Dear Americans, really?! WTF.
Mr Trump was elected by about 25% of all eligible voters in the US: just a bit over 50% turnout, each candidate about half of these votes. 25%.
In the past twelve months, I have been repeating to all that wanted to hear it, and all others as well, that the Democrats would have a field day against Mr Trump, if only they had the right candidate. Ms Clinton wasn’t that. It simply was “her turn”, and the classe politique stuck to that, as her victory would serve them well.
No doubt Ms Clinton would have been the much better president, hands down, simply as she actually understands the issues at hand, but she, as well as the Democrats’ establishment, were not able to reach and mobilise the people required to elect her. Trying to be honest and explaining the complex problems and possible solutions didn’t work. It was perceived as more of the same, and, even if well founded and intelligent, it didn’t resonate with the public, with its super-short attention span that is so common these days, and influenced by the conditioning of minds by the algorithmically created and maintained echo chambers like Facebook.
Ms Clinton’s dancing around the Clinton foundation questions, around the issue of the e-mails, and around the speeches to Wall Street companies, plus the appearance of opaque Washington back-room dealing, money-grabbing, and clinging to power of the whole Clinton clan didn’t help.
What really disturbs me are all the commentators these days that refer to Mr Trumps victory speech, saying, see, how gracious and inclusive he was, it seems all was just rhetoric while campaigning, it won’t be that bad, he can be presidential. Don’t kid yourself: for over a year, he was just cleverly playing us with his offensive hate speech, in order to win the White House, to then return to his true, loving and gracious self as president? Sure. Look at his past, and you know this to be false. He has been a bully all his life.
He might take back his rhetoric a notch or two, he might not actually build that wall, there will be a lot of sugar coating, and he will face the reality of law-making and government in general, but we better believe all he said during the campaign as being the essence of what he believes and represents. In his core he will remain the law and constitution evading and loathing con-man, the man who divides the humans, and the world in general, into winners and losers, the pathological liar, the thin-skinned, racist and misogynistic ego-maniac that aims at revenge against everyone who he perceives to be against him. For him, there’s no distinction between a human and his or her ideas. Not agreeing with someone’s ideas means going after the person. They must be made losers. If they suck up to him thereafter, he might “graciously” accepts them back, as exemplified by some of his former opponents in the primaries.
What a feudal understanding of today’s world, completely contrary to a liberal and pluralistic society of equals, where ideas and concepts can, and must, be openly discussed and criticised, in order to get us further, to liberate our minds, to find truth, and to get rid of the dark ages of fanatical religion, dogma, and blind believe and obedience, without the continuous fear of a thin-skinned overlord to come after us and our livelihood.
I am aware that there are many countries and societies that (still) work in this Trumpian fashion. But this is America, the self-declared beacon of democracy and freedom. I hope the US democratic system will even out, and contain, most of the potential damage Mr Trump could do in his short-fused bully fashion. For now, the damage already done is the fact that a person with such a disgusting campaign could become president, rendering his behaviour acceptable in general.