Trump

In November 2018, 92 year old Christine Jordan, a cousin of Martin Luther King and herself a veteran civil rights campaigner, went to in the election vote for Governor of Georgia. She went to the same polling station she had voted in since 1968, but ‘this time…they threw her out…they had no record of her’. She was not alone. Tens of thousands of would-be voters were turned away. How did this happen? Greg Palast has, among other things, been investigating voter fraud in the US for the past twenty years.

Donald Trump is set to nominate a successor to liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who died on 18 September. His declaration speaks volumes about the opportunism of the ruling elite. Trump is proposing Amy Coney Barrett, described as a “social conservative”. She is pro gun, anti immigration and against abortion. His calculation is that he can increase his appeal among women that support the religious right’s reactionary agenda. Any nomination must be ratified by the Senate and it is here that the cynicism is most clearly exposed.

After four years of his bigotry, racism, climate change denial and attacks on working-class people, is it really possible that Donald Trump could be reelected in November? To answer these questions, we have to understand the extent of political polarisation taking place in the US. In 2020 alone we have seen both the hope and horror that has defined the country at the heart of neoliberal capitalism. Let’s start with the horror. In California and Oregon wildfires have destroyed an area equivalent to the size of Wales.

Along with the public health catastrophes and economic and social dislocation triggered by Covid-19, we have seen a pandemic of paranoia. Theories that the virus was created in a biological weapons laboratory or that epidemic diseases are part of a shadowy plot to depopulate the world have interwoven with previously marginal fears about the dangers of vaccination and 5G telecommunications infrastructure. Now these theories are fusing with opposition to public health measures.