The new face of Extremism is more depressing than you think (Exclusive)

It's about time we recognised Extremism as this century’s great political strategy. Extremism is so potent not simply because it can get you the votes but because it can also help you stay in power.

If it is the incitement-quotient in an Extremist’s promises that energises his supporters at a political rally, what eventually comforts the Extremist’s detractors, once he has assumed power, is his measured rollback of those very militant promises.

The new face of Extremism thrives on guaranteeing a Hitler, and delivering a Pussycat.

Nobody, perhaps, understands the virtues of Extremism better than Donald Trump.

"Who are these Trump supporters?" Liberal America wondered for about a year,without deducing anything close to a concrete answer.

The liberals were of course searching for some semblance of unified political thinking that galvanised the Trumpeters.

All that while, the real Trump supporters, were fostering more of an unconscious connection with their pompadour-wearing idol. They were lovers of action movies,video games, comic books, oversized heroes, reality television, game shows, and ones who got a new tattoo done every weekend. These were people whose idea of looking inward amounted to self-promotion, and who saw Iraq War-I & Iraq War-II in sheer Superhero Movie Franchise-terms. These people are not dumb -- just people bored of the usual platitudes and the cultured filigreed prose doled out at political daises. And Trump was the ACTION they so craved for.

Most of this, of course, we know about -- one way or the other.

But Trump’s real success and the success of Extremism as a sound political strategy go deeper. And my hunch is that it’s about to be unfurled in full glory only now.

Within seven days of being elected, Donald Trump had by and by made the following statements: Waterboarding as a torture technique is bad; Climate Change is not a Chinese-backed deception to destroy American economy but a reality; the Clintons are not wicked people, and they’ve suffered greatlyin many different ways; Obamacare need not be dismantled in its entirety.

That’s one week and four of his campaign spiels conveniently folded away. Who’s to complain, though? He got himself elected by promising to do the wrong things, and now he’s just doing the right things.

Think about it: the only masses who should be complaining are those who voted Trump into power, and voted him for his hardliner stance on sensitive issues. But, of course, all they can now manage is, “Didn’t we tell you he’s not evil?”

By dressing himself as the Bad Boy amid a bunch of well-dressed prim-looking neat boring boys, Trump appealed to the slick-seeking generation. And once they paved for his successful migration to the Oval Office, Donald John Trump, age 70, only had to show us what a grown-up he actually is to prove himself worthy of the position he’s about to assume.

In the weeks following that first week, Donald Trump has progressively dissed divisiveness, invalidated nativism, and deemed the idea of Islam Ban as illogical.Reminder: His campaign was wrong, and Trump’s now just doing the Right Things.Who’s to complain?

And so, the future of Indo-American trade, which was a matter of great concern for analysts, can for now be dropped from the list of giant anxieties. A friend of the Hindu or not, Trump has too shrewd a business mind to worry about protectionism while overlooking such benefits as India’s liberal market economy, the US$100 billion worth of bilateral trade that happens annually between the two countries, Indian government’s systematic raising of FDI limits, and India’s huge imports of American defence equipments.

My feeling is that, contrary to the primal fear that he may turn out to be this Dictator of the New World, Donald Trump may just down in history as one of America’s most docile Presidents.

All of this brings us to the central question at hand here, which is: What percentage of political thinking today is borne out of having something like a genuine ideology and what percentage of it is just one grand parade?

Over the past year or so, since he started campaigning, many of us seem to have forgotten Donald Trump’s basic vocation: that he is essentially a brilliant salesman. And as Trump slowly sheds away his radical image and readies himself to become the most powerful man in the world, his supporters may do well to realise that his claim for American Presidency was, perhaps, nothing more than his greatest sales pitch ever.