Talking point: Hawke’s Bay’s American Kiwi offers his take on Dis-USA

AP200611105048.JPG Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden heads to the White House, waiting for Donald Trump to take legal action. Photo / AP

If there is a God, she must live in Iron Mountain, Michigan … or else, he lives directly across the Menominee River in Niagara, Wisconsin.

Either way, the godly vibes crossed state lines and generated enough sacred mail ballots, counted at the end of the process, to restore the ‘Blue Wall’ that Pennsylvania voters continue to build brick by brick as I write.

And thus handing over the presidency to a grateful Joe Biden and an even more grateful nation (at least 50.5 percent of Americans).

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s legal challenges abound.

Born a citizen of the United States, I remain respectful of an electoral process conducted and told under the most intense scrutiny of the media, and I trust that the United States judicial system will protect the integrity of that process.

So Joe Biden and the Democrats have won the White House (and possibly even the Senate), and that is tremendously important to the nation and the world. But what has not happened is also very important.

Voters have not fulfilled the moral mandate, indeed the moral repudiation of Trump, which would have prompted a return to a more united, tolerant and reality-based nation.

As I write, Donald Trump has been endorsed by 69,047,249 Americans; that’s more than six million more votes than he won in 2016.

In 2016, it could be argued that voters didn’t really know Donald Trump. Many probably felt they ‘knew’ Hillary Clinton more … and disliked her and the wealthy, liberal (left of center in US terms) and culturally ‘superior’ and irreligious elites that she supposedly embodied. So in that sense, voting for Trump was a blind stab to the ruling class.

Yet after four years in which the United States and the world witnessed with shock and dismay both Trump as a person and Trump as presidency, how could he win even greater support? A man whose character is impossible to describe with a positive adjective.

Because for those voters who are religiously and racially intolerant (if not outright racist), apocalyptic in their beliefs, economically reduced and insensitive to hard facts, he still represents the best, perhaps the only, way to point the middle finger at rulers.

In large numbers, they do it because they are angry, but even more because they are afraid and have no hope. And no modern politician manipulates those two powerful negative emotions better than Donald Trump.

Some basis of their fear and hopelessness deserves sympathy, specifically the growing economic and quality of life gap that separates the super-privileged minority from the vast majority of families, who have multiple jobs and are still drowning. Trump has delivered a convenient stew of villains to blame – China, immigrants, and, God forbid, socialists – all spiced up with bold lies uttered with presidential authority.

More thoughtful policies aimed at rebuilding a sustainable and equitable economy are much more difficult to communicate and energize, as Democrats have discovered. When asked in NY Times exit polls which of the five issues ‘mattered most’ to their presidential vote, 35 percent of all voters said the economy (the highest ranked issue) and, of them , 82 percent gave their vote to Trump.

However, other aspects of fear and hopelessness exploited by Trump are absolutely disgusting and more dangerous.

White voters gave 57 percent of their votes to Trump. White evangelicals or born-again Christians gave 76 percent of their votes to Trump. White non-college graduates gave him 64 percent of their votes.

White voters currently make up 65 percent of the voting population in the United States. This percentage is steadily decreasing … 20 years from now, the United States will have a majority non-white population.

For many white citizens, this means that the “American way of life” is disappearing. Jobs lost at the hands of ‘foreigners’. Children are taught to ‘think globally’. Empowered women. Strange religions were practiced. Too many browns, blacks, yellows … treated ‘politically correct’ to begin with. Oh!

That’s one reason to be afraid, as Trump has relentlessly shown that he is anxious and capable of exploding.

The United States and the world have yet to see the havoc that Donald Trump will wreak between now and January 20, 2021. As he has emphasized, he is president of the United States until that day, and he will bring out the best in him. Trump can always be counted on to do something even more self-indulgent and damaging to further his personal interests and revenge.

Unfortunately, we cannot simply erase his stain from our consciousness on January 20.

Then it won’t stop. Trump is not an anomaly. He is the avatar of nearly 70 million voting Americans; will remain your Tweeter in Chief. Of the (only) 44 percent of all voters who felt that Trump had the ‘temperament to serve effectively as president,’ 94 percent cast their vote. Where will your temperament take you?

Alternatively, how could those Americans overcome Trump and come to embrace the inevitable change in their lives with tolerance and hope? That is Joe Biden’s challenge to meet.

Otherwise, America’s darkest days are yet to come.

Tom Belford, a former regional councilor, served long ago in the honorable Carter White House.