The Death of The Republic

As I listened to Kamala Harris reassure her supporters that her failure to attain the White House would not lead to anything other than an orderly transition of power in line with the Constitution of The United States of America, and encouraging them to fight on to build the America that they want, in kindness and mutual respect for one another and the dignity that all people deserve I could not help but marvel at the treasure that American voters have thrown away. The raw contrast between the grace and decency of this impressive and capable woman when set against the self-aggrandising mumblings of Donald Trump is stark, and promotes nothing in me but pure regret.

What a World we All nearly had with Kamala Harris as the leader of the Free World.

Is she right? Does the fight continue? Is there hope?

I want to believe.

Of course my fears are many, and they crowd around me like stygian imps, chattering with frightening assertions;

"He's gonna try and revoke the twenty-second amendment"

"He's gonna make good on his deportation promises"

"He's gonna appease Putin and doom Ukraine"

"He's gonna give comfort to Netanyahu"

"He's gonna promote and sign a Federal Abortion Ban"

"He's gonna hurt marginalised people"

"He's gonna hurt your friends"

"He's making a mockery of the very fabric of the American Ideal"

And there it is. The End. This election result, this mockery of decency is the death knell for the America that while imperfect has been a great and powerful beacon of freedom and equality for decades, and the best expression of those ideas for over two centuries.

The Founding Fathers envisaged a fair, decent, open, free society where all would be equal. Some of them were slave owners, but early on in their Independent History they overcame the horror of slavery, and then again they enforced the idea of Equal Rights with regard to gender, and then race, and then in recent memory for the LGB community and I suppose many had hope for similar improvements for the Trans community and the onward march of genuine freedom.

The ever evolving mission that was begun with thoughtful men putting pen to paper in a house in Philadelphia has been a fire that has lit the World, and yet now this inheritance has been screwed up and spat upon by over half of the voting electorate in an act of absurd and tragic self-harm.

Washington, Adams, Jefferson were all imperfect men, but none of them would have offered their support to an adjudicated rapist, let alone a person convicted of crimes in a Federal Court. Hell I do not believe that even Richard Nixon would have done anything less than turn his back on Trump.

I grew up idolising America. I dreamed of visiting New York, of seeing the Grand Canyon and walking along Hollywood Boulevard, thrilled by the greatness of a country that had harnessed the power of science and sent people to the Moon, and built great big things and led the World in commerce and freedom.

As I grew a little older I learned the darker truths of America, I started to see her imperfections, the errors in her history, but I also learned that progress came as an answer to all of those mistakes, that she learned how to be a better expression, however imperfect, of the ideals upon which her foundation was built.

I finally managed to visit America in my thirties. I spent time in San Francisco and I fell in love all over again with this country of contradictions and imperfections, as I saw her beauty and met her people, from all walks of life, who were decent and honest and friendly and proud of their country. The next year I managed to finally visit New York, staying with a British friend who had made Manhattan her home and my love for America deepened and widened. I made a brief visit to Philadelphia to visit people who I had met on the Internet, and who are still my friends to this day, and I took in the crucible of the American experiment and bought a pocket sized copy of the Constitution and generally encountered some parts of the "real" America.

Since those two formative and joyful visits I have been back for work and for pleasure and on every occasion I was still more convinced that despite the fact that there was clearly much work to be done, America was still in touch with the values at the heart of its formation. I saw a place and a people committed to freedom, honesty, decency, fairness and fraternal love for one another in their shared core identity as Americans. Yes, of course, there were failures that were evident even to my tourist experience. There were areas of great deprivation, obvious issues with regard to racial tension and racism, clear evidence that some people were afraid of those that they did not understand rather than welcoming of difference and alternative ideas. Yet still I was sure that the direction of travel was towards a better next day, towards a deeper, fairer and more perfect union.

I stopped believing in that direction of travel in 2016 when enough Americans chose to elevate a self-confessed sexual predator, a blatant misogynist, a man who casually lit rhetorical molotov cocktails and tossed them into the enduring thicket of race relations, and not just elevate him a little but elevate him to the highest office in the Land.

