It is going to be very, very interesting to see the outcome of this election. Most of the world has been sitting up and taking notice of the 2016 Presidential election in numbers unsurpassed before. But what everyone had been gazing at until the campaign started was a country whose image had been built by its soft power over the past few decades: The average person in the nineties looked at America and thought of successful free enterprise, a country of hard-working entrepreneurs, wide roads and Hollywood. Today, that image lives in the minds of a smaller demographic less frequently exposed to the news, but nothing had rocked the boat so severely as to endanger it completely. For, despite all the disdain America received over its healthcare system, its gun laws (the lack of them) and what was seen as a relentless pursuit of capitalism, a large majority of the world still looked at its free shores of materialistic pleasure with not-so-secret admiration. They respected a country that was built not on a narrow definition of its citizens, but on the promise of happiness for anyone who could work hard to be successful.

From McDonald’s to Amazon Prime, they wished they could have them in their town. Over the recent years where foreign policy blunders caused worldwide opinion of the US to flag, the Silicon Valley and its prestigious universities did their part in keeping it flying.

When Americans elected their first black President, people respected a country that looked like it had conquered the draconian racism that seemed to be persisting for almost a century after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Having been snubbed hard over the Iraq wars, it looked like it was back to being at the pinnacle of its soft-power in the eyes of most of the world.

Come 2016, and the world watched puzzled as a loud-mouthed businessman pulled off a populist stunt appearing as a candidate. For outsiders who were used to America’s relatively quieter and more dignified political campaigns, this was something entirely new (and for some, strongly reminiscent of louder elections in their home country). Wagers were lost and thoughts of the whole thing being a short-lived novelty shattered as puzzlement gave way to amusement and finally to wide eyed disbelief. What has been extremely noteworthy is the political backing Trump enjoyed and the statements that have been thrown around since 2015. In short, people wondered how the bloody hell a US presidential election descended into the bizarre spectacle it is right now.

Looking beyond good old economic discontent and frustration with the political class (for which there is ample reason), what the world is also waking up to at the moment is the fact that a large fraction of the evils America had seemed to have surmounted, had perhaps merely been swept under the carpet. Shameful to publicly state any more, but continued to be nursed and kept smouldering in the private confines of her citizen’s minds: That behind the many humdrum how-you-doings and how’s-your-day-goings people have been used to hearing, there still dwells in a disturbingly large fraction of the voting population the primitive emotions that drive racism, xenophobia and the irrational belief that simple things are the solution for complex situations. For a long time many believed that Trump’s straight-talking style offered the working class a breath of fresh air against the closet political faction that had regularly earned and betrayed their trust in Washington, but even the most hardcore of his supporters will have had their beliefs shaken with some of the recent incidents.

For the rest of the world, America’s soiled linen is being aired for all to see, with the stiff wind of social media blowing the stench about for everyone to get a whiff of. Whatever be the results of the election, it remains to be seen how the world’s superpower will go back to winning hearts like it did in its heyday.



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