World politics - The U.S. Presidential election

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 On Tuesday 5th November 2024, the people of the USA voted for their next president. To my utter dismay and despondency they voted Donald Trump back into the White House. For some reason, that I cannot comprehend, this was always going to be a close race but all the unbiased opinion polls that I’d been watching indicated that Kamela Harris had a slight lead and stood a good chance of being the first female president of the US - but, instead of voting for what appeared to be a reasonably decent human being, they voted back into power a criminal who clearly lies and cheats at everything he does - and is a despicable, narcissistic, moron to boot.

Let me be clear: I don’t live in the US so I couldn’t care if the US vote Republican or Democrat, as both are too right wing for me. As far as I’m concerned Bernie Sanders is also too right wing. I’ll be quite happy if the US suffers over the next four years because they will only be getting what they deserve. What upsets me, however, is that people around the World could well suffer, too - and they didn’t vote for Trump. For example, Trump could be bad for the people of Gaza, if things weren’t already bad enough there, as he provides Israel with increased support to carry out it’s genocide. Trump could be bad for Ukraine as he might force it to surrender it’s eastern areas to Putin’s Russia. It would be good to see the end of that war but not if that only encourages Putin to continue his push west to try and bring all the old Soviet states back under Russian control. I think that’s clearly what Putin would like to do but he might be unable to do so right away as the current war effort has been a lot more expensive, I think, than he bargained for - but that does not mean he won’t try as soon as he feels able. Then there is the fact that Trump denies the clear reality of climate change caused, at least to a great extent, by human activity. He is almost certainly going to take the US out of any international agreements on climate change and reverse any positive steps taken by the Biden administration - and that will only result in an increasing number of natural disasters caused by climate change. Almost worst of all is the potential loss of any degree of democracy in one of the planet’s most important nations. Trump didn’t only win the presidency but he won the electoral college by a landside and he won the popular vote by a few million. In addition to that the republicans took control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. As a result there will be nothing to prevent him carrying out his extreme policy agenda - and that is bad news for everyone on planet Earth.

It has to be asked: Why did the US vote for Trump given the man’s many, many character faults? I think too many of it’s citizens have felt let down by the more liberal leaders failing to bring about the American dream for them and, like many throughout history, they looked to the easy lies provided by the very people who prevent them achieving that dream. They are told that the problem is this or that minority (the Jews, the Hatians, the blacks, the gays - anyone but the already obscenely wealthy who are the very ones spinning all those lies). Unfortunately, many ordinary citizens are either not very intelligent or uneducated or both - and they swallow such lies without any question. Trump deliberately appealed to the lowest common denominator because he was confident they would believe every word he spouted - and they did in vast numbers. In fact, it struck me during the campaign that Trump only increased his vile rhetoric the more that Harris came across as decent, sane and positive. It would appear that Trump understood that a huge percentage of the US public were bigoted, racist and narrow mind - and that the more evil he spouted then the greater would be his support. My only hope is that, because this might have been an election ploy, he’ll be less extreme in office than he implied he was going to be - but I won’t be holding my breath. There is also the possibility that too many, especially men, did not want a female president and preferred, instead, to have a lying, cheating moron lead them.
Another negative of Trump’s victory is, of course, that he is not going to face justice, or jail, for his many criminal actions. That is a great shame.

November the 5th 2024 was, I’m afraid, a very sad day for the human race.

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