As a Canadian, I am not really in a position to speak of the choices Americans made yesterday. I don’t agree with them, fundamentally, and I’m extremely saddened by them, but that was their decision to make, and they made it.
The fact that they made it is going to lead to more analysis than I can fathom, and for many many years to come, but to sum up: Americans preferred a convicted felon, a grifter, a man who has stolen money from charities, a rapist, and a racist, who peddles in fear and lies and retribution, over a smiling and competent and smart woman of color. So some thoughts:
- The only person to beat The Orange Felon (The OF is my name for him) is, surprise, Joe Biden, who was never perfect, but seemed a mostly decent type and, perhaps more importantly, was a white man. I continue to believe we have The OF and everything that comes with it because Americans once had the audacity to vote for a man with a Kenyan father, and that most immigrants to the US are not white and/or don’t speak the majority tongue. The word “majority” is key in the US, as it is in other Western countries.
- If you support a party, and the belief system it encompasses, that still can’t beat someone like The OF, well, this calls for some introspection. Because the message isn’t getting through. Blame who you want but your message is not working. And perhaps the delivery needs to change. I don’t agree that one can be so put off by tone that it would result in a vote for a felon but that’s exactly what’s happened and so deal with it. Better. Though, really, neither American party survives. Not as we know them. One was hijacked. The other killed itself slowly and continues to do so.
- The American system sucks no matter how you look at it. The two-party system is terrible. The Parliamentary system (like the one in Canada) also distorts things. The Chinese believe that democracy breeds chaos and sometimes they’re right, even when they say it for the wrong reason. But the two-party system results in false equivalencies. Many years ago, perhaps during the first OF administration, but I think it was earlier, during Bush 2, I called our time The Era of False Equivalencies and it’s only become worse.
- A lot of the message from the left and the center is not getting through because of the media. And this isn’t an American problem per se; each country has its own issues, but a common denominator in much of the world is the control of the message by very wealthy people and/or those close to the leadership structure, the result of which is a citizenry that lives in alternate, or parallel, realities. I don’t know what the solution to this is, and this fact may be the most damming thing wrought by the internet overall, but it is not the only thing. The thing is, the rich get richer. And thus more powerful. Until, I don’t know, revolution. Which creates a different power structure.
- The media, in most countries, is not “Liberal.” That idea is the result of persistent messages from the Right. They are very good at this. At creating labels that stick. (see, also, the final paragraph of this text.)
- In most countries The OF’s backstory would be disqualifying. And not just a little. A lot. The American legal system – and most everyone, including those in power and the media – went half in on the prosecutions and created not a criminal but a martyr. The Conservatives in the UK were toppled by a…party. And it didn’t look like a fun one at that. The reasons for the beginning of their demise seem quaint now.
- The OF is not so much dangerous (which he is) as he is indifferent. To you. To your suffering. To all suffering. Only his suffering matters to him. He is not ideological. He just wants love. Or what he imagines love to be. Which is mostly about acceptance and power. His needs are ultimately transparent.
- The OF is surrounded by ideologues and there will be a rogues’ gallery of them in the administration now. That’s where the danger lies for most Americans and most of the world. He is surrounded by truly awful people. (Hello Elon!) And JD Vance. Holy cow. How many believe The OF, a person in such obvious physical and mental decline, will last a full term? He’s not just old, after all, he’s Joe Biden old.
- So…the Ukrainians. The Taiwanese (probably). They can’t be comforted by this. On the flip side, Putin and Xi are probably ecstatic. Xi, especially, is probably laughing himself silly. Putin can’t believe the gift that The OF and the entire Republican party continue to be to his whims. The OF is going to cede entire countries to him, and countries and industries to Xi. Modi is also happy. That douchebag in Hungary is happy but he rules over a place that is shrinking economically and socially. That he is an example to many of these people, including The OF, is tremendously odd.
- The Palestinians were going to be screwed no matter what. They are already screwed. They’ve been screwed for decades now. Perhaps longer. But now they’re fucked. It’s possible we will see them wiped out, or sent to the Sinai, or to Jordan. They’ve never really had friends, not at the state level, but now….
- We are going to see a bunch of “Strongmen” types come to power. My guess. Or more of them. There are already enough.
- Mostly, however, I am worried by the backslide we’re going to suffer on a planetary scale. The green movement is on pause. There will be local wins, there will be others doing some work, but the American government is out of the “let’s save the planet” business. The only heartening aspect of this to me is that Texas of all places is a leader in renewables. But The OF is no friend of the planet. He doesn’t understand how it runs nor is he interested. He only understands and is interested in profit. This is another industry he will cede to the Chinese. Odd to say, but the Chinese will have to save us now. I’m still not convinced the Europeans are fully committed to the effort. The Russians don’t care. The Indians are too obsessed with catching up. The Brazilians need help.
- And, finally, this election has now effectively normalized The OF. Which is stunning. There are millions of young people who will not know anything but. They will look at The OF’s resume and shrug. They will listen to him speak and shrug. They live in a country with a two-party system and one of them will be…this. For a long time. That legacy will continue.
It’s all quite dark if you ask me. (Democracy dies in darkness, indeed. Also, of all the eulogies for “America” I have read today this might be the best if not the smartest.)
I do know this: Ideologues keep going and going until they can’t. Until the wall of opposition to them becomes too high and too powerful. Ideologues ignore consequences because they can. And this is what will happen here. Some things can be fixed, of course. All systems go through course corrections. But some things can’t be fixed. Not on human timelines. And it is those I most worry about.
In 2016, I pretty much stopped watching the news and listening to it on the radio. I couldn’t stand the voices and not just The OF’s, but all of them. I couldn’t listen to the idiocy of the ideas, but more than that, the idiocy of the media, the sports-talkification of it all, pundits yelling at each other, or ignoring what was being said, facts or no facts, so they could get to their next point. It had all become gamified. Everything. The media made me angry not because of the content but the context in which it was all happening. Trust in the media has gone down in the US (and elsewhere) and that was the point. When you stop trusting the media you can say anything. And so you do. Because there are no consequences.
I have just published a book set in 2017, after the start of the first OF presidency. The fact I have to qualify that now makes me a bit ill. And the fact I could have set the book in 2025 makes me more ill yet. So we are, indeed, Still Ill.
George Constanza, the surprisingly prescient character from Seinfeld, once said “it’s not a lie if you believe it.” Not that a lie, no matter how widely held, changes the truth. And that means any truth, a concept which may be more and more elusive. But we live in an age where simple concepts, such as “the truth” are not so simple. And the sad part is many people simply don’t care.
