If a person of unsound mind is not allowed to contest the election for the post of village head even in the most backward country of the planet, how is it that the self-proclaimed birthplace and nursery of modern democracy has elected, not once but twice in eight years, an “eccentric” person as its President?
No, it is not any opposition Democratic Party politician of the United States or President of Iran, Russia, China or North Korea, but highly placed and globally renowned intellectuals, journalists and academics who are now openly questioning Donald Trump’s mental stability. Even in India, a country where many people still have soft-corner for him, a well-known professor of New Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University in a discussion in an international Hindi podcast called Trump a “sanki.”
A former Indian diplomat also used almost similar expression while appearing in a premier English television channel and so did several prominent anchors and panellists in India and abroad.
A renowned columnist of British daily Guardian on January 25, 2026, called him a “monster and an embarrassment,” yet he considered him an aberration who can be defeated. Another writer in the same newspaper used the same word, and many other abusive expressions for him way back in 2017 during his first term.
If he is really suffering from any psychological disorder, or is a monster or a convicted felon, the biggest poser is why there is mysterious silence over the quality of democracy in the United States, where such a person got elected, not once but twice, after a gap of four years – the first such “distinction.” But why confine oneself to this gentleman; there is no dearth of Trump-in-the-making in France, Germany, Italy, Britain, etc.
In some of these European countries, such leaders have already reached the top post, or are on its threshold. Imagine what will happen to the world in the future?
The White-dominated international media and academics who spare no time to applaud the Western liberal democratic system are nowhere discussing how such a person can be elected by the electorate of the country, which no doubt has reached its zenith in the field of science and technology and which is undisputedly the most powerful nation in the world.
Here is the country that boasts of having the best governing institutions and has the highest number of social scientists and constitutional experts.
Yet this question needs to be addressed, as apparently no civilization that has made so much progress in almost all walks of life will go on to elect such an “abnormal” person to lead it. No, he is not a military dictator who has seized power, but enjoys the people’s mandate. What type of constitution and law allowed the majority of the population of the United States to elect a man as the President for the second time, who, after losing the election, openly backed the armed attack on Capitol Hill, the power centre, on January 6, 2021, which led to the death of several people?
This incident had not happened in any Banana Republic of Latin America or Sub-Saharan Africa, but in the country that has taken the “responsibility” of thrusting democracy all over the world.
William Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, one of his famous tragedies: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Perhaps, today, the situation demands the rebirth of the famous English playwright who would replace the word Denmark (under whose control Greenland is at present) with the United States. Mind it, Hamlet was the prince of Denmark, while Donald Trump’s ambition is to become the emperor of the universe.
Thus, the hard fact is that the modern democracy is facing a real crisis, not in Iran, Russia, China, North Korea or other third-world countries as the propagandists would like us to believe, but in the United States and maybe in some European countries.
Western scholars are deliberately glossing over the signs of cracks in the capitalist democratic structure. They are diluting the whole issue by stating that Trump is just an aberration and can be defeated; otherwise, everything is hunky-dory and it is perfectly all right.
No, he cannot be called an aberration, as the Guardian columnist wants us to believe. He was consciously elected twice by the Americans. A solid band of supporters is strongly behind him, even across the Atlantic Ocean. Herein lies the real concern.
However, the sad fact is that even the researchers and experts from the third-world who love to converge to the Western universities would, instead of examining the challenge the democracy is facing there, go on to hail its great success. They would parrot the lines set by their research guides.
These ladies and gentlemen would write books, attend seminars and television discussions, where they would quote from various Western authors to expose the lack of democracy, rise of majoritarianism thinking and collapse of institutions in the rest of the world. Various prestigious foundations and universities would generously give scholarships to undertake such research.
Nobody is preventing these bright minds from Africa, Asia and South America from doing so. But at the same time, why are such scholars not delving deep to study the inherent weakness within the whole democratic structure raised over the centuries by the West? It is the serious flaw in the legal system and rigidity of the society, which led to the re-election of a “convicted felon” like Trump, whose mental condition is now being questioned.
Had any such absurdity taken place in any non-White country, the response of the Western armies of public opinion makers would have been completely different.
Why did the US Supreme Court’s 6-3 judgement, ahead of the 2024 election, grant immunity from persecution to convicted Trump, not kick off a storm in the country? All six judges, including Chief Justice John Robert, were Republican appointees, whereas the three appointed by the Democrats ruled against him. What type of nation is the United States, where the top-most judges are so biased? In the US, Supreme Court judges, once appointed, serve till the end of life, or if he or she volunteers to retire, or are impeached. John Robert is on this post since 2005. Is there any other country on this planet that has the same strange record?
Contrast this with India. A single-member bench of Justice Jagmohan Lal Sinha of Allahabad High Court on June 12, 1975, declared the 1971 election of the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi from Rae Bareli null and void, prompting her to impose an Emergency on June 25. True, she took the help of the Supreme Court to bail her out. But in the election held 21 months later, the Indian electorate – certainly not as educated as in the US – voted her out of power. She never instigated her supporters to attack the Indian Parliament.
Indira may be accused of becoming dictatorial when unseated by the court verdict. She returned to power in 1980, yet she was never called eccentric, monster and convicted felon.
India, notwithstanding the rise of majoritarianism in the later years, never tried to export or thrust democracy all over the world.
Notwithstanding this anarchy in the US, our Western-educated constitutional experts and jurists, through their writings and lectures, would not dare to pick up a pen on the prevailing chaos in Western democratic institutions. No, Trump is not an aberration, but an outcome of the same faulty system that led to his birth.
While embedded journalists from reputed international broadcasters and newspapers and professors of these universities are still on a civilizational mission throughout the planet, the third world intellectuals have no courage to show them light and tell them loud and clear that the Western scholars should first look inside before bothering about others.
The United States boasts of having a two-party system. What is not highlighted is that both the Republican and Democratic parties are struggling to find their leader.
While the money power played a key role in the emergence of Trump from nowhere, the Democratic Party is facing a crisis of existence. At one end of the party is Christian Zionist Hillary Clinton, while on the other end is a faction led by anti-Zionist, left-leaning Jew Bernie Sanders.
While we in the sub-continent are busy cursing the dynastic rule within, what is hardly questioned is the presence of Kennedys, Clintons, Bushes, etc, in the US politics. While two George Bushes served as President, the third one, Jeb, had served as Governor of Florida between 1999 and 2007. Jeb Bush threw his hat in the ring for the presidential candidate of the Republican Party in 2016, but had to bow out after the sudden appearance of the rookie Trump.
Similarly, mainstream parties in major democracies in Europe, too, are fighting for survival, yet the ruling establishments there are more concerned about democracy in Venezuela and Iran.
Back home in India, several over-excited YouTubers started seeing great promise in Zohran Mamdani becoming a future presidential candidate of the crisis-ridden Democratic Party. What they ignored is that only a person born in the United States can become its president, whereas Zohran’s birthplace is Uganda.
Curiously, while the Republicans are hunting down the migrants – sometimes killing their own people in the process – the Democrats are accused by them of encouraging people from across the world to increase the vote bank.
This is simply because Latinos, Jews, African-Americans and migrants from across the globe vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.
Such glaring realities are seldom discussed in the third world, where the top echelon of society is still busy praising everything belonging to the capitalist West to the sky. They must understand that China, too, is no less developed a country, as was the Soviet Union before 1991. Yet, their political setup was always questioned. They no doubt produced dictators, but not eccentric rulers.
This post was last modified on January 30, 2026 6:45 pm