Let’s say it out loud. On the evening of 5 November 2024 television audiences in America and around the world are going to watch as Donald Trump claims victory.
You know he’s not going to do anything like accepting defeat graciously.
Win or lose, he will claim victory.
It’s not in him to do anything else.
Remember back to the debate with Kamala Harris? He said he won the debate when the reality, as even a child could see, was that Kamala Harris pushed him off balance and smilingly watched as he spluttered about the size of his rally crowds.
Kamala might as well have said,
“Your dick’s about the size of your little white finger, Donnie!”
She pressed his buttons and played him like a game. America doesn’t need a leader so easily manipulated and distracted.
He’s going to say he won
You know it. It’s not in him to say he lost.
Hell, he may even win. He’s right about the game being rigged. The Electoral College is tilted in his favour. In 2016 he didn’t even win the popular vote
2016:
Clinton: 65 853 514 votes, 227 Electoral College
Trump: 62 984 828 votes, 304 Electoral College2020:
Biden: 81 283 501 votes, 306 Electoral College
Trump: 74 223 975 votes, 232 Electoral College
The polls are saying it’s close.
He’s going to say he won. He’s setting us up for it right now.
Win or lose, it’s a disaster
In 2021 Trump claimed he won in a rigged election and did everything he could to cheat his way home, even throwing his own Vice-President to the wolves when he refused to participate in a corrupt scheme to avoid certifying the Election College votes.
He’s had four years to lick his wounds and plan a rematch. In that time he has hijacked the Republican Party and told his snarling supporters to fight, fight, fight. He has a stacked Supreme Court on his side.
If he loses, he’s not going to go down without a fight and, given the calibre of his base supporters, that means violence and chaos because even Donald Trump realises that he’s not going to get another chance.
If he wins - and the polls are saying it’s a toss-up - he’s had four years of planning to transition America to a dictatorship. Project 2025 lays out the complete destruction of American democracy.
With the Supreme Court pretty much saying a sitting President can do anything he likes, you can bet Donald Trump will grab his chance to remove any opposition and seek revenge on anyone who has called him out.
It will be like Hitler assuming power in 1930s Germany and suspending elections and legislative oversight.
Do you think America is going to stand for that?
Either way, it will be chaos
American politics has become ugly. I think it’s inevitable in a racially divided nation. Look at Barack Obama who struggled to pass legislation through a hostile Congress and had his Supreme Court appointee thwarted.
There are some Americans - many in positions of entrenched power - who simply cannot accept that the “All men are created equal” line in their founding documents holds any truth.
Americans of colour have been held down, humiliated, incarcerated and executed for centuries and there are some who would like to turn the clock back to Jim Crow, if not Dixie.
People like Donald Trump stir up resentment and talk of “American carnage”. Familiar tactics of the extreme right across the globe where immigrants are seen as destroying the nation.
Oh, the irony!
You think I’m kidding?
People aren’t that stupid or easily led, you say. Democracy and civilisation rules.
Yeah, right.
In 1840 a man called Charles Mackay wrote a book with an eye-catching title.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
He describes events such as the South Sea Bubble and the Dutch Tulip craze where crowds have collectively lost their heads, competing to spend fortunes on worthless stocks or flower bulbs. The lynch mobs, the witchcraft trials, even the Crusades have seen insanity on an industrial scale.
As a species, we can be remarkably foolish in large, excited groups.
America saw this on 6 January 2021 when a crowd, whipped up by Donald Trump, assaulted the Capitol in session.
While Trump himself watched, grinning, on TV and tweeted out a commentary.
Read the book, read reviews, think of all the stupid mass delusions we’ve seen since then.
We like to think we're rational, thoughtful, well-meaning people
And we are. Mostly.
Just that there are certain topics that set us going. Those guys who dumped the tea into Boston Harbor. Those guys who destroyed Jewish businesses in Germany, breaking so many windows they called it “Crystal Night”. Those guys who lynched Emmet Till.
Sometimes emotion and foolish belief overcomes reason and judgement and we do stupid, wasteful, destructive things on a whim when we’re egged on by some grinning idiot.
Donald Trump thrives on chaos. He’d much rather people act without thinking if he can make a buck or feel good about it. He detests the sort of calm, thoughtful, well-educated leaders like Barack Obama or Kamala Harris who make him look small and ignorant.
He’s going to claim victory on 5 November and he doesn’t care where the chips fall. so long as he gets to smirk about it.
It’s a month until that day.
What are you doing to avert disaster, my American friends?
Britni