When Trump failed to retain the Presidency in 2020 I had such great hope that America had come to her senses. I clung to the idea, the dream, that perhaps after this actually brief flirtation with a political betrayal of their national ideals the American electorate had come to their collective senses and perhaps there was no cause for alarm in the long term.

Today I have realised that I was hoping for too much, for far too much.

Mark your calendars, never, never forget the day.

The sixth of November 2024 is the day that America was fooled into returning a self-serving, self-aggrandising figurehead of a Fascist and authoritarian movement that actually hates the America that I love and that every American I have ever known well also loves.

If you do not believe me, read this Wikipedia Page about Project 2025 and then read this Wikipedia Page on The Heritage Foundation. It bears mentioning that Project 2025's own website attempts to put daylight between themselves and the Trump campaign and the Trump ticket, but the connections are irrefutably there.

It is not an exaggeration to state that Donald Trump has won because of the people raising money for him and promoting him and they are the people who value the outlook and aims of The Heritage Foundation and their ideas as discussed in Project 2025. He is not engaged with doing anything for America, he ran to avoid prison and further prosecution, betting on the Office of the Presidency providing him with enough protection to live out his life in freedom. That is all he cares about.

What is more disturbing is that as I write this the Republican Party has taken control of the Senate, and it looks increasingly likely that before too much more time passes the GOP will also control the House of Representatives. There will be little or no gridlock on the Hill, the GOP will be able to push any agenda it likes, safe in the knowledge that their installed demagogue will sign their bills into law.

The Old Guard of the GOP are dead or dying, the last few in post as elected officials and the ones recently ejected by Far Right neophytes from sects such as the Tea Party are the people who have been telling their base to vote for Harris and openly committing to voting for her themselves, across party lines, with no motivation other than their belief that Donald Trump is a danger to the Republic and in no way a representative of their values of honour, duty and service.

The political expression of The Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 now has a clear road from 01/20/2025 (yes I am using American date notation on purpose) to the obliteration of the American Experiment, the clinical euthanasia of the American Republic and the birth of a Theocratic Autocracy steeped in White Supremacy and Phallocentric exceptionalism.

Foreigners will be deported - needlessly.

Women will die - needlessly.

Freedom will shrivel and die as the extreme ideals of the Christian Right prevail, and in the greatest irony of all the people that voted for it will find that their lives do not get better, that America does not become great again for them.

The gap between rich and poor will widen from a canyon to a deep blue ocean and life expectancy will be cloven in two, one far lower number for those born into poverty and one far higher number of those who retain their wealth.

Art will be demonised and suppressed.

LGBTQIA+ people will be victimised and punished.

Non-white people will suffer even greater hardship, unless they are prepared to fall into line and accept their destiny as second class citizens under White Supremacy.

It will not just be four years and then there is a chance to fix the damage and overthrow the government and re-embrace genuine, universal freedom and shared dignity.

The people who have engineered Trump's victory are going to make damn sure that no one that looks like Kamala Harris can even poll in double digits in the next election cycle, let alone anyone who does not comply to their medieval, theocratic dreams of repression.

I still Love America. There are people in America that are important people in my life, people who I love as Brothers and Sisters, people for whom I wish only good things, happiness, peace and freedom, for whom I have an overwhelming sense of fear. I am scared that they will find their horizons narrowed. I am scared that they will fall foul of this tide of repression. I worry that they have no choice but to hunker down and find small ways to resist. I worry that I will not see them soon, that I may never see them again.

Moreover, the inward-looking quasi-isolationism of the people around Trump will hurt the World. There is no doubt in my mind that the effect of their twisted ideology will be to unleash chaos upon the rest of us.

I am not an American. I do not live in America.

I am terrified that this travesty will do unimaginable harm to our World, in terms of the retrograde effect it will have on the desperate emergency we face with regard to Climate Change, in terms of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, in terms of the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian People, and in terms of countless other lesser yet still globally significant issues.

I am afraid. I am not exaggerating, I am genuinely afraid for me, for my children, for my family, for my friends, for the people of this World.

Nothing would make me happier to be wrong about this, but at this moment I hear the bell tolling for thee America. Rest in Power, find the resurrection of your true soul and forgive me in time for my lack of faith, but for now I mourn the Death of the Republic, and I am preparing myself for the coming storm.

Goodnight, and Good Luck.