Will Americans extend the era of Donald Trump for another four years?

Never, since the bloody Civil War of the 1860s, which ripped apart the great nation – and which left scars which remain to this day – have the people of the United States been so divided.

The divisions may manifest today, whether the cross on the ballot paper goes to the Republican Party of Trump or the Democratic Party of his Presidential challenger, Joe Biden. However, they spread deeper and wider – to gender, race and generation; to the “haves” and the “have nots”; to those who feel they belong and those who feel they are excluded.

Not since the years of protest against the Vietnam War, in the late ’60s and ’70s, has there been so much political turmoil evident in street demonstrations. Trump has certainly been a polarising figure like no other “commander-in-chief” since the upstart colonists wrested their independence from the English in 1776.

He has often been correctly accused of speaking, tweeting and acting without thinking things through and has been portrayed, by his political enemies and many in the media, as a stumbling, vindictive and dishonest buffoon. In many cases, he has justified the characterisation with his public outbursts.

However, that is a simplistic view of Trump and one which does little to explain his popularity with a significant proportion of Americans, his alleged misadventures notwithstanding. He and his supporters can, also correctly, point to the fact that, in many ways, the US position – at least from a financial point of view – has improved during the Trump administration.

Unemployment figures are lower than they have been for years … and employment among Black Americans (the sector supposedly despised by Trump and his followers) is at an historic high. The stock market is also looking healthy, despite the financial setbacks of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Democrats are using Trump’s handling of Covid-19 as a major weapon against him, claiming he has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans through his failure to acknowledge the seriousness of the pandemic and refusal to support those states imposing hard lockdowns.

He and his supporters, on the other hand, argue that lockdowns are ineffective in slowing down the spread of the virus and that they can cause serious, and lasting, damage to an economy. The Trump era has been said to have been the “little guy” hitting back at the political establishment – and at the disturbing social and technological developments which have changed forever the society in which they live.

That hankering after the “good old days” is what drove the revolt in the UK which became Brexit. So, the outcome of the US election will very much be a judgment on whether that movement will be a significant factor in the political future of the West.

Yet, through this all, one cannot deny that, for all its faults (and there are many), the democratic system that underpins American society still offers the sort of opportunity – and freedom – which the founders of the country were prepared to fight and die for. It is to be hoped there will be no fighting and dying in the Land of the Brave…

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