America at a crossroads

 The US election, just passed (5 Nov 2024) was a clear choice, because the 2 candidates couldn’t have been more different: in persona, background, experience and in what they stood for. And neither of them tried to brush over those differences – in fact, they both campaigned on emphasising them.
 
For a start, Trump makes it very clear you’re either with him or against him – compromise is not a word in his lexicon – and if you’re not with him, whether you’re in the media, in politics or in his own party – you’re The Enemy (within).
 
Harris did her best to present an alternative that could bridge the divide that has plagued America for some time. Of which, it needs to be pointed out, Trump is not the cause but a symptom. In that light, one should not be so surprised that he had such a commanding victory – he literally represents the polarisation of America in his persona, character and rhetoric.
 
From that perspective, Harris had a snowball’s chance, despite the early honeymoon wave she rode (to mix my metaphors) following her nomination. Tucker Carlson, I feel summed it all up in a very derogatory and sickening allegory at one of Trump’s late rallies where he compared Harris to a ‘naughty girl’ and Trump’s eminent election to ‘Daddy coming home’ and he was going to ‘give her a spanking’. The only thing more nauseating than his gleeful and belaboured, perverse-morality-tale was the rapturous applause it drew from the crowd. I single it out from all the excesses that we saw in Trump’s campaign because it captures in one succinct grab, the misogynistic and puerile nature of Trump, as both a person and a Presidential candidate, portrayed by one of his most avid fans. This is the President you are going to get because he’s the one you want; is what it said to me.
 
From an outsider’s perspective on the other side of the Pacific, America is going backwards and accelerating. Many Americans have a patronising attitude towards Australia, and even when I was over there, I heard about how backward we were in comparison – at least 10 years behind, which is conservative if you’re talking about technology. Australia has enjoyed a long and healthy relationship with the US; an important, strategic ally in the Pacific region, ever since they saved us from a Japanese invasion with the Battle of the Coral Sea during WW2.
 
Yet we have much better and more affordable health care, better child care facilities, more realistic (one might say, sane) gun laws and much better reproductive rights for women, especially after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade. We also have lower inequality and have had for decades.
 
So it’s not an exaggeration to say that America is at a crossroads, because Trump’s second term will mean more hate from all quarters (because hate axiomatically generates hate in the opposite direction from the side being hated), more restraints on women’s reproductive rights, more racism and misogyny in general, not to mention the erosion, if not outright elimination, of LGBT rights, all under the catch-phrase of anti-woke. There are also the attacks that Trump will launch against mainstream media, whom he called ‘the enemy of the people’ in his last term. Misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories will flourish, while attempts to counter these may well result in prosecutions if Trump has his way. He’s made no secret that he will weaponise the Justice Department, which he will now treat as his own personal law firm.
 
Former staffers have warned us of his fascist tendencies, which is manifest in his open admiration of foreign strong men like Putin. So America now has its own ‘strong man’ that a large proportion of its population believe they need. But that has rarely gone well if one looks at historical antecedents.