The USA voted, and Russia was also excited about the result. But Vladimir Putin’s favorite candidate was neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris, says Vladimir Kaminer.
Donald Trump’s victory came on the heels of the disappearance of butter in Russian grocery stores. The ways of the Lord are unfathomable, the old Nazi saying “guns instead of butter” suddenly became reality many decades later in Putin’s Russia: the butter was gone, suddenly and without warning. The last remains were stored in special cabinets for particularly valuable products, protected from thieves, alongside the whiskey and caviar.
Fortunately for consumers, we now live in a globalized world; for every sanction, some clever businessman knows a way around it. So the Russians ordered butter from the Arab Emirates and Turkey, and Turkey in turn bought it from Ukraine. So the Russians promptly had Ukrainian butter, even though they were waging war against Ukraine at the same time. The bloodthirsty patriots immediately called for a butter boycott, while the moderate consumers remained silent and stockpiled.
Vladimir Kaminer is a writer and columnist. He was born in Moscow in 1967 and has lived in Germany for decades. His best-known works include “Russian disco“. His latest book “Have a good meal! Stories from Europe’s tables” was released in August 2024.
The butter scandal was only overshadowed in the Russian press by the American presidential election. “Trump instead of butter!” was the slogan. Will everything be bad or will everything be good? The man is unpredictable. This election was all the more exciting for the Russians. In general, an election in which the outcome is unclear until the end and no one knows who will win leaves the Russians perplexed. Unlike in its own elections, the media in Russia was allowed to openly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of both candidates and compare their programs. How much the Russians would have liked to vote, but they weren’t allowed to.
The most frequently printed cartoon these days showed two Russian grandmas sitting on a park bench: “Pennsylvania has already counted, Yekaterinburg and Siberia are still reeling,” one says to the other. Putin already said in the run-up to the American election that he preferred the Democrats because they were less surprising. The media immediately suspected that this was a lazy trick; Vladimir had certainly already settled everything with Donald with a handshake – and didn’t want to get in his way if he was re-elected.
I think Putin’s candidate wasn’t actually called Harris or Trump. No, Putin bet on Mr. Chaos this year. The USA is as divided as ever, and in such a situation an election victory does not provide an answer to the big question: What next? The cultural counterrevolution is in full swing in the USA. For a long time, education in America was seen as a clear social advantage, essential for success and a career. The “illiterates” were disempowered and scorned as unqualified for the post-industrial era.
They were despised by the educated and called “white trash” or even worse, “ordinary people”. As such, they had no decisive voice, they were wiped away from the social surface. How is the so-called “ordinary American” supposed to talk or even argue with a Harvard graduate? Not long ago it was unimaginable. But Donald Trump showed the way, he showed how it works and demanded: Such a conversation can and must even take place. The ordinary American can put the Harvard graduate in his place.
This cultural counter-revolution brought Donald Trump into office for the second time. But his victory cannot be expected to resolve the global conflict. This election was not an election. It wasn’t actually about migration, health care reforms and tax cuts. Such questions cannot drive people to such an extent. This time it was about more, about existential values, about what should really be fundamentally important and right for life.
This radicalized the election campaign to the extreme, the candidates insulted each other violently, she was “mentally disabled” and he was a “fascist”, they said that if their opponent came to power, America would be destroyed. So it was no longer about winning the election, but about destroying the enemy and “saving” America. Anyone who has such high stakes cannot give up just because the election results are not in their favor.
