What Trump Has to do with it?

Reality has upset all the intricate schemes of “wise men”.

Many times I had to write and talk about the growing community of “surprised” experts. Those experts, who were genuinely surprised by the collapse of the Soviet Union. How dare they? Indeed, we analyzed everything and prepared a brilliant speech against that collapse for Bush Senior. (That speech was later called “chicken Kiev ” because of its absurdity). Those “surprised” experts started acquiring their disciples and successors, who continue to get frustrated with growing global and local disasters, happening in spite of their analysis.

Now it became a trend and a mainstream (in their language) to be “surprised” . Moreover this “surprised” community was joined by politicians, journalists, artists, public figures, even human rights defenders. And then a strange thing has happened: exactly this “astonishment”, meaning – incompetence, began to be considered as a politics.

Look, those thieves in power do not want elections, isn't it a surprise? Why don’t they understand that rigging elections is not good? Oh, look, there is a war in Chechnya again! And what do those Chechens want? It is not our business. Kremlin bombed Georgia, grabbed Abkhazia and South Ossetia – who could have imagined that? And why do Arabs rebel? We invested so much money in their dictators, we asked them to undertake reforms and establish democracy. No one can be trusted... And the Ukrainians – why are they doing this? We agreed with Yanukovych on everything. He promised to join the European Union with the help of Putin. Well, of course we didn’t assume that Putin will attack Ukraine. And why is he still not satisfied, after the supply of our shrimps was banned? And what do they do in Syria? Obama himself drew red lines there, and they are still bombing. And what is it, this Brexit?

It would be ok if they were surprised silently and peacefully and did not undertake any actions, but, in fact, exactly those “surprised” experts are governing the world's policy. It happens when, unfortunately, their understanding of things does not conform to the reality. Their ideas of the world economy are strong, they look at the world with confidence and they firmly believe in globalization. The problem is that they believe not in the globalization that is really happening, but in the globalization of their own views. Strong belief in their own rightness cannot be hindered by the rapid globalization of corruption, organized crime, terrorism, drug trafficking and other "insignificant" things", which have no place in their bright future.

And how sincerely surprised were our friends abroad by the events in Minsk on December 19th, 2010. Why do they rebel? Indeed, Lukashenka firmly assured us that he was supported by 100% of the population, that there would be no riots and the elections would be stolen honestly. Also he told that no one would come out into the streets. Why did those thousands of people take to the city center, in the cold weather, under the threat of death? We thought they were weak, fragmented, lacking a multivolume economic program. Surprise!

And now this “astonishment” in its entirety has come to Washington, to the former center of world politics. All American elite have suddenly decided that there is no need to pay attention to the reality, that it is appropriate to laugh at the unpromising Trump and support the perspective Hillary. She is defending liberal values. In the understanding of the “surprised” experts, of course. And this understanding is strong, and there is no need to take into account such problems as migration, especially when terrorists by no means can take advantage of it. Or here's another invented problem – corruption of power. It just cannot exist in the heart of the democratic world! Moreover, interracial tensions stopped in the 60s, when we put an end to the segregation.

And then came November 9! Shock! Reality once again has upset all the intricate schemes of wise men, who attempted to explain things in their own way, without any serious research or actions.

This reminds me of the Soviet history, when the era of stagnation was announced by the party bosses as “a period of developed socialism”.

We have yet to learn what kind of president Trump will be. But those problems, which were further exposed during the American elections, are still here with us, and they continue to amass, threatening us all.

I would like to see that America and Europe, which are known for the ability to defend values, are no longer surprised when everything goes wrong. I wish they would cease to believe that there is no connection between the simmering collapse of their policy and their “realpolitik”, which admits the deals with Putin, Assad, Castro, Lukashenka, Aliyev... - the list is quite long. I would love to see realism instead of “realpolitik” preferably before the elections take place in France and Germany. But his probably requires new leaders.

Andrei Sannikov, leader of the civil campaign “European Belarus”, specially for charter97.org