Was Donald Trump elected because he is laughable? : reflections on Trump and sovereignty

Flying over the Pacific to return to Sydney after six weeks in the US, conversations with my friends in New York in the aftermath of the November 8 election run through my head. There was a strong sense of bafflement, even incomprehension, at Donald Trump’s victory. It was mystifying that people seemed to have failed to see the lies that his campaign spread, and accepted his blatant sexism and racism. These responses were often accompanied by outrage and anger at the bigotry of the President-elect and his advisers. There have been, of course, plenty of explanations put forward for the result. But they tend to either be monocausal – such as blaming the result on white middle- to lower-class men – or lacking specificity: sure, sexism played a significant part, but Trump’s vulgarity is not the reason for his success. Or, explanations employed spurious analogical reasoning: the most sophisticated was Yanis Varoufakis’ comparison of the current economic situation to the Great Depression. All these offer elements of truth but they fail to explain how a genuinely laughable figure was elected president.