THE recently concluded Jamaican general election is a studied and extreme contrast to the almost vitriolic nature of the Republican primary elections in the United States. In the aftermath of our election we have demonstrated once again the civility and common sense that should attend a smooth transition to power in any democracy. Both the leader of the Opposition and the prime minister have stated the need to work together in the interest of Jamaica. There was no rancorous reference to the nightmare of a recent past. Time will yet tell how committed they are to this stated path or how falsehood will be revealed for what it is.

The promise to work together for the good of the country is to be contrasted with the stated intention of the then minority leader of the US Senate, Mitch McConnell — now majority leader — that his mission, and that of the Senate, must be to ensure that President Barack Obama was a one-term president. In saying this, McConnell had no respect or concern for the strong democratic traditions that had informed his country’s founding and that have become the envy of the world. Neither did he have any respect for the people of Kentucky, whose vote he ardently sought to become senator. In their pursuit of this almost nefarious policy of obstructionism, there was a mindless undermining of the president’s policies, and at crucial points — as in the shutdown of the government — a serious jeopardising of the constitutional legitimacy of the American Government. No thought was given to the harm that could be done to the nation or how much its respectability abroad could have been damaged. There was just one intention, and it was to deny the legitimacy of the first elected black president of the USA.

This obstructionism has not abated. In fact, it has gained fresh fuel in the stated intention of the leader and other members of the Senate not to consider any appointment that the president may make in filling the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by Justice Antonin Scalia after his recent untimely death. Never mind that in the 2008 elections, Obama won by roughly nine million of the popular vote, and in 2012 by 5 million. If he was able to run for a third term, there are strong indications that he would win.

The truth is that the people have repeatedly reaffirmed the trust they have reposed in him as their president. There has not been a more decent and judicially temperamental president to grace The Oval Office in the White House. There are no scandals that he has had to rebut. He is a family man par excellence, and his judgements and decisions, although they may not be always right, are done with care, and one could say, almost lawyerly deliberation.

Contrast this even temperament and caution with the rambunctious, rancourous, petty, and dangerous fulminations of the leading candidate for the Republican Party. Contrast this with what is paraded as the best elements of policy emanating for the Republican majority in the Congress and several governorships around the country. The Republican establishment or the elites of the party are frightened that Donald Trump could emerge as their nominee for president. They have sought to distance themselves from his most outrageous and distasteful statements and behaviour. But what they do not have the integrity to admit is that they are responsible, perhaps even more than Trump, for his rise. As my wife said, “They spawned him.” One reporter put it pointedly that he is their Frankenstein.

The anxiety, vitriol and now violence that we are now seeing at the Trump rallies have been long in the making. The Republican standard-bearer this time around is Donald Trump, a real estate mogul who has captured the imagination of a growing number of Republicans and others who have been on the fringe of American society, like the white supremacists and assorted ethnic haters who see in Trump their last great hope for reasserting themselves in American life.

Trump has been able to say and do outrageous things without reprimand because there are elements in the Republican Party who desperately need him to be there, and who will not be turned off by what can be considered politically incorrect speech or horrible, violent behaviour.

The vitriol that the Republicans in Congress have spewed against Obama has now come back to bite the Republican Party in its butt — big time. In refusing to work with the president the country has had a dysfunctional government since the Tea Party mavericks rode into town in 2010.This ‘non attention’ to the people’s business, often in deference to interest groups and cronies, not only caused gridlock, but intensified the hatred on both sides of the political divide to the extent that cockroaches scored better in national assessments of the likeability of the Congress.

The net result of all this is that people are now at the angriest they have been over the past 20 years. Median wage has fallen; the middle class is hard to define as many who lost their homes in the Great Recession and have become homeless have slid into poverty. Zero Interest Rate Policy and Quantitative Easing (QE, printing of money) have decimated the savings of many retirees. Wages have remained stagnant and there has been no robust recovery in strong sustainable jobs despite the monthly statistics showing rising monthly employment. Main Street is still starved of credit as Wall Street has gobbled up most of the capital under the QE programme and has largely failed to make it available to the real productive sectors of the economy.

So people are angry; and the anger is palpable. But Trump has not distinguished himself as the one best capable of channelling this anger into anything productive for the nation’s future good. Instead, he has played to people’s worst fears and has stirred a pot with a toxic brew of ethnic hatred, fear, and now violence. He has given voice and legitimacy to what has emerged as a dark, dirty underbelly in the American society. Part of the anger is manifested in the constant cry of members of the white majority that they want their country back. This is no more than coded language for the perceived threat that the changing demographics in the American society represent to the dominance of the white majority. It is rooted in the xenophobic tendencies that have been endemic in the Republican Party, and to which Trump is merely lending leadership.

The world has begun to take a keen look at this dark and dangerous place that America has reached. All well-thinking citizens of the world are understandably troubled by this development. In the globalised village that the world has become, America is still indispensable to its good health. Spewing hatred for others is injurious to this. But H L Mencken aside, we have to count on the good sense of the American people to do what is right for the good health of America and the world. The putrid ideology of ethnic hatred and bigotry must not be allowed to win the day.

Dr Raulston Nembhard is a priest and social commentator. Send comments to the Observer orstead6655@aol.com