https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/04/if-donald-trump-wins-new-age-endarkenment?CMP=fb_guIf Donald Trump wins, it’ll be a new age of darknessJonathan Freedland
Friday 4 November 2016 15.26 EDT Last modified on Saturday 5 November 2016 11.09 EDT
We are standing on the brink of the abyss. And, like anyone who’s ever peered into a chasm, we are experiencing a queasy, sinking feeling. All round the world, not just in the United States, people are contemplating the prospect that on Wednesday morning we will wake to hear of victory for Donald J Trump.
The mere imagining of that outcome is inducing anxiety in those far away from the action. I don’t just mean obsessives such as me, who spend the midnight hour checking the early voting returns from Washoe County, Nevada. Otherwise normal people also confess to being reduced to nervous wrecks by the thought that Trump might actually win. They chart their mood swings on social media, delighting in hopeful news – Hillary Clinton up in ABC News tracking poll! – or panicking at any sign the snake-oil salesman might pull it off, such as today’s Washington Post headline: “Donald Trump has never been closer to the presidency than he is at this moment”, I could feel my palms turn clammy.
In Britain we feel especially vulnerable. If you voted remain, the memory of a ballot going the wrong way is fresh. And not just any ballot, but one you believe will cause lasting, epochal damage. The thought that Tuesday might bring the second such moment in a year is one to dread.
Thanks to Brexit, the usual reassurances – the expert endorsements, the polling data – have lost their calming properties. In June the smart money, including the betting markets, said remain had it in the bag. Burnt by that experience, nothing can soothe us now – except the right result. Until then, we have to chew our fingernails, hit refresh on the Real Clear Politics polling page and wait.
Many, especially in the US, will have a ready response: what’s it got to do with you? To which the answer is: plenty. The experience of the last photo-finish election – Bush v Gore in 2000 – taught many non-Americans a lesson we could not forget. Americans decide, but their decision affects the entire world. The supreme court’s installation of George W Bush as president had a profound and global impact. Just over a year later, Bush was agitating to invade Iraq, a choice whose consequences we live with still. (In Britain the focus is always on Tony Blair, as it was again this week when John Chilcot faced MPs. But that war would never have happened without Bush.)
It's the contempt Trump shows for democratic norms that has people fearing they are witness to something akin to fascism
So a President Trump will change lives far beyond the US. An American leader who believes climate change is a Chinese hoax, who believes terror suspects should be tortured and their family members killed, who believes that Saudi Arabia should have nuclear weapons, who is fascinated by nukes’ power of “devastation” and who has asked repeatedly why the US doesn’t use them; a man who says, “I love war”; a man who drools in admiration for Vladimir Putin and whose disregard for Nato, and refusal to promise to defend a member state if attacked, would all but invite Moscow to invade one of the Baltic states – such a man would plunge all of us into a dark future. That we are not living in the US will not protect us.
But his impact will be felt – is perhaps already being felt – in a more subtle way too. For like it or not, the US and Britain breathe some of the same air. Their politics rubs off on us. (This year, unusually, it’s worked the other way around too: Trump invokes Brexit daily.)
So a Trump presidency would exert a pull beyond America’s shores. Suspicion of migrants, loathing of Muslims, a desire to put up walls and roll back social progress – these currents exist everywhere. Were Trump to win, they would have the endorsement of the most powerful office in the world. For eight years, Barack Obama has been a cautionary voice, counselling against the global rush towards xenophobia and insularity. If Trump replaces him, white nationalism will have command of the world’s loudest megaphone. Racists and bigots everywhere will feel validated, vindicated – and mobilised.
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