20 16 election reflects American politics. What are the problems in society?

The world-famous 20 16 American election is over. However, the political vortex it aroused continues, and the strategic changes and even philosophical thinking it triggered are far-reaching. At present, public opinion is only an analysis of the superficial phenomena such as the reasons for the victory and defeat of the two parties, the characteristics of Trump's cabinet formation and its policy trend. This paper holds that this general election, Britain's referendum on Britain's withdrawal from the European Union in the first half of the year, and a series of sudden changes since this year have become landmark events in the process of the 20 16 world. They show that in 2 1 century, a new trend is emerging in world politics, which is different from that in the 20th century.

The American election reflects a major change in American political form.

It is still too early to evaluate the historical significance of the 20 16 general election to American political change. There are some comments for reference: some people say that this is the biggest political division since the end of the American Civil War; Others believe that this is the most serious impact on the two-party system in the United States since the reorganization of political parties in the early 20 th century; Others pointed out that this is the biggest change in American society since Roosevelt's New Deal. Regardless of the level of these comments, they all point to a new starting point or turning point in American politics.

First, this election reflects a major change in the power structure of the two parties in the United States.

Trump, the presidential candidate of * * * and the party, rose suddenly, taking a big lead with more than 300 electoral votes, driving most States in the United States to become "red States", so that * * * and the party finally won the "three-in-one" general election of the president, the two houses of Congress and the governor. This is a rare new record of American bipartisan politics after World War II, forming another new political party reorganization in American history. Among them, the most important thing is that the four democratic "towns" in the Great Lakes region-Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania-have changed from blue to red and turned to the * * * and the party. This shows that the influence of the Democratic Party in traditional industrial areas has been seriously weakened, and the AFL-CIO, as an important source of votes for the Democratic Party, has completely lost control of its trade union votes.

19 At the end of the 20th century, the Democratic Party of the United States changed from a representative of plantation owners in South China to a representative of the interests of the middle and lower classes in the northern industrial areas, which lasted for more than a hundred years, forming a "reform" route of the Democratic Party from Wilson and Roosevelt to Kennedy and Johnson, and then to Clinton and Obama. In this election, Trump's winning strategy is characterized by posing as a representative of the interests of the middle class, under the banner of "reform", changing the image of * * * and the "conservative first party" within the party, and pulling traditional Democratic voters into the ranks on a large scale. This election broke the traditional regional structure and policy division of the two parties, changed the historical track of the two parties for a whole century, and will have a far-reaching impact on the American political structure in the 2 1 century.

Second, this election reflects a huge and profound rift in American social identity.

From the beginning, * * * and Trump, a Republican, disguised themselves as representatives of the interests of middle and lower-class whites with low education and long-term oppression from all directions, and played the banner of "anti-immigration, anti-elite and anti-globalization". First, he defeated the mainstream forces, especially the candidates of the Bush family, in the * * * and the party, and then pursued the victory, and elected Hillary Clinton, a Democratic candidate with strong financial resources, one-sided media, constant support from the upper echelons of the two parties and high public opinion. This result is "unexpected" but "reasonable". This "feeling" is an irreversible and subversive fracture in American social identity. This is an unprecedented mutation. More than ten years ago, Huntington, the founder of "Clash of Civilizations", wrote "Who are we? The book foresees that the traditional white middle class in the United States, mainly Anglo-Saxons and Protestants, will become a minority due to the rapid growth of the minority population in about half a century and around 2050, and the inevitable result is that the mainstream values of American society will be subverted.

This prediction came true in less than ten years, and I'm afraid Huntington himself wouldn't have thought of it. Racial conflicts in the United States have a long history, but none of them involve the division of mainstream social identity. The identity split reflected in this election includes the confrontation between 1% upper-class rich people and 99% lower-middle class people, the confrontation between upper-class elites and the broad masses of lower-middle class people, the conflict between white society and colored people, the difference between coastal areas and inland areas, and the age-old prejudice between gender and various interest groups. Even in grassroots politics, identity is divided, and the value orientation of "left-wing grassroots" represented by Sanders and "right-wing grassroots" represented by Trump is also outstanding. This time, the exposure of the split of American social identity is full, intense and complicated, which is indeed unprecedented. This identity division will last for a long time, and its influence on American party politics and even domestic and foreign policies cannot be underestimated.

Third, this election reflects the intergenerational change of American political form, that is, the political form of network informationization replaced the political form of industrial age.

On the surface, Trump countered the intervention of the whole two major party machines, all mainstream media and state power in a certain sense with the strength of individuals and families, and won with such a great advantage that the world public opinion was stunned, especially the professional authority in the field of political science. As a result, some people regard Trump's eccentric personality and vulgar language, the image charm of his children's son-in-law and the scandals of the two candidates as important factors leading to the election results. As we all know, the most important factor leading to this election result is that the political form in the era of digitalization, informationization and networking has emerged and produced great effects.

In the face of this new political form, the original Gallup sampling poll model is invalid, and the polls using big data and cloud computing are very close to the actual results; The original two-party grass-roots voting control method is invalid, and more voters no longer vote according to the previous regions, families, occupations and genders; The mainstream media unanimously favored Hillary Clinton, deliberately suppressed Trump, and covered up the serious problem that the Democratic Party was divorced from public opinion, which only helped; New communication methods such as online media, social media and self-media are popular, and new models of big data and cloud computing are used to accurately predict that Trump will win;

Network tentacles penetrate into the most secret places of the core figures, quickly expose global communication, and instantly subvert the orthodox decision-making process and election results; Western party politics has been difficult to control within a country, and international political forces and international non-governmental organizations are interfering more and more. Russian hackers and Wikileaks have influenced the election process from different directions. Wait a minute. The original American two-party political form is the product of the industrial era. Under the new historical conditions, it is emerging new forms such as fragmentation, networking, entertainment and internationalization, and its new characteristics such as grassroots, mobility, mutation and globalization will continue to develop. The American election, Britain's withdrawal from the European Union and a series of events in small and medium-sized countries such as the Philippines, South Korea and Turkey all point to this trend.

Fourth, this election reflects the polarization trend of American politics, among which the right-wing polarization trend is more prominent.

As a landmark event in American political history, Trump's election has both positive and negative effects, especially the serious consequences of the American right-wing forces taking the opportunity to gain power. The intensification of social contradictions in the United States at present reflects the deeper contradictions in the interest structure, industrial structure and government resource allocation in the United States under the trend of globalization. A series of extreme propositions put forward in Trump's campaign platform, on the surface, are the emotional catharsis of the long-term dissatisfaction of the middle and lower classes of society, but to some extent, they put forward the fatal weakness of the United States in the face of domestic structure:

First, the domestic middle class is extremely dissatisfied with the distribution of wealth and ethnic relations;

Second, the decline of industrial competitiveness has weakened the real wealth and financial ability of the United States;

Third, the huge gap between America's global strategic goals and its ability to achieve them has become a strategic negative asset. Trump's danger lies in his involvement in these core issues, which broke the "secret of the emperor's new clothes." This offended the "political correctness" that the American elite avoided. However, the Democratic Party headed by Hillary ignored these contradictions and failed to come up with a systematic road map for reform, which is the fundamental reason for its failure.

However, the tone of Trump's so-called "reform" is exclusive, conservative and retrogressive, and it is impossible to solve the thorny dilemma facing the United States. On the contrary, it may open the Pandora's box of racism, religious fundamentalism and anti-ideology and intensify the existing internal and external contradictions.

Just after the election, social unrest broke out in various parts of the United States, racist forces rose, and right-wing forces gained the upper hand in forming a cabinet. There are indications that "Trump phenomenon" is extremely complicated, and "Trump reform" is full of unpredictability and instability. Once all kinds of conservative values and right-wing extremist ideas are combined in this election, such as racism and xenophobia, white racial superiority and anti-ideology, trade protectionism and anti-China and anti-China forces, isolationism and American exceptionalism, cold war mentality and anti-globalization, McCarthyism and Christian fundamentalism, etc. And put it into policies and actions through the new president's cabinet team, its negative impact will far exceed American politics, and the future of the world will be worrying.

The American election reflects the changing trend of world politics.

The new American political form is the product of the change of the world economic form. Trump's election, together with the two landmark events of Britain's withdrawal from the European Union, reflects the new contradictions and conflicts in world politics and economy in the 2/kloc-0 century. Its characteristics can be summarized as follows:

First, when economic globalization reaches a certain stage, it will aggravate the imbalance of interest structure within countries.

