their nationhood brought upon by migration and the effects of globalism.

When Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak congratulated president-elect Trump, it was met with howls of derision. Oppositional types made the argument that it was the Umno establishment that was in the line of fire.

As an opposition supporter, I find this sentiment extremely troubling and the kind of thinking that led Hillary Clinton to her Waterloo. The reality is that Najib is right in what he said about the Trump victory and if the opposition is not careful, we may never get that tsunami vote that replaces the current regime with something hopefully better.

The Trump vote was a vote against the establishment. However, pundits forget that Trump destroyed the Republican establishment in the GOP (Grand Old Party) primaries before taking his message to the national stage. He did this by slaying sacred cows and projecting himself as the only one who could save America from the Washington elites who cared little for the white working class that was neglected in the national discourse.

It would be a mistake to dismiss Trump’s demagoguery as appealing to only a subsection of the voting public. While a white working class was in fact his base, his anti-establishment message struck a chord with a diverse group of people who were sick of how things were done in Washington. The reality is that Trump cemented his anti-establishment credentials in the GOP primary that translated to national appeal.

For Malaysian opposition types to see this as some sort of bell weather on the Umno establishment is to miss the point. Trump destroyed the GOP establishment and then went on to destroy the DNC (Democratic National Committee) establishment. In other words, a majority of Americans were sick and tired of the GOP and DNC establishment and voted for an outsider who would change the system.

The problem here is that the opposition and Umno are the establishment. There is nothing that separates the two besides the numerous corruption scandals that plague Umno. In addition, as recent by-elections have proven even this does not seem to bother people who still vote in Umno.

In opposition-controlled states, the economic, social and religious policies are merely the continuation of the Umno establishment. Indeed, the main problem with the opposition is that there is nothing radical that separates them from the Umno. The opposition is merely a revolving door of political personalities (who have operated from both sides of the divide) attempting to redefine mainstream Malaysian politics without breaking the mould or slaying sacred cows.

A Malaysian Bernie Saunders?

In Bernie Saunders, the DNC had its own populist candidate but the DNC establishment as proven by the Wikileaks emails smothered that ember before it become a flame that would ignite a revolution like what Trump did with the GOP. Saunders’ rhetoric appealed to the white disenfranchised working class that would ultimately determine the elections and ironically redraw the electoral map with the loss of traditional DNC strongholds.

The fact that Saunders’ opponents in the DNC routinely highlighted his perceived lack of interest (not true) in the African American community is typical of the racial politics of the so-called progressive centre-left.

Therefore, what the opposition in Malaysia needs if it is really interested in generating a Trump tsunami is a Saunders of our own. Someone who could galvanise the urban and rural polity into rejecting establishment politics and redefining oppositional politics in a way that moves beyond social or political alliances.

Moreover, this is extremely important. Trump did not win because as some would have us believe that social alliances between entrenched interests be it economic or religious, came together. Trump won because his base expanded to include voters who decided for this election at least to reject establishment politics - the swamp of Washington - and vote for the candidate that was willing to destroy his own political establishment.

Then there is personality politics and then there is Trump. Make no mistake, while some Americans may have voted along party lines, what was needed to win - and this has always been the case with American elections - are people who step over party lines, independents and numerous demographics who have never voted.

What Trump managed to do is throw away the conventional political playbook and engage in some good old fashion demagoguery, changing his positions on various issues sometime in the same speech, so that various political interests were satisfied while keeping the core nationalists message intact. In other words, "Make American Great Again", but how we will discover later.

In fact, I would argue that Trump’s ethnocentric message is more in line with mainstream Umno dogma than the supposed inclusive values of the DNC (and in the Malaysian context, the opposition - minus PAS and PKR on a bad day) which many found hypocritical and after the disappointment of the Obama regime, bereft of any moral standing.

Trump appealed to a voting base using rhetoric he knew they would understand, but he also managed to project his anti-establishment message to voters who were disappointed of the change denied them.

Of course, in the American context, there are constitutional safeguards - fragile they may be - that restricts the kind of systemic racism that on paper at least America recovered from. Does this mean that a Trump administration will not roll back on progressive ideas that have riled up the right for years? No. Just that a sizeable chunk of the electorate believes that draining the Washington swamp would not entail the destruction of their liberties. This of course is a problem depending on your weltanschauung.

Finally, there is the whole issue of how the American media got it wrong. While I think the facts speak for themselves when it comes to the establishment media in America, what I would caution is that in the Malaysian context, the alternative media has become the mainstream media.

The alternative press has unfortunately become one big echo chamber. It is difficult writing this when Malaysiakini is under constant attack by Umno. But the press has a role to play and as the Trump victory shows, it is more important that media we consider mainstream report, analyse and spread ideas that accurately reflect what is going on in the country and not project a self-sustaining fantasy that satisfies the consumers.

S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy.