American politics - a president impeached by the people!

With just a few states left to declare it looks like Biden has won the US presidential election, even if the few remaining ones end up going to Trump. There are, of course, the many legal challenges Trump claims he is going to instigate (or has already done so) but unless he comes up with real evidence of cheating or fraud then Trump’s race has been run and lost. This, as far as I’m concerned, is great news. At the same time the count was a lot closer than it was expected to be. Why? One interview, with a US commentator that I heard, indicated that he thought many people had said they were not voting for Trump when that, in fact was what they intended to do, Again, why? This commentator figured that a lot of those people knew how many held Trump in low esteem and didn’t want to be seen as supporting him as they feared they would receive a tough time from many friends and family for doing so (while many of their friends and family were likely thinking the same way). Others, he said, did so deliberately to mess with the polls and reduce the Democrats understanding of how big a fight they were actually in. Who knows?
The clear fact, however, is that Trump won a lot more votes than predicted by the polls - and I do understand why many voted that way. Many US citizens objected to what had been happening in the US for decades and felt that Trump’s maverick ways offered an escape from this. I do not believe, however, that Trump ever had their interests in mind but that, instead, he simply harnessed their angst in order to gain the White House - and having built this support base he figured he would be able to rely on this to win a second term. He nearly did - but a sufficient number of US citizens, thankfully, had seen through his bluster and lies to turn away from him.

Having said all that there were a couple of policies that I agreed with him on. The first of those was how he attempted to change, or end, some of the US trade agreements made over recent decades. I figure the US, and many US workers, had lost out through these. At the same time these trade agreements were less easy to correct than what Trump tried to suggest - and what was gained on the one hand ended up being lost elsewhere. The second policy I agreed with him on was in trying to get Europe to contribute to NATO as they had agreed to. I’m no fan of NATO but I figure the countries of Europe that were not contributing as agreed needed to step up and do so as their not doing so resulted in the US contributing more than was agreed - money that the US could use in others ways.
However, his policies in other areas were either a disaster or simply a mistake. His plan to build a wall between Mexico and the US being an example - and, as far as I’m concerned, simply racist. The US was built on white people, initially, coming into the country with very few restrictions. Later, many Mexicans and other Latino peoples also came in - and, of course, we have the black slaves who were brought in the millions to help the white man get rich. It is a pity that the native Americans were not more technically advanced when the white man initially arrived and had been able to drive them back into the sea and home to Europe. All this wall was ever going to do was prevent Mexicans seeking legal status and a better future. It was never going to stop the drug trafficking as those involved in this trade were simply going to find other ways to get their products into the US.
His attacks on China, re the trade agreement and blaming them for COVID-19, were totally unacceptable and unproven. His handling of the US COVID-19 response and his defunding of the WHO (not, admittedly, faultless) were, at the very least, stupid and possibly dangerous. His removing the US from Climate Change agreements were also, potentially, very dangerous to everyone on the planet. Then there was his unilateral withdrawal from the deal with Iran to reduce sanctions against them in return for Iran agreeing to reduce uranium production to levels which only allowed development of nuclear power for electricity generation. I am no fan of the Iranian regime, and I would not be surprised if Iran, like Trump accuses, were instigating instability in the Middle East and funding Islamist terrorist groups but to step away from such an important agreement, against the wishes of it’s partners in the agreement and despite the IAEA advice that Iran was complying with the deal was very dangerous. Imposing increased sanctions on Iran has made life harder for Iranian citizens but was unlikely to change what the Iranian government was doing - and only resulted in Iran increasing it’s uranium purification programme beyond the levels agreed in the deal - and who could blame them? If the US was going to ignore it’s side of the bargain then it’s only understandable that Iran would do likewise.  

I can understand why many US citizens supported Trump as his actions seemed to be bolstering US nationalism and making the country look strong again - but what upset me most about the man was his character: His lies, his tantrums, the revenge and insults he heaped on those who disagreed with him, his racism, his clearly lax morals, his misogamy (in at least seeing women as nothing more than meat which he could make use of as he wanted) - and the list of his character faults go on and on. Maybe, if not for those many faults, he might have won a second term and he would have been able follow through on some of those misguided policies? Maybe, therefore, we have to be thankful that he did have so many character flaws? The Republican led senate refused to follow through on his impeachment - but I think we can say, if only by a smaller extent than hoped for, that the citizens of the US have impeached him instead.