The damage that has been done to the American psyche as a result of this circus of a presidential election is disastrous and will have lingering consequences. The American political process has been reduced to sound bites filled with idiocy, insults, superficiality and non sequiturs. It does not say much good about America’s people, government or media that they have allowed their electoral process to descend to such depths.
Does a person’s looks, race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation really matter more to the majority of Americans than a person’s life story, ambitions, values, work ethic or knowledge about the world? A great many people in the US and around the world must be asking this very question, and rightly so.
America’s founding fathers would surely be spinning in their graves if they were able to witness the depravity and vacuous rhetoric of this presidential campaign. America has gone from the era of Abraham Lincoln and fireside chats to reality TV and soap operas. How sad that America’s political process is no longer one that other countries may wish to aspire to, and that so many Americans appear to have embraced this descent into the mundane and the profane. If the US can no longer be the guiding light that represents the aspirations of billions of people around that world, what country may take its place? Can another country take its place?
Although it now looks as though Hillary Clinton will indeed ascend to the presidency in January, and many people around the world will be genuinely relieved, there is also reason to be greatly concerned. She will preside over a terribly broken political system and greater divisiveness than America has seen in many decades. There is serious doubt about whether she has the inclination or ability to be the type of change agent that propelled Donald Trump to the Republication nomination – which America very much needs.
