So it's over. The American people have elected Donald Trump as their next president. The Republicans have also gained control of the Senate; the state of the House of Representatives is yet to be determined but a Republican majority seems extremely likely.
The consequences of this are hard to predict with certainty, but it is not going to be good. The Globe and Mail's Andrew Coyne paints an especially bleak picture - he figures Ukraine is likely finished (notwithstanding Zelensky's desperate attempt to put on a brave face); I think he is likely correct in that assessment. Scarier is the possibility that this will embolden Putin to invade other European countries. Coyne reckons NATO can be considered a non-factor here. He may be right about that; if Putin concurs he may well try to conquer the Baltic states and parts of Poland. Some more alarmist types think he would go beyond that; I have my doubts (Russia would be pretty badly overextended in such a scenario); the most dangerous possible situation, though, is if the alarmists prevail and the nuclear-armed UK and France send troops in and get into direct combat with Russia.
Another specter raised by Coyne is that of China having a go at Taiwan. That seems a lot less likely to me; the US is heavily dependent on microchips from Taiwan and would be much more likely to step in in such a scenario. Presumably China knows that, so they unlikely to take the risk of going up against the US right now (especially a US led by someone as unstable as Trump). This might become a bigger risk in the long term, though; the US has been trying to bring chip manufacture home, and while that has a ways to go China might bank on them throwing Taiwan under the bus a few years down the line.
Assuming (as I still do, for the time being) that nuclear disaster is averted, there is still plenty that can and will go badly. Coyne again sees severe erosion of democracy at home, with little prospect for improvement:
We should not count upon the majority of Americans coming to their senses in any event. They were not able to see Mr. Trump for what he was before: why should that change? Would they not, rather, be further coarsened by the experience of seeing their neighbours dragged off by the police, or the military, further steeled to the necessity of doing "tough things" to "restore order?"
Some won’t, of course. But they will find in time that the democratic levers they might once have pulled to demand change are no longer attached to anything. There are still elections, but the rules have been altered: there are certain obstacles, certain disadvantages if you are not with the party of power. It will seem easier at first to try to change things from within. Then it will be easier not to change things.
While Coyne focuses on only a handful of issues, there are plenty of other reasons to consider this an abject disaster. Abortion access, for starters, may not be secure even in blue states - beyond revoking the FDA's approval of mifepristone, some fear the Trump administration will make use of the archaic Comstock Act, an 1873 law that prohibits the movement by mail of any "article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion", which could include not only drugs but the equipment needed for abortions in clinics. While previous court decisions have interpreted this to mean only the mailing of these things for illegal use, the current Supreme Court can't be expected to uphold that precedent. I suppose this might create opportunities for enterprising new med school graduates in this country to set up abortion clinics in places like Emerson, Sarnia, and Windsor...
And speaking of the Supreme Court, it will probably be decades before the rightwing stranglehold on the court is broken. This means that even if non-crazy people are able to win elections at some point in the future, they will be severely constrained on what they can do.
But the worst consequence by far (assuming nuclear war is averted) is that climate change is almost certain to be a lot worse than it would have had Trump not regained power. Trump plans to completely dismantle the measures put in by the Biden administration; including the invaluable (if misnamed) Inflation Reduction Act, which has (had?) the potential to radically transform the power grid in the US by expanding renewable energy, while creating numerous jobs in the process. Some point to the fact that red states have benefited enormously from the jobs already created, which might be a disincentive for Republican representatives in those states to repeal the legislation. Others have their doubts though:
"It’s one thing to say you don’t want these tax credits repealed. That’s a good start," said Adrian Deveny, who helped write the Inflation Reduction Act when she worked for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). "It’s another thing to vote no on a [future] tax package put forward by the president."Trump also vows to slash climate research (and most other scientific research as well); even in his first term some scientists gave up and left the country, and it is likely to be a lot worse the second time around. He further vows to rescind all manner of environmental rules, opening the door for massive fossil fuel drilling.
Regarding who is to blame for this mess, the recriminations will doubtless echo for years. Bernie Sanders has roundly condemned the Democratic leadership for years of neglecting the working class, and he is not wrong about that. More centrist types blame the Harris campaign for failure to communicate properly, for focusing too much on reasons not to vote for Trump and not enough on reasons to vote for Harris. There may be something in that too; although some were claiming record turnout this time around, the evidence suggests otherwise - turnout seems to have been lower than in 2020. That indicates that a lot of people just didn't think there was anyone to vote for.
But having said all that, much of the blame lies squarely on the American people themselves (including but not limited to the aforementioned working class). I know this is considered impolite to say in some circles; a lot of democratic idealist types (be they social democrats, liberals, or moderate conservatives) say things like "the people are always right". While it's forgivable (and gracious) for a losing candidate to say that in a concession speech, there is no way any reasonable person can say that an electorate who selected a man who is a sexual predator, racist, con artist, pathological liar, and likely spiralling into dementia has made a good and wise decision. I'm sorry, America, but you got this one wrong. Very, very wrong, and the whole world now has to figure out how to deal with the consequences.
One final thought - it's easy to imagine a microbiologist with access to CRISPR technology looking at the way things have gone, and the way it looks like they're going, and deciding to come up with a real-life version of the Captain Trips virus from Stephen King's The Stand, so as to give humanity the kind of "Great Reset" that seems so sorely needed. At this point things are so far gone that I'm not sure I'm prepared to even say they'd be wrong to do so.
