Tuesday, November 15, 2016

This Democracy Is A Lie

Source: Media Cache
It’s a full week since the disaster that is the American elections, the shock has worn off for some and others are still in mourning. For some, the outcome of the elections came as no surprise, I tend to think these are the people who have long given up on humanity. For some of us, somewhat optimistic, we hoped and thought the outcome would be different.

While I could go on about how tragic the outcome is and how it’s an indication of the racial and gender discrimination that still exists and is deeply rooted in our society (because this really isn’t just about America) I will instead talk about post the election.

Hillary seems to have lost this election in a similar manner to Al Gore in 2000, while Hillary hasn’t won the election she won the popular vote. I’m not entirely sure how the voting system works but a candidate can either win both the popular vote and the electoral college vote or they can win just the electoral vote (I’m not sure if I’m using the right words here). In order for a president elect (smirk, big words) to win the election the candidate must receive a majority of electoral votes (there are 538 electors on the college).

Source: i.ndtvimg.com
According to NBC news Clinton won the popular vote by a bit over a million votes, yet the orange one gets to run the country (the picture along side is a bit biased but I don't care :) ). I’ve said this before (in my previous post actually), I’m a firm believer of the quote by Emma Goldman that says “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal”. A candidate who hasn't won the popular vote has been sworn in four times in the American democratic history. I could go into a long winded lecture about who (unjustly) lost the election when and what the circumstances were, but I refuse to be such a bore. All I can say is it’s happened four times before this and the last time it happened was in 2000 when George W. Bush was declared the winner of the general election despite having lost the popular vote to Al Gore.

Following George W. Bush’s rather unfavorable actions during his presidency (This is according to some shady website I found called the dailydot) I would have thought there would be a change in the American voting process. According to this website George W. Bush failed the American people; he failed to bring those responsible for the September 11 attacks to justice. His policies led to the great recession, and last but not least he did not advocate on behalf of the LGBT community (He and Trump are alike this way).

The American people chose Hilary and they got the orange one that goes by Trump instead. This goes to show that this democracy is a lie, how can the opinion of 538 flawed (probably old white) men sideline the opinion of some 130 million people? I understand that this system was probably established based on the fact that the 583 are probably chosen by the general population and their opinion is therefore an indirect representation of the people’s opinion. But shouldn’t the electoral vote then be disregarded in the case where it differs from the popular vote? The electoral college evidently doesn’t always know what the people want.

That being said, we can all agree that the American voting system is a bit peculiar, it takes forever, and then when it does eventually come to a conclusion the people don’t always get what they want. One of the things that stands out for me is that it is biased towards a certain class and race. State representation on the electoral college is not based on the size of the state (writing more about this would leave me confused and angry but here’s where you can read up on it if you are interested:  www.nbcnews.com)

Besides the election outcome itself (I kid you not, when I first saw that Trump won the election I thought it was one of those fake news that Facebook has been publishing lately) what I find surprising post-election is the strength of the US Dollar against major currencies (i.e. Euro, Japanese Yen, Canadian Dollar, and the Rand)! Somehow I had assumed it would plummet if Donald Trump won the election, but obviously I was wrong.

There is a lot that I could go on about (If I may be so vain) relating to the US elections but nothing I would say would be new and I don’t know enough about US politics to write anything that’s life changing, and I won’t risk my blog being riddled with more factual inaccuracies (nobody knows how much of what I’ve said is actually correct). Besides my factual inaccuracies we can only hope that Trump won’t be the disaster of a president that his speeches and interviews indicate he will be.

EoP (End of Post)

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