Image by Element5 Digital via Pexel
What happens when the entrenched actions of the political class pull them and their ideas further from the most basic needs of the masses?
The end or the start of Americas next political era
By Matthew Fraser, Editor in Chief
I know I am not the only person who noticed that this year’s presidential election is not run on much of anything positive. There is minimal hope or advancement offered by either of the two candidates. Though the whole Western world breathed a sigh of relief when Biden was pushed aside and shuffled off quietly, it was not to make way for a candidate who was well-loved and desired but rather to crack the door for someone who was at least good enough and not so horrendously weak before Donald Trump. In far too many ways Kamala Harris is just a āsheāll doā candidate. America needs a president and it shouldnāt be Trump so sheāll do. The pollyannas argue that maybe you can hope for something better later, if you’re lucky Tim Walz may even influence her a little bit to your cause.
In turn, Trump and Vance are running a strict campaign of horror and grievance; Trumpās strange indignation that Biden was replaced so late in the race coupled with Vanceās āfreed from the confines of internet forumsā screeds on childless cat ladies and secret Marxists, paint a picture of anger and disgust with all who donāt live quite like they do. Simultaneously, the Republicans as a whole struggle mightly to paint a picture of decay and weakening that appeals to the masses. They remind all who would listen that America is not as respected or feared as it once was, and how other nations no longer bow and cower at American displeasure. They speak often about the unravelling of US hegemony and how if only a strong man were to take the wheel once again he could lead America back to its rightful place at the head of the world, never to be unseated again.
In return, Harris echoes their words, speaking to her audience about needing to create the most lethal military in the world at the DNC, as if America does not already outspend every other nation by an increasingly growing amount. Harris steps forward to validate the worst aspects of the Trump anti-immigrant screed and to forward the ever-tightening restrictions on those who wish to flee the countries America destroyed on its march to hegemony and its furtive clawings against the end of its hegemony.
And in the end, we get two campaigns based on fear and loathing. Fear that the other will reinvent America into a weaker, more evil creature than it already is. Fear that each party’s followers will be worse off under the other than they are now. Fear that one day in the not-too-distant future Americans will lose something that they can never get back and that the world will move on happily without it. And that leads to the loathing.
Loathing that those without children will drag your life down to whatever depths that their lives are at because of course they canāt be as happy as you are. Loathing at those who disagree with us in one place and on one thing and laugh at jokes we donāt like. Loathing for those who view others around the world as human beings.
But what happens when the loathing carries a nation away? What happens when the entrenched actions of the political class pull them and their ideas further from the most basic needs of the masses? American athletes in Paris marvelled at the ease of the cost-free healthcare during the Olympics. Despite some commentators calling this a national embarrassment, a few months later, this has disappeared from American discourse entirely. Instead of a push to bring the free healthcare that started for Olympians that started in America back, the US has returned to business as usual. In its place, there is fear and loathing for the other half of the country.
