The election results are all but in, and Barack Obama’s faithful Lieutenant, Joseph Biden, the previous Vice President has won a resounding victory to secure the American Presidency, for 2021. Biden secured almost 75 million votes which gave him 306 Electoral College votes guaranteeing he will be the 46th President of a waning United States Empire. While more people have voted than at any other time in American history, percentage-wise, this number does not break records. Given that around 239.2 million Americans were eligible to vote in 2020, the projected number of voters brings us to a 66.8% turnout rate. This result makes 2020 the year with the highest voter turnout since 1900 when Republican William McKinley won re-election with 73.7% turnout.
The highest voter turnout in history was in 1876 when 82.6% of eligible voters cast ballots in the race between Republican Rutherford Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden. Hayes eventually won the Presidency in a close, contested election. In the dying days of his Presidency, and with just over two months to January 20th when Joe Biden is sworn in, Donald J. Trump has done what no other American President has before him. But what every American engagement with the world has been, he doesn’t want to lose, denies that he lost and rigidly believes he’s right, irrespective of the overwhelming shreds of evidence in the numbers before him.
Trump may at first seem unusual, but going back to the previous Presidents of the United States, all were either promoters and or supporters of white supremacy – the white ideal. Some were slaveholders like Lincoln, most started wars, strife and conflicts elsewhere, and almost all believed in America’s “manifest destiny.” Certainly, the “founding fathers” were all either rich or of the landed class that’s why they could afford to spend a six-month holiday writing the constitution. But like Trump and presumably Biden, they all ignored the “elephant in the room,” the unresolved issue of on-going racism written into their much-vaunted constitution and started with the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the continued commodification of the black and brown peoples in America.
The difference between Trump and the previous Whitehouse incumbents is that he was born without a socialised filter to smooth over the truths. And lacking any desire to hide how he feels, Trump cut a swathe in 4-years- contributing to tearing off the carefully manicured façade that so many Presidents before him, including Barack Obama, cultivated. They’re tasked to create an obscenely false impression that America isn’t divided- resolve its race issues -love capitalism, and happy with the country’s on-going wars programs. Worse still is the papering over the cracks of a restless populace, tired of fighting for a “better life,” tired of fighting with others and tired of fighting with themselves. He (Trump) demonstrating most terrifyingly, what the “Great United States” of America is, and that no amount of politics and marketing can hide the lie any longer.
America is a country that loved Trump because Trump mostly lied, but told the truth in a few “important” areas. The vast majority of white Americans are racist, poverty-stricken and tired of being so scared. They are incapable of dealing with the realities of being Americans representing a myth fostered by rich white men for their benefits. The irony is it required a delusional, narcissistic, misogynistic, racist, prejudiced, amoral, greedy white man to tell Americans what they are! Which is unsurprising because that is precisely the types of men that designed and built the United States of America- the land no longer of the brave and the land of the free. It turns out that many Trumps are hiding in plain sight, Donald J was the one that exposed them all, and that is why “Trumpism” is here to stay because it’s always been what defined America.
