America, what have you done?

You can’t even blame the Electoral College this time, that anti-democratic peculiarity that values a Wyoming vote 3.7 times more than a Californian vote, because this time Trump has stormed the popular vote too. This time America made a conscious choice. They chose Trump.

They chose a man with multiple criminal convictions. Judicially determined to be a rapist. With Cosby levels of assault and harassment allegations against him. Who incited an armed rebellion against their country. Stole classified documents and refused to return them. Leaked state secrets to their enemies. Let them die during COVID. Enriched his businesses with their money. Lied to them almost every time he opened his mouth.

This is who they chose.

It was principally white people who chose him, of course. For all the talk of the inroads Trump made with Latino men – and they were significant – 84% of the people that elected Trump were white. Not quite the diverse coalition now being touted by his team. More an identity focussed supporter base who look back to a time of mythical greatness when their supremacy was assured and People of Colour were in their place. 

“It was the Economy and Immigration, Stupid!”, intone the commentators, as if Trump had actual policies to boost economic growth or grapple with immigration that the electorate had rationally decided they preferred. Trump barked about tariffs seemingly without knowing how they work in the real world. Apart from reprising his promise to build a wall, his only tangible immigration policy is to round up, incarcerate and then deport thousands of people by unspecified means. Perhaps some voters really believe Trump will deal with these two issues effectively. Most, however, seem swept up in a Zero-Sum politics of resentment and grievance, where any gains by others are at their expense, and it’s time to claim them back. They viscerally understood that Trump was running on identity and revelled as he leaked id over rally stages whilst miming fellatio, swaying to music and wheezing out vitriol.

Trump’s sole coherent economic policy is yet another heist on the American people – a continuation of a decades-long successful campaign to sequester the fruits of their productivity and the benefits of technological progress for the wealthy while living standards stagnate for the rest. He will deliver more massive tax cuts for the billionaires who gathered around him at Mar-a-Lago on Election Night, whose seven, eight and nine figure investments in his campaign will be repaid with interest, who skewed algorithms to create and amplify the dystopian fantasies of Trump’s tirades, who curried favour by reducing legacy media outlets to vanity projects, who professed outrage at Trump’s antics on January 6, 2021 but returned to the MAGA vomit to boost their piles of gold. 

It is these billionaires who will now be installed in Cabinet to rewrite the regulations supposed to protect America from their predations, who will drill, baby, drill, dooming the planet to immolation as the rest of its inhabitants watch on in despair.

Maybe those working class suburban and rural Americans who voted for a Daddy to protect them will be shocked by the coming chaos. They shouldn’t be. We’ve seen this movie before. The very economic precarity that destabilises their lives is caused by and benefits the privileged individuals and organisations that orbit around Trump and his MAGA world. Trump’s proposed tariffs will directly cause inflation that in turn will lead to interest rate increases. His massive tax cuts will transfer resources from the state to the wealthy leading to spiralling budget deficits and savage cuts to Government social spending. He has swept the House and the Senate and this time there are no John McCains to save the Affordable Care Act. There are only billionaires complaining about the cost of labour and red tape and demanding both be reduced, men who have built obscene wealth by paying poverty-level wages to the employees who generate their companies’ value. Trump’s working-class supporters may soon ponder the wisdom of their vote. 

American women may also ponder Germaine Greer ‘s timeless quote: “Women have very little idea of how much men hate them”. With the re-election of Trump, the fathers, brothers and sons of American women embraced a warped violent masculinity that demands control over women’s fertility and access to their bodies, reducing the very-much-Second Sex to incubators whilst fertile and babysitters once menopausal. Their men applauded Trump’s crass insults about his “weak” female opponent who would be a “play toy” for foreign leaders – the very leaders who play Trump like a Stradivarius, flattering him in public, incredulous in private as he cravenly does their bidding, whether gifting them rare COVID testing machines at the height of the pandemic or sacrificing Ukraine. Those American women who understood the danger Trump 2.0 represents to their bodily agency and independence must wonder at their men’s willingness to hoist them on the pyre of a macho idol because he flattered them on podcasts. For the White crumb maidens who embraced his perverse cult believing themselves safe within their white privilege, time will come for you. And your daughters.

No-one can say they weren’t warned. The people who worked most closely with Trump in his first unsuccessful Presidency lined up to say how wildly unsuitable he is to lead America, particularly with the kingly powers gifted to him by a servile Supreme Court. He will now have the power to appoint more judges, clear out the civil service and replace it with lackeys, enhance voter suppression, use his cronies to spin hegemonic narratives through all forms of media. He will hollow out democracy from within to entrench MAGA power for the long term.

As the world braces for the dramatic economic and disastrous environmental shockwaves about to be unleashed, perhaps it now dawns on Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles just how foolhardy was their decision to embrace the Morrison ego-trip of AUKUS, and to integrate our military so blindly with America’s as to transform us into another of their Pacific outposts. Unlike the AUKUS concepts of a plan, the French contract Morrison tore up contained not only concrete timelines for the delivery of the military hardware it purported to purchase, but it also forged an independent geopolitical path for Australia that was not beholden to an archaic Anglosphere nor an anarchic Clown King. With construction on the Virginia class submarines lagging badly, the AUKUS deal may collapse soon anyway if Trump’s hawks decide to keep our promised subs at home. We should let it go.

These next two months will be the calm before the devastating storm and no doubt filled with hand-wringing and finger-pointing as to who is responsible for the Trump redux. Biden. The media. The woke. Elon. There’s blame enough to go around but ultimately it was the American voters – particularly the White and male ones – who doomed us. How bad will things be after January 20? As bad as you can imagine and worse. With the climate crisis already upon us and America’s oligarchal companies’ tentacles extending across the globe, ignoring the tussle and tragedy of its day-to-day politics won’t save non-Americans from the consequences of what America has done. We’ll all be rooned, I fear, before the Trump era is out.