Since the result from the US election emerged, and my initial response of disbelief, despair, and portents of destabilisation, I have tried to take a calmer, more rational, more realistic look at the road we are now heading down.
Well, at least I have tried. But there is nothing.
The modest statements, the respectful comments regarding Obama, the platitudes of united a divided country; they mean nothing. Nothing at all.
And the statements from our own government representatives, to move past the disparaging remarks made about Trump during his campaign, sound just as hollow as his own words.
Whichever way you look at it, the most powerful country in the world has been handed, at best, to the extreme right of the political machine, at worst to an egotistical, racist, misogynist fool.
If he remains as a just a figurehead, a bile-spouting front man for all the potential reversals of any element of progressive policy, then the US will descend even further into a viciously divided country.
If he proceeds to enact even half of the vague and vitriolic proposals that reared their ugly heads on the stump, then the result will be the same, but with potentially even more division.
If you dismiss his pre-vote statements as merely pandering to his core support, then that is an insult to them, and a victory based on blatant falsehoods. If he meant it all, then the result is the same, but your blood runs even colder.
As with Brexit, anything that isn’t ‘us’ is the enemy, is the cause of our woes. As with Brexit, this was the ‘Big Lie’. Both here and in the US the established power bases have been the architects of the suffering and the disenfranchisement. And both in the US and here the power has been given back to them.
Trump’s one truth is that the political system doesn’t work. But you don’t pick a tree surgeon to do a heart transplant. You sure as hell don’t pick an egotist who falsely claims to be a successful businessman to re-establish effective popular representation.
The fact that reactionary and isolationist rhetoric found support on both sides of the Atlantic is the saddest and most worrying aspect of the last few months. And watching as the ripples spread outwards, and waiting for the next quake, makes the daily sunrise the only guarantee for tomorrow.
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