DONALD Trump has won the race to become American president.
He won convincingly, with all the seven swing states breaking for him and even winning a majority of the popular vote, a feat which he did not achieve when he first won the presidency in 2016.
There are no bones about it, Americans have voted for bigotry, for racism, for misogyny, and for lies and conspiracy theories.
A convicted criminal and adjudicated rapist who has been accused of sexual abuse by dozens of women will take power in the White House in January.
He has promised that on day one of his term he will institute a policy of mass deportation, targeting millions of American residents, the overwhelming majority of whom are law abiding and gainfully employed.
These mass round ups will not just affect those who are in America without proper documentation, Trump has also vowed to deport the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio whom he falsely accused of eating cats and dogs even though they are legally resident. He has also threatened to deport pro-Palestinian protesters.
Those undocumented migrants perform many low paid and unpleasant jobs that Americans are unwilling to do.
Coming on top of Trump's promise to introduce tariffs on imports will lead to huge inflationary rises for ordinary Americans that risks starting off a global trade war, the prospect of a crippling economic recession is very real.
The Republicans have won the Senate and are making some gains in contests for the House of Representatives. There is a very real prospect that Trump's MAGA Republicans will control not just the Presidency and the Senate but the House of Representatives as well, meaning that there will be no checks on Trump's power at any level of American federal government.
This will give Trump the ability to ensure that his picks for the Supreme Court, which already has a conservative majority, will not be challenged, cementing a far-right Christian nationalist conservative majority in the Supreme Court for decades to come.
There is now the very real possibility of a federal abortion ban, the overturning of equal marriage and civil rights and equality legislation protecting women and minority communities.
A vengeful Trump will weaponise the Department of Justice to go after his political opponents, those he deems "the enemy within.
Meanwhile, Trump will appoint the anti-vax conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr as head of public health, replacing medical science with quackery. Kennedy has announced that his first act will be to ban fluoride in drinking water on the debunked basis that it causes cancer.
Trump has also promised a government role for Elon Musk saying that he will appoint Musk as head of his new Government Efficiency Commission.
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing about 750,000 federal workers, has accused Trump and Musk of wanting to gut the nonpartisan civil service and replace fired workers with political allies.
There is much that is alarming about a Trump presidency, but the fact that America has elected a scientifically illiterate climate change denier could have the most serious consequences for the rest of the world.
Trump has repeatedly stated his wish to exploit fossil fuels to the max and is expected to pull the USA out of the Paris Agreement, cancelling many of the US's existing measures to tackle climate change. The already slim hopes of keeping global warming below 2C are now in the dust.
There are some who hail a Trump presidency on the grounds that it will bring about an end to war. For Ukraine, Trump's victory means that it will be forced to cede swathes of its territory to Putin's Russia and will probably be forced to abandon its goal of joining the EU.
The war might end but the repression of Ukrainians in the territories Ukraine will be forced to cede to Russia will only intensify as all vestiges of Ukrainian language, identity, and culture in those areas will be stamped out. It is often forgotten that a substantial majority of Russian speakers in Ukraine are ethnic Ukrainians.
For Palestine and Gaza, and the broader Middle East, there will be no peace. Biden and Harris have rightly been criticised for enabling the genocide in Gaza, but Trump has frequently criticised Biden for holding Israel back. House Republicans have expended considerable effort in blocking food and medical aid to Palestinians.
Trump has indicated that he'd give Israel more of a free rein to make decisions, and attacked Biden for trying to restrict the potential targets of Jerusalem’s retaliation to Iran’s October 1 ballistic missile attack.
Now that Israel has banned UNRWA, the United Nations aid agency for Palestinian refugees, from operating in Israel, Gaza or the West Bank, the already desperate situation of the Palestinians is set to get even worse.
Trump cut off US funding to the agency in 2018 and it was only restored by Biden three years later. Just before the election Trump told Netanyahu in a phone call to "do what you have to do" to secure Israel's aims. As the news of Trump's election broke, Netanyahu hailed it as a "huge victory."
In 2019, Trump recognised Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights even though the Israeli annexation and occupation of the territory is illegal under international law. He also moved the US embassy to Jerusalem.
The Israeli right wing will now be looking to annex at least parts of Gaza and the West Bank, safe in the knowledge that there will be no objections from the White House.
Trump has said he wants an end to the war in Gaza, but that means an end to the war on Netanyahu's terms, with no concessions to the Palestinians, whose already immense suffering will only get worse.
Just as those who voted for the Labour Party in July's Westminster General Election were quickly disappointed as Starmer's promise of change was revealed to be false, so those Americans who voted for Trump on the grounds that they believed he would look after the little guy are going to be rapidly disabused of that notion.
Those who voted for the face eating leopards party are about to discover that it's their faces which are going to get eaten too.
There is no excuse, Americans knew Trump was a convicted criminal, liar and racist demagogue with clear signs of cognitive decline who had attempted to overthrow the government. They voted for him anyway.
They have made their bed, and now the rest of the world has to lie in it.
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