There are only a few hours before the polls will open in the United States, and citizens begin voting for the next president. I predicted some time ago, and I reiterate it now, that I believe no matter who wins the election, the next four years will be tumultuous in America, and I believe that neither candidate will complete their term in office.
If nothing else is clear from the presidential campaign in the States, one thing is certain: the population is radically opposed to the status quo; and frankly, I do not think that the election will do anything to alleviate their exasperation.
Hillary Clinton is the epitome of a status quo candidate. She represents, basically, everything that the American people are disgusted with about politics. She is insincere, corrupt, dishonest, and completely committed to the financial and business interests that fund her campaign. She is the archetypal embodiment of a political model that the population can no longer tolerate, but she, and everyone like her, is determined to defy the obsolescence being imposed upon this model by the popular will.
Trump, of course, is repugnant. His candidacy is the embodiment of everything that has been done for the past five decades (at least) to sabotage the critical thinking skills of the American people. He is the channel through which their justifiable dissatisfaction can be diverted against irrational targets. He exists because of the American people’s severe cognitive dissonance.
If Trump is elected, whatever policies he is actually able to pass in Congress, they will be bad. Reagan-esque tax cuts for the super wealthy and corporations, deregulation across the entire business spectrum, cuts in social spending, and so on. Other things he promises to do, like scrapping the NAFTA agreement and imposing high tariffs on the goods of American companies that manufacture abroad, will never happen because the president does not have the authority to do that.
If Clinton is elected, the US will remain on its current policy course; which, again, is intolerable for the majority of the American population.
Popular opposition if Trump is elected, however, will be focused on his personality, his boorish behavior, and any number of stupid controversies and scandals he will inevitably concoct; which is to say, it will not be substantive opposition, and if he is successfully forced out of office, he will be replaced by a return to the present status quo. Furthermore, opposition to Trump will be met with an ugly response by his supporters, who are likely to continue to back him no matter how horrible his performance as president is. This will create a major rift in the society that will manifest itself in self-destructive and perhaps even savage ways.
If Clinton becomes president, opposition is more likely to be policy-focused, and will come not only from Trump supporters, but from genuine progressives in the Democratic Party, and from young people, whose preferred candidate was Bernie Sanders, and who never wanted Hillary Clinton in the first place. If she is forced from office, the replacement is more likely to bring a positive change.
The vote, then, in my opinion, is not so much about Hillary or Trump, but about which way you want the country to respond once either of them is forced out of office.