The free flow of wealth around the world increases the difficulty of social wealth redistribution, and the phenomenon that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer is increasing. The rich can find new wealth growth points and shelters on a global scale, while the poor are getting worse at home. When the latter cannot find a way out, there will inevitably be a wave of anti-globalization and anti-regional integration. This is the economic reason for the serious opposition between elite politics and grassroots politics. It is also the social basis for Trump's opposition to trade liberalization and rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the fundamental reason for the British people to oppose EU integration and vote for Britain's withdrawal from the EU. In order to get votes, politicians in various countries have to accommodate the anti-globalization tendency of grassroots politics. In order to maintain the foundation of domestic rule, governments have to retreat on the track of globalization and regional integration, or even change tracks and derail. Once this trend spreads to become a common phenomenon, the factors of conflict in international relations may rise faster than those of cooperation.

Second, the interdependence between emerging economies and developed economies has changed, and developed countries have changed from promoters of trade and investment liberalization to advocates of trade protectionism.

Emerging economies have accounted for more than 50% of the world economy, and their ability to stimulate economic growth is greater than that of developed economies. The proportion of excess profits returned by developed economies from developing economies is declining, and the path of stabilizing the internal social structure by relying on external profits is getting narrower and narrower, and the middle and lower social security system in China is seriously unable to make ends meet. An important topic in this American election debate is health care reform, which also involves the adjustment of the entire tax system. This involves the core issue of the whole interest structure, resulting in sharp contradictions and conflicts. At the same time, with the upgrading of industrial structure and international competitiveness of emerging economies, the world market share of developed economies has further shrunk, and the domestic employment rate has also shrunk. In all these cases, western countries blamed the internal structural crisis on the rise of emerging economies, thus targeting trade protectionism at major emerging economies. As a result, the existing world trade system and international monetary system will have a profound crisis, and it will become a long-term strategic issue for developed economies, emerging economies and developing economies to compete with each other by regressing to the world economic order of exchanging land for prisons and beggar-thy-neighbor before World War II, or insisting on reforming and innovating the world economic system.

Third, under the background of intensified contradictions, persistent structural crisis and the lack of good policies by governments of various countries, there is a dangerous trend of combining polarized politics, extreme ideological trends and extreme violence in developed countries.

The opposition between the world economy and domestic politics has greatly distorted the world outlook of people in western countries. They blame external competition for all kinds of disadvantages in the west at present, and directly blame immigrants for the decline of income and living standards. American immigrants compete with the middle and lower classes of whites at all levels, while European immigrants bring more violent terrorist attacks and social crimes, leading to the spread of extreme ideas such as neo-Nazism, neo-racism and neo-nationalism throughout the West. This kind of communication, in turn, exerts strong pressure on the mainstream society with the help of the spread of new media, and urges state power, party politics and traditional media to move closer to the right-wing conservative forces. The western "political correctness" with the universal values of democratization, marketization and privatization began to return to the old extreme ideas such as white racial superiority, American exceptionalism and Christian fundamentalism. Extremist organizations and violent terrorist acts spread like cancer in both rich and poor countries. Once these two extremist forces merge into one, they may pose a greater threat to human security. The Islamic State (IS) is a realistic example.

Fourth, global governance has become a more urgent theme of cooperation among major powers.

Due to the protectionism, isolationism and anti-globalization tendency of American high-level, global governance on a global scale will face greater difficulties. Whether Trump can maintain the Paris Agreement on climate governance, whether he accepts a more open East Asian free trade system, and whether he is willing to take on more global governance responsibilities is uncertain. The global governance system is inherently fragile, the supply of governance public goods is seriously insufficient, and global governance is out of touch with domestic governance. These problems will be aggravated by the retrogression of the United States. If the United States is unwilling to further develop the global governance system, it will inevitably strengthen the American allied system, then Trump's commitment to withdraw from the allied system and reduce overseas troops will become a thing of the past. If global governance encounters obstacles, then the big countries in various regions have to settle for the second best and develop cooperation mechanisms within the region as much as possible, which will become another form of big country game.