The Beginning of the End of the End of the World

Translator note: the author had the temerity to publish this in a Brazilian newspaper three days before the election. Almost jinxed it, the SOB. I only even began to translate it after Pennsylvania was called. Whew. What a squeaker. Truly, the USA Democrats are the Botafogo of politics. (Soccer thing. Don't ask.)

The Beginning of the End of the End of the World
By José Eduardo Agualusa (O Globo)
October 31, 2020

Next week, I hope I'll be able to (soberly and quietly) celebrate the beginning of the end of the end of the world. I know very well that the fall of Donald Trump — which most polls forecast — won't mean, by itself, that all tragedies mankind has been suffering in these endless months will roll back.

Yes, we'll keep on suffering the whirlwind of trouble borne from environmental destruction and climate change. The Covid-19 pandemic — which is one of the troubles in the aforementioned whirlwind — will continue its march of death, killing thousands each day, destroying economies.

But Trump's toppling has a gigantic symbolic value. It represents the ultimate failure of a model of political action that normalized rudeness, divisiveness, racism, sexism, misogyny, hypocrisy, and worked tirelessly to define Falsehood as the new Truth, attacking journalism, labeling any attempt to reach the truth as Fake News.

Of course, this style of politics wasn't invented by Trump. Jair Bolsonaro, in Brazil, was a Trumpist before Trump himself became one. The same could be said of Rodrigo Duterte or Nicolás Maduro. However, by being elected President, Trump legitimized this model, reinforced it, expanded it. He became the epicenter of a retrograde (not to be confused with conservative) wave which swept almost the entire planet. Portugal, for one, would never have seen a far-right party get seats in Parliament if not for Donald Trump's triumph.

With Trump's fall, it's reasonable to predict a weakening of these populist movements worldwide.

Without its mentor, attacked by all sides, most of all for the predatory way it's been destroying Brazil's (and the world's) environmental assets, Bolsonarism in Brazil has painted itself into a corner.

The only country in the world where a majority of the population won't be celebrating Trump's defeat is Russia. This is not surprising. Russians elected Putin, and Putin elected Trump. In a way, Russian votes were even more critical to Trump's victory than American votes. Most Americans didn't even vote for the businessman. The Russian people saw Trump's election as revenge against the country that humiliated them so much in the past.

Chinese rulers, too, won't celebrate Trump's defeat. (The people, on the other hand, might.) Or those of North Korea. All of them know that, with Joe Biden in power, the USA will have a chance to grab back — though with great effort — part of their old prestige, power, and influence.

What I'll be celebrating next week (I hope!) is, to put it short, the return of a slight degree of intelligence, civility, good sense, and humanist vision to the global political life. A return is not progress. In any case, it might be, at least, the beginning of the end of the end of the world.