US elections 2020: Trump is no aberration, he’s the ugliness in America’s soul

If Joe Biden was right and the 2020 presidential elections were a contest over the soul of America, then his victory is bittersweet. With almost half of the votes cast for Donald Trump, he is undeniably very much a part of the American soul. 

In the words of Princeton Professor Eddie Glaude, Trump is not an aberration, but a reflection of the ugliness that very much is, and always has been, a part of us. While the US may not yet be ready to grapple with this reality, the rest of the world can no longer afford to live in denial. 

Around the world, many hoped that the lies we have told ourselves of our American innocence – the lies that form the bedrock of American exceptionalism and neatly separate us from the desperate impulses that brought forward Trump – would prove true. They didn’t. 

Almost eight million more Americans voted for Trump this past Tuesday than they did in 2016. They saw the divisions he fuelled, the xenophobia he embraced, the children he caged, the white supremacists he refused to condemn, and the pandemic he bungled; and they weighed that against the tax cuts they won, the conservative Supreme Court judges he appointed, the climate chaos they can ignore, and the punishments he inflicted on the “liberal elites”. They decided they wanted four more years of Trump.

Read the full article in Middle East Eye.