THE DIVIDED STATE OF AMERICA

The occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC, USA for the next four years will have the colossal challenge of bridging the political chasm in American politics and society.

That’s if they want to...or the more disconcerting scenario; if they can.

Will the incoming President even be able to put the genie back in the bottle?

Will the genie, now fully aware of its destructive power - once again, even want to go back into a bottle or be pigeonholed, until the next time it’s ‘services’ are required?

Political differences were mined, exploited and weaponised for all their toxic and divisive rancour in this election campaign.

Divide and rule is one of the more sinister aspects of politics noted throughout history. Divide to rule as a political campaign strategy has been employed and exploited to maximum effect in the 2020 US presidential election, arguably more so by the Trump camp.

The spectacle of the polarisation of America along political lines and the cult-like adulation evident amongst the Trump supporters (more like adherents), has been a spectre difficult to observe but impossible to ignore.

Politics by its very nature is adversarial. As in any competitive venture, there will be a winner and a loser.

But where winning becomes an obsession where it’s not just everything but the only thing by any means necessary, bringing the process into disrepute can have lasting negative consequences for the body politic - ultimately the society, the people.

So where does the healing of America begin? And when does it start?

What will it take to bridge the gulf of mistrust carved out of weaponising racial differences, social and economic disparities, religious beliefs and cultural divergencies?

In a sense, America’s strength which lies in its diversity and its much-vaunted ‘dream’ of freedom and prosperity that his nation of immigrants has been seized, flipped and used against it.

The proverbial ‘enemy’ is not external, it’s within. And it's been let loose.

It’s as if all the hard-fought gains won over the past decades especially in the quest for racial and social equality have been dashed to pieces by an election campaign of unbelievable bitterness that has eclipsed the excesses of the previous one.

Considering that just over a decade ago America’s beacon was at full brilliance when it not only defied the pessimists by electing its first Black president, with a White running mate...but did it twice!

What has gone so wrong? How did it revert back to this?

America is now more divided than it’s ever been in recent history - and not just along racial lines.

A darkness seems to have fallen over the land that’s been the leader in the free world.

While American hopefully spends some time in deep reflection trying to put that genie back in the bottle, it’s ranking as global leader, already in serious doubt, is faltering further as a perplexed world looks on.