To Understand How Trump Won (and Almost Won Again), Read “The Blind Man’s Garden”

 On Election Night 2020, 81 million people watched in indignation and confusion as 74 million others showed a baffling commitment to a man whose actions have directly contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands over the past year.  That night was both more and less surprising than the 2016 election:  not many expected the outcome of 2016, and people in 2020 are wearily accustomed to the weekly roll-out of new scandals.

 

After the events of the past year, though, many Americans thought the era of Trump might end.  Surely, the horror of the pandemic would shock his supporters out of it, and they’d vote…whomever, so long as it wasn’t him.  Not so—he even got more than 10 million additional votes.  The huge, weighty dissonance of watching the events play out is hard to reconcile.

 

That’s where The Blind Man’s Garden can help us.  Published in 2013 by British Pakistani writer Nadeem Aslam, this novel takes place in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the months following 9/11.  We begin by following Jeo, a young medical student, and Mikal, his foster brother, as they plan to travel into Afghanistan to help civilians injured after the US began their retaliatory attacks.  Almost immediately, they are sold into Taliban service; almost immediately after that, the base they are taken to is raided by US forces.  Jeo is killed and Mikal is taken into US custody as a terrorist and subjected to torture.

 

Throughout the novel, Aslam explores the forces that create divisions between people and groups.  Even though Aslam’s novel takes place in a very specific place and time, its implications are applicable to many situations.  Several elements contribute to Aslam’s picture of humanity in the face of crisis, especially in how these elements can contribute to the crisis and help it spin out of control.

 

The violence in the novel, though much of it is state-sponsored, is decentralized and chaotic.  Anyone can be struck at any time.  Jeo and Mikal only left their home to help civilians, but they are immediately met with attacks.  The events of the entire novel only exist as fallout from America’s response to 9/11, but that response targeted people who were entirely uninvolved in the strikes.  In the face of this sudden, widespread eruption, the people in Aslam’s novel look for security.

 

Many find it in strict adherence to Islam.  After Jeo’s death, his father, mother-in-law, and widow attempt to visit his grave, only to be stopped at the gates to the cemetery by cloaked figures holding large sticks.  They forbid the women from entering, saying it is against Islamic law, and further state that it is transgressions like these that have brought Allah’s wrath on formerly-pious nations.  While we are meant to see this as a mistaken action, there are few strawmen in this novel.  Aslam asks us to understand why so many people reacted to intense instability in their lives by clinging to something that could give that chaos a meaning, an order.

 

In the same way, we can try to understand the continued support for Trump’s administration in 2020 as an attempt to create normalcy and sense for themselves.  Even besides the pandemic, 2020 has brought events that would have dominated headlines for weeks and months:  the assassination of Qasem Soleimani nearly leading to all-out war, the wildfires in California and Australia, the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and so many others drowned out by the constant stream of more.  While many of the people who still cling to Trump consider different events to be significant, Blind Man’s Garden can show us just how strong the desire for stability can be.

 

The thing people choose to cling to, though, are dependent on their backgrounds, especially in education.  Jeo’s father, Rohan, set up a school as a young man and called it Ardent Spirit.  When the school first opened, it bore an inscription on the front arch reading “Education is the basis of law and order.”  Rohan added “Islamic” at the start of the inscription soon after, and it continued morphing more and more after he left:  next “Islamic education is the basis of law,” then “Islam is the basis of law,” “Islam is the purpose of life,” and finally resting at “Islam is the purpose of life and death.”  This institution dedicated to education changed its central tenet toward something that guaranteed order over insight and produced graduates eager to attend government-sponsored jihadi training camps.  Some of these boys scheme later in the novel to hold a nearby Christian school hostage, resulting in the deaths of dozens of teachers and students there.  This was the way they were prepared to engage with the world.

 

The US has an education system that privileges people in wealthy areas from K–12 and makes higher education a pipe dream for many.  Better-funded K–12 and access to higher education tends to result in people who are more open to new ideas and critical thinking, but so many people in poorer, more rural areas don’t have these opportunities.  I grew up in a small town in Texas, where Army recruiters visited the high school a few times a year, enticing students with a pull-up contest and promises of stable work after graduation.  Most of the people I knew then have either gone into higher education (a minority) or are Trump supporters, with very few exceptions.  He promises stability without upheaval and change for his followers.  In the face of so much upheaval and change this year, it becomes clearer why and how his base remained so loyal.

 

Aslam’s novel mainly focuses on the actions of people who want to do good, whether the protagonists or readers see their goals as good or not.  However, Some are motivated only by material gain or superficial revenge.  After Jeo’s death, Rohan helps pay a ransom for an acquaintance’s son.  At the first meeting with the young man’s captors, they accidentally bring the wrong boy.  When they point out this mistake, the kidnapper pulls out a binder full of pictures, names, and family information, asking the boy’s father to pick out the right photo so they could meet up a second time.  There is easy money to be made in the chaos of war, and Aslam shows the people who seek at their most brutal and their most mundane.  People like this are interested in maintaining the status quo—regardless of the lives that may be lost.

 

A substantial number of people in the US are interested in maintaining this status quo—one where we are divided, constantly concerned with getting the next meal on our plates so we can’t think of wider-reaching things.  Where we’re scared of covid but still checking in to work, only to do the jobs of two people because a coworker is out sick, and choosing to quit is a privilege we can’t afford.  The kidnappers in Blind Man’s Garden are betting on the families of captured boys prioritizing that love above all else, because they can make money from it.  Real-life people who have the funds to do so can manipulate policy and public opinion in ways that guarantee them money.  Facebook avoided fact-checking pro-Trump messages leading up to the election, leading to the propagation of misinformation that could have directly contributed to another Trump victory in November.

 

Aslam’s novel takes a frank look at the factors that contribute to extremist beliefs becoming mainstream.  Though many this year have been confused about Trump’s continued popularity, a look at Blind Man’s Garden can help illuminate the reasons why he is such a compelling figure.  Aslam gives us a way to understand that popularity, empathize with it, and attempt to address some of the fundamental things (like access to education) that could set up for a better future where fear is less persuasive motivator.