Mr Harvie said: “Yesterday, the First Minister offered his congratulations to the convicted felon Donald Trump on his re-election.
“Writing officially, on behalf of the Scottish Government, he wrote that he is sure Scotland’s cultural and social ties with the US will flourish during the presidency of a misogynist, a climate denier, a fraudster, a conspiracy monger, a racist, a far-right politician who tried to overturn an election result both covertly and by inciting violence.
“Words fail me. What social and cultural ties does the First Minister really think will benefit from a relationship with such a man? And more importantly, what has the First Minister done so far to reach out to the marginalised and vulnerable people whose lives are most directly threatened by a second Trump term?”
While less than half of the voters (far less than half of the nation) expects the End, the Worst, the Darkest Timeline, we should remember how many people among us have survived *our* culture’s efforts to destroy theirs. We invaded one continent and enslaved another. We killed, we “schooled,” we interred, we attempted to destroy languages and histories. And yet, people go on and their languages and practices reemerge after centuries of abuse. It’s a little soon to set fire to our hair.
[snip] It is telling how little “stolen” elections have been mentioned since Trump’s second victory. But it is within these lies that Trump’s chaos calibrates itself, inside a unified and powerful ecosystem of rightwing news, online content and viral disinformation that has grown more powerful throughout this era, spewing the same falsehoods in unison day after day, on repeat, for years. It is the “political technology” by which swathes of the population have voted in effect to anoint a king in the belief it will amount to more freedom. …
In the immediate aftermath of such a seismic election, there is perhaps a tendency to paste one’s own grievances or ideology on to an explanation for why it unfolded as it did. Having interviewed hundreds of American voters – and non-voters as well – I am confident there is no single explanation or answer.
All this jockeying comes amid the fact that while Trump is claiming a mandate from his election, in fact the vote was anything but a landslide. While votes are still being counted, Trump seems to have won by fewer than two percentage points in a cycle where incumbents across the globe lost. This appears to be the smallest popular vote margin for a winning candidate since Richard Nixon won in 1968. While voters elected Trump, they also backed Democratic policies.
It is likely that, when all of the votes are counted, Trump will have received about half of the votes cast, beating Vice President Kamala Harris by about a percentage point. As a function of the two-party vote, Trump’s popular vote victory — his first — will probably be the smallest since Al Gore received more votes than George W. Bush in 2000. …
What we can say, though, is that this was not an electoral landslide, but a narrowly contested race in which Trump is likely to have benefited as much from who didn’t turn out to vote for his candidacy than who did turn out to vote for him.
Trump aligns directly with billionaires, promoting a culture where justice serves the wealthy, prejudice is trivialised and power diminishes equality. This trickle-down bigotry will ultimately create a system where servility to power and social division become normalised, eroding fairness for everyone. …
Trump’s aim isn’t to lift all boats, but rather to lift enough to convince voters to tolerate the corruption, consumer scams and environmental degradation that enrich a plutocratic class. This strategy, boosted by a pliant mediasphere, enables him to present a party of private power as the voice of the ordinary voter.
To start, a 501(c)(4) organization, named for the section of the Internal Revenue Code that authorizes such “social welfare” organizations, aren’t required to publicly disclose their donors. And by keeping the transition off of any official government email systems, the Trump team can evade having their emails requested by any Democratic or nonpartisan transparency groups under the Freedom of Information Act. …
Reporting from The New York Times and other outlets has also indicated that Trump and his team are strongly considering skipping the process by which administration officials normally obtain security clearances after FBI background checks. Instead, Trump aides have reportedly argued for the president-elect to unilaterally grant clearances to top aides based on private background investigations done by a firm contracted by the transition. …
Because security clearances are an executive function, the president can grant anyone a clearance at any level for any reason, even over the objections of the national security professionals who assess whether a given individual can be trusted with the nation’s secrets. And as an elected official, Trump himself is exempt from clearance requirements despite his long and documented history of mishandling and allegedly unlawfully retaining national defense information.
There is an anomaly in all election analysis: Trump. The question is if anyone after will lie as shamelessly as he does. Will the whole nation ever agree on Reality again?
If Democrats can’t again appeal to non-White and working-class voters in cities, this election may signal the start of a long deterioration in the party’s voter base.