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Now no matter how this election turns out in the end, it is evident that the United States is more divided than it has been for many decades. It is not only about the candidates. Trump's supporters literally seem to live in a different world than Hillary's. They live in different places, they speak differently, eat differently, send their kids to different schools, and they both have a very different perception of what the facts are. They assemble their world view from entirely different media sources.
Clinton country, that is upper class and upper middle class Whites, Hispanics, Blacks and other minorities. Trump country is working class Whites and large parts of the White middle class afraid to suffer more than they already have.
Either way: The US will be even more divided after Tuesday and be weaker for it, irrespective of who will be President because neither of them will have the public backing them om either their domestic nor foreign policy endeavours. And it is the result of an entire generation of politicians that has failed to unite the country and instead tried to divide for political gain.
On top of all, it is pretty embarassing. While it is obvious that only one candidate is qualified, how is it possible that political America was unable to come up with with a candidate who is not under FBI investigation (it was obvious Hillary's e-mail scandal would become a big issue, criminal or not) or a complete political impertinence.
In effect, none of the two candidates will have the ability to reduce the gap and increase unity. That is in part because both of them are not good candidates; one mediocre, one horrible. But the larger problem is that - and that is obviously my outside view (but WR inside view) - that I am not even sure what could be done at this point in time to tackle the issue.
I am not completely sure when it started getting this bad. I think for some it was 9/11, which was an event that shook America's confidence and was of a magnitude that some believed it could only have been committed by the US itself - those folks stopped believing media and government.
The next issue probably was the Iraq War - a war, while having popular support at the time, the government had initiated with lies backed by media that were all too eager to be close to what was happening on the ground and failed to act as a corrective fourth power. Not only did the media not do their job (in a political climate that saw French Fries renamed because France did not want to go to war), also many Democrats voted for the War - doing what seemed opportune and popular at the time, but not best for the country.
The third big issue was the election of a Black president. It signified that the white male's rule may be coming to an end in a country that has been owned and ruled by White males since its inception. You don't have to be racist to understand that this had the power to instill fear in people who had been on the wrong side of globalization and modernization processes for years and now not even could feel that 'people like themselves' would rule and make things better for them - remember Obama came to office in the middle of the financial crisis.
The fourth issue I already touched on slightly. It is the changing demographics of the US that is driven by both legal and illegal migration. They also signify a power shift, and while the rise of BLM was certainly driven by social media, it certainly also cannot be understood without this power shift (the same goes for the attention it gets from its opponents).
All in all, the threads on whether there will be violence depending on who wins from either militia types or non-Whites may exaggerate the problem in the short term, but the overall challenge remains: How can the US grow back together?
Clinton country, that is upper class and upper middle class Whites, Hispanics, Blacks and other minorities. Trump country is working class Whites and large parts of the White middle class afraid to suffer more than they already have.
Either way: The US will be even more divided after Tuesday and be weaker for it, irrespective of who will be President because neither of them will have the public backing them om either their domestic nor foreign policy endeavours. And it is the result of an entire generation of politicians that has failed to unite the country and instead tried to divide for political gain.
On top of all, it is pretty embarassing. While it is obvious that only one candidate is qualified, how is it possible that political America was unable to come up with with a candidate who is not under FBI investigation (it was obvious Hillary's e-mail scandal would become a big issue, criminal or not) or a complete political impertinence.
In effect, none of the two candidates will have the ability to reduce the gap and increase unity. That is in part because both of them are not good candidates; one mediocre, one horrible. But the larger problem is that - and that is obviously my outside view (but WR inside view) - that I am not even sure what could be done at this point in time to tackle the issue.
I am not completely sure when it started getting this bad. I think for some it was 9/11, which was an event that shook America's confidence and was of a magnitude that some believed it could only have been committed by the US itself - those folks stopped believing media and government.
The next issue probably was the Iraq War - a war, while having popular support at the time, the government had initiated with lies backed by media that were all too eager to be close to what was happening on the ground and failed to act as a corrective fourth power. Not only did the media not do their job (in a political climate that saw French Fries renamed because France did not want to go to war), also many Democrats voted for the War - doing what seemed opportune and popular at the time, but not best for the country.
The third big issue was the election of a Black president. It signified that the white male's rule may be coming to an end in a country that has been owned and ruled by White males since its inception. You don't have to be racist to understand that this had the power to instill fear in people who had been on the wrong side of globalization and modernization processes for years and now not even could feel that 'people like themselves' would rule and make things better for them - remember Obama came to office in the middle of the financial crisis.
The fourth issue I already touched on slightly. It is the changing demographics of the US that is driven by both legal and illegal migration. They also signify a power shift, and while the rise of BLM was certainly driven by social media, it certainly also cannot be understood without this power shift (the same goes for the attention it gets from its opponents).
All in all, the threads on whether there will be violence depending on who wins from either militia types or non-Whites may exaggerate the problem in the short term, but the overall challenge remains: How can the US grow back together?
