Ksenija Pavlovic pens down a personal reflection on the closing election week in America.
Today, I have received a note from an esteemed British scholar commenting about how he does not look forward to the U.S. Election. “After the shock of Brexit,” he said “I don’t want for 2016 to get worse.” This really made me think about this whole year of political turmoil and reconfiguration of the world we once knew. I must say that politics has been failing to meet my ideals for quite some time now, the ethical ideals I once had when I decided to pursue a degree in political science. I wanted to understand the world, deeply, and be able to elucidate problems by finding progressive solutions, but as I unveiled the layers of concealed knowledge in political power circles I’ve gotten the full access to, I came to realize that no one really wanted to understand anything, at least none of those standing on the front line.
It’s all about vanquishing and at the risk of sounding like Jean-Paul Sartre trying to defend my self-imposed existentialism, I do not look forward to the U.S. election day either.
The theory of subterfuge and the ongoing strategy as to how to bring down your opponent, the ruthless game of politics in which only one can win—all means permitted—as for the God’s sake, it’s the election week and November 8, resembles the coming of the Apocalypse. This impending Apocalypse, I already lived through the Balkans, and it came, and the world kept spinning into the next day. America, now it’s your turn.
Election memo on page six
I also learned throughout this election, that there are people, confidantes even, who will listen to what one says and then send memos to the candidate’s foreign policy advisers, tabloid memos which would usually not get further than a gossip spread on page six, but on this occasion are meant to serve as proofs of partisan loyalties, sensationalist pamphlets which are qualifying them for jobs in case their candidate, come November 8th, wins the election. It’s callous and it’s dirty, this whole campaign has been so merciless that one of the questions I am left with is how any of the Presidential candidates who wins the election will be able to move forward with everything that has been said and done this year. We are too intensely focusing on November 8th, 2016 but the world won’t end on that day and the problems will remain as well as will a new found unraveled rage and hate and racism that is looking at us from the American suburbia we once thought we knew.
Do we really think that all these deeply seated right wing sentiments that Trump unleashed within a large portion of the American electorate will just go away? They won’t.
What do we have to look forward to? These infuriated people are legitimate citizens of this nation and if Hillary wins she will have to deal with these issues, but then domestic politics will cease to be an “advertised campaign trail priority” as there is so much going on in the global arena at the moment that it won’t let America rest.
Old Postcard from North Korea
The intelligence community is already making reports on nuclear probes led by North Korea and how they expect for them to intensify as we approach November 8th. Putin is closely watching the election, and probably indulging at some degree that Hillary does not have it easy these days. Putin wants Trump to win as he knows that Trump will be much easier to manipulate. Hillary knows Putin too well, and that in itself is a problem as she won’t budge on any of her foreign policy positions in the next eight years, two mandates permitting. But, I have a sense that no matter who wins, we will have a one-mandate-president. This election will not solve anything. November 8 is only historical in the sense that the world we once knew will officially cease to exist. Blame it all on Sartre, but I do not look forward to the U.S. election. Without true authenticity, we will just have the campaign promises for the next four years on loop.