THE OBSERVER: After Donald Trump’s victory, brute force will prevail over geopolitics as authoritarians are appeased from Russia to Israel to China
Feelings are not the usual focus of a world dominated by macho strongmen, complex geopolitical challenges, wars and disasters. Yet every rule has exceptions. Following Donald Trump’s unexpectedly decisive US election victory, dark storm clouds seeded with powerful emotions overshadow the international landscape.
Feelings of shock and anger that this lying conman again seduced enough voters to win the presidency roil America’s friends and allies. There is incredulity that so very many people collaborated in their own seduction. And there is puzzlement at exit polls that show 45% of female voters backed a serial sexual predator while Latino and black men helped a shameless racist to prevail.
Of all these emotions, fear is perhaps the most powerful. Fear for future generations who will suffer the consequences of Trump’s actions. Fear that millions of young people who care deeply about the planet may inherit a dying world of mass extinction and ever more lethal droughts, floods and heatwaves. Fear that Trump unbound – godless, corrupt, immoral and self-worshipping – will be all our undoing, ethically as well as politically. » | Simon Tisdall | Saturday, November 9, 2024
