Illegitimacy

I’m reflecting now on the various US presidential elections of my lifetime. I have always supported Democrats, and have tended to disparage Republican presidents and presidential candidates personally as well as disliking their policies. I thought it irresponsible of Republicans (and the new media) to cover for Reagan’s increasing mental deficiencies, particularly in his second term. I thought George W. Bush’s first election was tainted by the problematic vote in Florida and the ridiculous intervention of the Supreme Court, and that he owed it to the country to bend over backwards to govern in a moderate, middle-of-the-road manner. (At the same time, it was clear to me that there wasn’t really a clear winner to the election. The electoral system simply failed. Though I believed, and still believed, that the most legitimate resolution would be an absolutely scrupulous full recount of the state which, it turns out, according to later studies, would ultimately have given the election to Gore.)

But it is quite clear to me that I have never watched the impending installation of a new president with such fear and loathing. Genuine fear. I worry about social programs I care about in the US, but having lived outside the US for more than a decade, and without any likelihood of returning, I feel pretty detached from day-to-day politics in the US. What I feel is existential dread for the fate of a country that is still my own, and for the world, which seems generally more unstable than it has for a long time, and where the US still has overwhelming influence, and even more overwhelming destructive power.