US election: ‘Decency still matters - why I’m hoping for change in the White House’
It’s polling day in what many see as one of the most important US elections in history. The climate crisis, coronavirus, and racism are among the issues in play, while for some democracy itself is at stake. For writer Russ Litten, it all depends on the basic human values of the man who wins. Here, he gives one view from this side of the pond
Attitude matters. This is especially true when it comes to selecting a leader.
Unlike wealth, attitude trickles down from the top and coats everything below in its own distinctive colours. Those colours are then nailed to the mast and dictate the course of the leadership. A calm and clued-up captain will lead their crew to safe shores. If the skipper is drunk, then the ship will sail a crooked course and, in all likelihood, sink like a stone.
This, for me, is the crux of the 2020 USA Election. The choice between Trump and Biden is not simply about which shade of the political spectrum will suit America best. All of that has been blown out of the water. This election is a straight forward choice between salvaging what’s left of a ravaged democracy or naked, unadorned fascism.
There are those on the Left who will tell you that, from a moral perspective, Trump is no better or worse than any of the Democrats who oppose him.
They will remind you that Obama ordered ten times more drone strikes than George Bush, of Hilary Clinton’s questionable foreign policy as Secretary of State. They will point to the fact that Smiley Joe Biden throws his full support behind the US military war machine as it “liberates” and obliterates its way around the globe.
All of this, and more, carries the weight of uncomfortable truth - the line between Republican and Democrat has never been thinner or more blurred. George Bush - once regarded as the pariah of all that is decent - is now an avuncular old chuckle-head who snuggles up to Michelle Obama and slips her boiled sweets.
‘TRUMP HAS HAD A VOLCANIC IMPACT’: Russ Litten
Such has been the volcanic impact of Trump’s presidency; even the architect of an illegal invasion that killed close to a million people is now regarded wistfully as a throwback to a more innocent time. Hindsight is often rose-tinted, if not always 20/20.
But let’s be painfully stark about this - nobody who takes on the role of President of the USA emerges with a stainless reputation. This is not a job for those wishing to remain pure of heart and clean of conscience. To become President, you must also be prepared to sanction the death of strangers. Given this essential truth, what does it matter if the President has the manners of a pig?
Over the last four years, I’ve tried really hard to become nonplussed about Donald Trump. This has proved quite difficult, because he seems to have been constructed by an evil genius whose sole mission was to embody every single negative human trait in one repulsive life-form and set it loose in my head. Mission accomplished.
Over the last year or so, I deleted his name from all my social media feeds and swiftly turned off any appliance when that grating, self-pitying whine invaded my airspace. Yet, despite my best efforts to marginalise his vindictive flatulence to the peripheries of my existence, still he invades and besmirches me, like a Nazi Frankenstein’s monster lumbering through my nightmares.
‘It’s not really Trump who offends me. It’s the people in power who indulge him and those who put him there’
But I’ve come to realise that it’s not really Donald Trump that worries or offends me. It’s the people in power who indulge him and the people without power who elevate him. The Republican Party are now so nakedly power hungry that they not only turn a blind eye to Trump’s worst impulses, they’re now actively trying to normalise and enshrine them. Mitch McConnell looks like a startled witch caught in the act of casting a wicked spell.
As for the latter, the so-called “basket of deplorables”, I’m not sure what could possibly be said to change their minds. It’s pointless appealing to their better nature, because they don’t seem to have one.
From what I can gather from numerous TV vox pops and online comments, the average Trump enthusiast is not interested in progressive ideas or nuances of policy. What matters to these happy go-lucky souls is “owning the libtards”.
That seems to be about the extent of the average Trump supporter’s ambitions - to have a mirror image of their own boorishness and ignorance held up as a symbol of dominance, thus upsetting every smart-arse college kid or bleeding heart liberal who sneered at them in the past.
There was a time when racists and thugs were mocked and derided, not given university platforms or prime guest spots on chat shows. Now, after four years of top-level celebratory thuggishness, we are at a point where Walmart have stripped their shelves of guns and ammunition in case the Proud Boys get upset and start shooting up the polling booths.
‘A Biden presidency would be a step in the right direction’
As for Joe Biden, I am not labouring under the illusion that he will save America from its inevitable fate as a fading empire, a demented toddler chasing around the world trying to rob everything at gun point. He seems to give every impression of being a decent man, and whether he is or not, I am past the point of caring. He is not a white supremacist and he is not a psychopath. At this late stage of the game, that is more than enough.
So the choice Americans face in this election is whether they want a President who pays lip service to democracy, or one who completely ignores it altogether.
I don’t get a vote, but if I did, given the current climate, I think I’d choose the candidate who doesn’t applaud fascists and boast about assaulting women. Call me a pearl-grabbing virtue signaller if you must.
It’s not a choice that offers much to those of a more idealistic mindset, but that’s the corner America seems to have painted itself into. A Joe Biden presidency would be a step in the right direction, however small.
Kindness. Decency. Manners. These things still matter. In the disease-ridden spiritual abyss that is planet Earth 2020, in the so-called symbol of Western democracy and freedom, they now matter more than ever.