Americans Freely Voted Against Democracy

The result of the U.S. election, four years after an attempted coup, makes clear that the aberration is Biden.

Welcome to the 2028 American presidential campaign. Born on Nov. 6, the race already defined with certainty the candidacy of Vice President-elect JD Vance for the Republican Party.

The campaign also begins with a guaranteed uncertainty: There will be a free and clean presidential election, if, in the next four years, the victorious Donald Trump and his prince regent create the Frankenstein country they promised.

The individuals and institutions that protected Americans from Trump’s basest instincts during his first term are no longer in place. The Supreme Court, appointed by Trump this year, guaranteed that he doesn’t need to pay for the federal crimes he committed.*

The air you breathe in São Paulo, the drought in the Amazon and the lethal violence of hurricanes that kill anywhere — all will suffer the impact of a second setback in the climate consensus that’s coming. Some days ago at a rally, Trump reiterated that global warming was a hoax.

The space here is too short to list the evils promised to many who exercised their freedom and brought back to the White House the person whom Joe Biden, upon being elected president, described as an aberration in American history.

The result of this election, almost four years after the violent attempt at a coup d’etat at the Capitol, makes clear that the aberration is Biden.

Even a narrow victory by Kamala Harris would not have changed a present that brutally tests American democracy. That is the insane length of political campaigns. The one in November started in January 2021. It is not possible to reestablish confidence in the Executive and the Legislative branch if the whole political establishment keeps a perpetual campaign going.

Nothing changes, just gets worse, in the foreign interference in the U.S. elections. You can’t blame it on Russia this year. Moscow had some success in producing fake videos and telephoned bomb threats to various polling stations in Georgia. But now the cast has grown. Iran sharpened its ability to hack, and China preferred to keep a low profile, trying to influence legislative elections and fighting what it sees as bipartisan hostility in Congress.

With or without Trump, confidence in the three branches of government that insure the health of a constitutional republic, institutions that Trump has been attacking for almost a decade, continues to collapse. This genie is not going back into the bottle any time soon.

Judging from what I read after the shock of the result, American political media will give itself immunity for the role it played in the ascension and return of Trump. It will continue to ignore that two adversarial views confronted each other at the polls: the reality TV sold by Trump, of a country he described as a dystopian garbage can, and the economic reality of the most prosperous country in the developed world, with plenty of employment and low crime.

In 2025, the country will experience the first presidency bought by this millennium’s oligarchy, the barons of Silicon Valley. Vance is a cyborg trained by billionaire Peter Thiel. Trump has made it clear he will throw open the government’s door to the intemperate Elon Musk to comport himself like a untamed bull in a china shop.

One doesn’t need a crystal ball to predict that Musk will not resist interfering in the next Brazilian presidential election. He is already being courted by the family responsible for the infamy of our 8th of January. Wake up, Brazil.

*Editor’s note: Donald Trump was indicted for federal crimes related to the events of Jan. 6, 2021 and retention of classified documents, but has not been tried or convicted on those charges. Trump was convicted in state court on 34 counts of fraud related to the payment of hush money, but has not been sentenced.