An election can be an adventure. Illusions and passion combine, you can fall for it. A re-election, a marriage. A thoughtful choice, a decision full of consequences, where the feeling is mixed with a project. This is the difference between the US presidential vote in 2016 and this one in 2020. If the United States chooses Donald Trump again, it means that they have changed profoundly. The friends of America will have to take note.
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If Donald Trump gets re-elected, it means that America has lost its special innocence, the one that so many admired, and made its fortune. The one that emerges in Barack Obama’s speeches and in Bruce Springsteen’s songs, but was also present in Ronald Reagan’s intuition or in John McCain’s brave decorum. Not a question of Democrats and Republicans, in fact. The one and the other have alternated, in this century, like long waves of the same sea. Donald Trump is not a wave, a tsunami.
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If Donald Trump gets re-elected, we must accept that American society has renounced the decorum and decency it accustomed us to, and not even the ubiquitous weapons, violence and full prisons have been able to erase. That decency and that decorum that came at the end of the film, that the kids learned at school, that soldiers and sportsmen remembered putting their hand on their heart. Donald Trump has not only collected broken promises and lies, favored the family, saved corrupt and condemned friends, provoked his countrymen with the darkest skin (Black Lives Matter). He divided the nation he was supposed to unite. He did it on purpose, with determination, day after day, invigorating the worst instincts of his supporters and mocking his opponents.
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If Donald Trump gets re-elected, it means that the US has chosen to turn its back on the planet. America First, perhaps; but not America Alone. Isolationism has been the rule, not the exception, in two and a half centuries of history. But the world is no longer that of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson. By now we share everything: travel and the environment, viruses and businesses, religions and urban models, social networks and TV series. The idea of doing it alone is not only naive: it is dangerous. The vulgate that the protectionist Trump pushed the economy into a legend. Tariff wars have raised prices, tax cuts have devastated the budget, a passion for oil and coal resembles a form of climate denial. The attitude towards Europe – poised between disinterest and contempt – appears offensive and shortsighted.
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If Donald Trump gets re-elected, means that the American dream, as we have known it, finished. The American dream has pushed people around the world to seek a better life in a new land. Many have found it, perhaps not immediately, perhaps after a generation or two. Immigration in the USA is not just a topic of discussion, as in other countries: the reason for being of the nation, from the beginning. The contribution of the new arrivals – from the Germans of Minnesota to the Italians of New Jersey, from the Jews of New York to the Indians of Silicon Valley – proved decisive. Is white America now afraid of the masterpiece it has created? It would be absurd.
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Donald Trump – according to the polls, unanimous – should not be re-elected. true: even in 2016 he was underdog, yet he won. But the pollsters have been more careful and the Americans more cunning. In four years, the 45 president has demonstrated his inadequacy – political, economic, cultural, moral, psychological – to play such an important role.
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Everyone can make mistakes. Human wrong. But persisting in error would not be American. Joe Biden is not a super hero. But a reliable man, who will accompany the nation to the altar of a new coexistence.
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November 1, 2020 (change November 1, 2020 | 22:48)
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