Trump has won (what a headline)

It’s been over a month since the US elections ended and articles about Donald Trump’s victory are still being published (this one, for example). One column that has appeared now is not very newsworthy, but the most curious thing is to note that, apart from the first article that appeared, the others were not newsworthy at all. Perhaps because in what was to be the closest election in history, the result surprised no one. The first premise of the syllogism, that of the unknowns about who would win, turned out to be just another fake news.

We could say that it was the hoaxes that really won. Between the fake news that is by far Trump’s favourite weapon and the immense blunders of the polls, what we once knew as ‘truth’ has become the stuff of poetic fabulation. In Europe at least, none of us were told things with the slightest semblance of veracity. America was another matter, of course. When Trump’s first presidency was won, I was in California and was shocked by the news from Spain of Hillary Clinton’s guaranteed victory. On the streets of any city outside New York, Boston, San Francisco or Los Angeles, it was palpable that this was not the case. But at least Clinton won in the absolute sum of votes over Trump and only the peculiar mechanism of the US presidential election gave the White House – by the skin of her teeth – to the latter.

Now we have experienced a very different election episode. Donald Trump received almost four million more votes than Kamala Harris – what a tight election – and won every state that was supposed to be up in the air. The great electoral doubt was dissolved from the very first moment. But it is worth remembering. It was that if Trump won, you didn’t know what would happen, but if Harris won, you knew nothing would happen. The Democratic Party has been turned into a kind of inoperative ghost, trapped by the woke culture, the trap of political correctness that forces one to do or say nothing that makes sense under threat of cancellation. At least it is to be hoped that this poison of forced correctness, capable of destroying what little we have left of democracy, will begin to fade.

Next month we will begin to find out what happens with Trump sitting in the Oval Office. His first promises – such as closing the Mexican border – belong to the trailer genre, which, as we know, is very careful to say what will happen in the movie. Will Trump support Netanyahu’s Israel as much as he did in his first term? Will he end the war in Ukraine? If he does, will it be by forcing Putin to moderate his anxieties or by satisfying all of them? Will the new/old president end NATO? Will he pay any attention to Europe? And what about China? How will the pulse for control, economically at least, of the planet play out?

AI-generated image.

History assures us that the questions we ask now have very little to do with the answers we will receive later. Trump, let us not forget, will be a lame duck because this is the last term in which he will be able to enjoy the presidency. We are really talking about the legacy he will leave behind. And even if the Republican Party’s triumph has been overwhelming – even if it is due to the failure of its adversary – we do not know what post-Trumpism will be like in the political formation that has won the votes of the most disadvantaged. If, as the experts claim, voters who have traditionally favoured the Democratic Party, such as Latinos, have supported Trump out of weariness, fed up with never being able to enjoy the much-vaunted American dream, it will be curious to see what will happen when they stumble back into the cruel reality of failure. Because, so far, no populism has succeeded in delivering on the promises it spreads, and it would certainly be a surprise if Trump were to make American society more balanced, fair and focused.

Nor do we know what the Democrats’ chosen formula will be to get them out of their zero-point zero, so the next few years lie in utter ignorance. With the suspicion that rigged truths and clumsy polls have little future ahead of them, if only because they have reached their respective ceilings. But what will be the new tool of deception with which they will try to control us from above, we don’t know either. The real news is that we ignore everything.

And in Europe, what does Trump’s victory mean for the Union? Since we Europeans know very well how to achieve ineffectiveness on our own, without anyone’s help, I imagine that we will tend to watch what happens on the other side of the Atlantic as if we were watching a circus show. As for how Melania’s husband’s presidency might affect Spain, it is better to draw a veil of silence. If Europe does not exist for the purposes of Trump’s idea of the world, Spain must sound like a medieval ballad to him. Maybe he’ll confuse us with Mexico – as often happens in the American giant – and we’ll get the consolation prize of some insult. That we can get worse? No doubt we can. But for that we might as well have Harris win as Trump win.