Today, 244 million Americans are choosing between a politician and a wrecking ball. And again, the world wonders whether a few thousand people in swing states will immediately plunge the planet into chaos in a self-destructive impulse... or reconsider in four years. Because America's democratic crisis won't end with Trump. An attempt to understand.
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First things first: I am sick and tired of unrelenting, mind-numbing news tickers on the US elections myself – like probably every sensible person. I'm revolted by them. How I would love to tune them out. Not just for a moment, to give my mental health a break, but to banish them from my life completely.
But the bitter reality is: the elections will affect us all. As individuals. As Luxembourgers. As Europeans. As inhabitants of this planet. Not only directly, through concrete decisions, as they have already done, like the withdrawal of the USA from the Paris Agreement and the appointment of a climate change denier as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, or the destabilisation of NATO through threats to leave it – no one knows whether Ukraine would still exist under Trump. But also indirectly, through a fundamental erosion of trust in politics, in international relations or the strengthening of authoritarian powers worldwide. There are Americans openly and proudly flying flags with swastikas on their front yard.
Against this backdrop, it will be decided today whether the lies, threats, revenge plots and increasingly commonly nonsense word salads will come from a borderline senile 78-year-old… or from the President of the United States. Because they will come anyway, no matter how the elections turn out. The only question is how much weight they will carry. The chances of that weight being the combined might of the world's greatest economic and military power is a coin toss at the moment. Yes, America's electoral system is not representative. But it is what it is and, despite its flaws, it will be the system used to elect the next head of state. And around 30 per cent of the US population are saying clearly, for the third time: they want Trump. And this 30 per cent or so could be enough.
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