Many people on both sides of the border are looking at Washington, D.C. today with hope. Hope that the past four years will vanish like a fever dream. Hope that the ugly side of the United States that has been on display since Donald Trump assumed the presidency will vanish, too. Hope that the intransigence that has infected both the Democrats and the Republicans can soften to something that at least resembles bipartisanship.
That’s a lot of hopes.
And while the end of Trump’s presidency is certainly welcomed by many, the threat of violence during the inauguration is very real.
Trump may have lost the presidency, but he still pulled more than 74 million votes. 74. Million. Votes.
Whether you think Trump is a burgeoning fascist or just myopic narcissist who is incapable of seeing the impact of his actions on those in his orbit or on the world at large, his election defeat doesn’t erase the anger, frustration and sense of betrayal from political leaders that led to his election in the first place.
The anger of a generation of people left behind as the United States transitioned from a manufacturing economy to a service economy is very real. It’s also justified in many ways. The economic evolution of western democracies has left millions of people behind.
That anger isn’t gone because the election is over.
My father, who was born and grew up in Italy during the Second World War, says Trump reminds him of Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator who ordered his blackshirts to march on Rome in October, 1922 and staged a successful coup d’état, no election needed.
Like Trump pumping up the crowd with angry rhetoric at the Jan. 6 ‘Stop the Steal’ rally and then unleashing them on the Capitol, while not actually marching with them himself, Mussolini didn’t take part in the March on Rome either. He just pumped up 60,000 angry Italian fascists and unleashed them on the state.
I don’t believe Trump will vanish with the election. I don’t know what he will do, but I am worried about what he might do.
And even if nothing violent happens today in D.C. (fingers crossed), the situation in the United States — the anger, the hollowed-out manufacturing sector, the political intransigence, the pork-barrelling, the gerrymandering — has all the ingredients of a powderkeg. Many people feel the game is rigged, and in many ways they’re right.
Is Biden the guy to pull our southern neighbours back from the brink? Probably not. But the world hopes so, because when the most powerful democracy on the planet appears on the brink of tearing itself apart, we all need to be concerned.
