Trump's White House 'Waapsi'

Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election may very well mean an end to democracy in the near future

Red Wave Rising US President-elect Donald Trump at a campaign rally at the Salem Civic Centre, Virginia

LIGHTNING never strikes twice. Donald Trump has certainly struck the White House a second time, underlining that his first victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016 was not just a one-off. After being defeated by Joe Biden in his 2020 bid for re-election, Trump has made a spectacular comeback by becoming the first Republican president in two decades to win the popular vote. The fact that a misogynistic, foul-mouthed and convicted felon has won the popular vote and the presidency reveals the rot at the core of, not just American democracy, but the theory and practice of liberal democracy across the world. Apologists of a thinly attenuated democracy will proclaim, with declarative finality, that the people have spoken. They may well have, but in tones pushed and prodded by the algorithms of Trump’s exuberant backer, Elon Musk, and in a way that they may not speak again for some time to come. Trump’s victory reveals that democracy is incorrigible. Once it has gone down the path of demagogic doom, as it has in the US and many other parts of the world, there is no possibility within it of effecting a course correction of redemption.