Thursday, November 05, 2020

My thoughts on the implications of the U.S. 2020 elections

As I write this post, the results of the U.S. elections for 2020 are still being tabulated, with votes (mostly mail-in ballots) still being counted.

But while we still do not know who will be the next U.S. President, and how the seats will be filled in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the votes that have been counted show that a significant portion of U.S. citizens actually voted for Trump and the Republicans.

A significant portion of U.S. citizens have actually voted for racism, nepotism, voter suppression, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia... they voted against science, against compassion for their fellow human beings, against basic decency.

Is this the United States that we know?

Is this what the United States has become?

Or is it what the United States has been all along, just hidden from our eyes because we chose to look away?

Whatever the results, with this significant portion of the U.S. population actually supporting such ideologies... can the United States still be expected to maintain legitimacy in world leadership?

Four years ago, the rest of the world tried to convince ourselves that it was an anomaly, that we just have to ride out the next four years. But today, the rest of the world has been shown a very different view... what lies ahead? Can we ever trust the United States again, knowing that, no matter who the U.S. President is, a significant portion of Americans tout a very different kind of ideology from what it used to represent?

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