While one may welcome in the New Year, there is little doubt that Americans will be even more divided than ever. Even a pandemic could not bring Americans together after the recent presidential election. Spurred on by outgoing President Trump, numerous Republicans and conspirators such as QAnon, many Americans believe that his re-election was stolen by a corrupt voting system. They have managed to put the very essence of democracy under a microscope for all the wrong reasons.
Many Americans look at Democrats and see a party made up primarily of radical lefties, blacks, LGBtQ+, and belonging to an apparatus run by political elites, business leaders and Hollywood celebrities who are also pedophiles and actively working against Trump. Democrats see Republicans as white, right-wing, evangelical and gun-toting folk. While these perceptions are far from the truth, polls nevertheless have shown that they are basically how both sides like politically to characterize the other party’s membership. Even concerted efforts to deal with the pandemic have not brought the two sides any closer together.
Following the U.S. election outcome, several Republicans in Congress and elsewhere have unfortunately continued to cater to Trump’s base by promoting false and misleading accusations about the voting process. With so much anger in the air and a President who refuses to concede his loss, the political and social atmosphere is more toxic than ever. The right-wing extremist Proud Boys will march on Washington as Senator Ted Cruz leads 12 GOP senators who are still trying futilely to overturn the results of the presidential election only to appease Trump’s base.
What all this means is that President-elect Joe Biden’s first major challenge will be to convince many Americans that his administration is legitimate, something rarely heard of in U.S. history. Protests will follow with both pro-Biden and pro-Trump supporters attempting to out shout the other side in front of far from neutral media. Depending on what happens in the two Georgia runoffs for the U.S. Senate, Congress may or may not become a continuing stalemate of ideological differences. President-elect Biden’s administration will have their work cut out for them to get anything significant accomplished in the next four years. With the divisions running so deep and Donald Trump screaming in the Twitter background, one cannot envy the challenges that his administration will face in the coming months.
FROLITICKS 