Crestfallen

The weather this morning didn’t match the prevailing mood because I felt as I had done in November 2016: trepidatious and sleep-deprived. The timelines and process around this US election are so complicated that the integrity of the outcome should be questioned, if the paranoia of Trump and cronies reaches such a level that they interfere with counts and incorporation of mail-in ballots to the tallies. It feels like the key cornerstones and certainties of democracy in the US have been eroded and I am concerned that Trump and his base are so bullish they could gaslight their way to victory without allowing due process to happen.

The turnout for Trump is surprising given the events of the last four years. I surmise that tens of millions of Americans are fixated on the notion of a strong economy, tax benefits and ‘jobs’, to the detriment of most other voting considerations and despite a litany of evidence that shows Trump to be despicable. This isn’t to say that the Trump administration excels at any of those vague buzzwords; just that they have become the key mantras. In a supremely consumerist society like the US, for many they win out easily against the concepts of inclusion, fairness and equality. Agendas that focus on these are deemed ‘extreme socialism’. It feels far removed from objective reality.

News limped in through the day and we inched ever closer to a resolution that favoured Biden by bedtime. This felt like a relief, but the world’s nerves are too shattered to celebrate loudly.

A friend in the US described himself as ‘crestfallen’, which is a) a fantastic word, and b) a word befitting of the mood.