TUAIRIM
November 17 2020
25
How American politics affect Ireland By Alice O’Donnell 3 November. US Election Day. I had the day meticulously planned out. Late to bed the night before, then late to rise, classwork followed by a nap between midnight to 3am, and then awake for the results that would inevitably fly in. Bed at 6am, and up for my 10am class. Easy-peasy. Naturally, planning a day always goes more smoothly than the actual execution, and as I lay in a darkened room trying to force myself into an early nap, I found I had a lot of thinking time on my hands. As my thoughts roamed the possibilities of the election outcome, I found myself wondering why did the American presidential race feel so important? Sure, it was an election, but aren’t all elections important? Why was it that this particular result felt so crucial to me, a very definite non-American citizen? I wouldn’t be on the receiving end of any of the results. I wouldn’t gain from Biden’s expansion of healthcare; I wouldn’t benefit from Trump’s promises to fix student loans. And yet, there was a definite feeling that the results of this election would hugely impact the wider world, Ireland very much included. But why? Sadly, there is no alternative America where Donald Trump did not win, so it is difficult to judge how much his presidency has influenced trends across the world, or vice versa, how trends across the world have influenced Trump’s presidency. However, there is no doubt that wild conspiracy claims have ran rampant throughout America during Trump’s presidency. Donald Trump’s fostering of conspiracy theories has filtered not just through America, but through the world. In a 2017 interview with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump said “I think one of the greatest of all terms I’ve come up with is ‘fake’. Of course, he didn’t create the word fake, but he created the culture of it. Fake news, Fake polls, Fake stories, even fake hair. Even he himself has been a victim of the pandemic of ‘fake news’; earlier last month
Trump retweeted a headline “Twitter Shuts Down Entire Network To Slow Spread Of Negative Biden News”. His observation that this “has never been done before in history” was indeed correct, as the story was completely falsified, and had been created by a Twitter page called Babylon Bee, a satirical site whose motto is “Fake news you can trust”. ‘Fake news’, an otherwise unheard of phrase pre-2016 has become common lexicon across the world. In 2017, Fianna Fáil, in what seemed to be a reaction to US politics, proposed to the Dáil to make the promotion of ‘fake news’ a punishment of either five years’ imprisonment or up to a €10,000 fine. Trump’s utter disregard for fact was perhaps most visible during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. From his attempt to defund the Centres for Disease Control in 2017, to retweeting a message that claimed the coronavirus was a hoax to repeatedly downplaying the virus itself, his distrust and suspicion of facts speaks volumes. Anti-mask protests are prime examples of this. While it’s impossible to say whether or not such protests would’ve still occurred in major Irish cities such as Cork, Dublin and even Galway with a Clinton victory way back in 2016, Trump’s views on masks, such as retweeting a message that he believed they stood for “social control… [and a] culture of silence, slavery, and social death” in May certainly did not lessen the anti-mask sentiment found throughout the world. From refusing to wear masks, to mocking his opponent Biden for wearing one, Trump has seemingly been dragged kicking and screaming to accepting masks. Ireland has found herself sandwiched between two very uncertain countries; the United Kingdom as it navigates Brexit, and America as it navigates a polarized country of extremes. The effect of balancing stability between two unpredictable countries was clear at the most recent Irish election. For better or for worse, parties and politicians who distanced themselves from the established Irish politics arguably swept the election, such as the Green Party, Social Democrats and Sinn Féin, the latter of which nearly doubled their first preference votes from 13.8% in 2016 to 24.5% in 2020.
While discourse and change within politics is a healthy and a good thing in moderation, the extreme anti-establishment nature of Trump’s administration is destabilising America, as seen in the numerous riots and protests occurring throughout the last four years. Even in very recent news, Trump’s constant efforts to undermine the election process and his refusal to accept its results speaks of unknown dangers for other countries. By doing so, he is placing himself above democracy, inviting other leaders to question their country’s voting system if they’re not getting the result they want. Of course, I haven’t even touched on the wider impacts of this American election in terms of cli-
mate change, a very real influence on Ireland and the world. One of Biden’s main campaign promises is committing $2 trillion funding clean energy, a policy which would not just abate climate change but would stimulate the economy. In comparison America, under Trump leadership, officially withdrew from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement the day after the election. This US election, while obviously focused on America, will create a ripple effect that will be felt throughout the world for the next four years, Ireland being no exception. And with that thought I finally managed to get to sleep.
An American’s perspective on the US election By Maureen Breslin It’s hard to believe the US election was only a few weeks ago. I feel as though I have aged three lifetimes in the point it has gone by. Starting on Tuesday, November 3rd, I hardly slept a wink. As an American, and a Journalism postgraduate student, the election had held my attention entirely captive from Tuesday to Saturday. I was glued to live-streams of news broadcasts and hitting the refresh button on the map of the United States every other minute, waiting for an update on the electoral college. Finally, on Saturday, news broke. In my home state and home city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, enough votes had been counted to call the race for President-Elect Joe Biden. The news came to a relief to many as my phone ignited in a bombardment of notifications from my news apps and friends alike. It was as if we had all been holding our breath, and
could finally exhale with the relief of some sort of answer, a winner. Though, with that winner, there seemed to be a loser, though a reluctant one. The count was a long and arduous process, due to the unprecedented amount of mail-in ballots because of the Covid-19 pandemic and record voter turnout. Despite this, Americans should have been able to at least sleep knowing that they had closure and finalization, either disappointed or delighted. The current president then threw gas onto that match of a notion, igniting it all in flames. For the first time in American history, the sitting president was refusing to concede. Donald Trump, without evidence, alleged that there was fraud in the election process. He threw baseless allegation after baseless allegation forward, which was dismissed in many states. However, this seed he had been planting since his 2016 Presidential bid, had already been sprung.
His base had heard President Trump speak, and that was all that was needed to get the fire burning. The entire integrity of the election and its process have now been thrown into question. It didn’t matter if there was evidence, or if news outlets were saying there was none. It could all be accredited to the lies of the establishment, the radical left, or the fake news of the mainstream media. Even when Fox News, a conservative leaning cable news outlet, came forward to state that the President’s accusations were unfounded, many Trump supporters cried that Fox had become, too, a part of the liberal machine. It was a flurry of absolute chaos to keep up with, but with it, there was a sense of hope for many. There was dancing in the streets of New York, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. There were people crying in relief and feeling free for the first time. There was a sense from PresidentElect Joe Biden that we could move forward as a
nation, somehow. He claimed that it did not matter if Trump planned to concede or not. On January 20th, Joe Biden would be inaugurated and would become the 46th President of the United States. Democracy would come out on top, whether Donald Trump conceded or not. Watching my Irish peers bear witness to all this and ask for my perspective has been interesting. It seems that the general consensus among most Irish people is that Joe Biden was the favoured candidate. In the US, at home, things are far more polarized. They are more divisive than ever, and unless you know your friends agree with you, it’s asking for a fight or bad blood to broach any political topic. Before Donald Trump ran for office, there were high tensions, but never as cutthroat as things in the US feel now. Hopefully, though it will not be easy, some return to calm policymaking can return to American politics and hopefully things can only go up from here.
